Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
2009 Results
Folks say that if you listen real close
at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin'
off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin'
for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the “Ellie
May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish;
for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin'
and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of
several screaming contests.
Federal Way,
The winner of 2009
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is David McKenzie, a 55-year-old Quality Systems
consultant and writer from
David McKenzie is the
27th grand prize winner of the contest that began at
An international
literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the
reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873).
The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit
bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The
Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three
times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the
sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the
almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with
the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for
years, "It was a dark and stormy night."
Most entries are
submitted electronically through the Contest's Web site: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/.
Runner-Up
The wind dry-shaved the
cracked earth like a dull razor--the double edge kind from the plastic bag that
you shouldn't use more than twice, but you do; but Trevor Earp had to face it
as he started the second morning of his hopeless search for Drover, the Irish
Wolfhound he had found as a pup near death from a fight with a prairie dog and
nursed back to health, stolen by a traveling circus so that the monkey would
have something to ride.
Warren Blair
Ashburn, VA
Grand Panjandrum's Special Award
Fleur looked down her
nose at Guilliame, something she was
accomplished at, being six foot three in her stocking feet, and having one of
those long French noses, not pert like Bridget Bardot's, but more like the one
that Charles De Gaulle had when he was still alive and President of France and
he wore that cap that was shaped like a little hatbox with a bill in the front
to offset his nose, but it didn't work.
Marguerite Ahl
Prescott valley, AZ
Winner: Adventure
How best to pluck the
exquisite Toothpick of Ramses from between a pair of acrimonious vipers before
the demonic Guards of Nicobar returned should have held Indy's full attention,
but in the back of his mind he still wondered why all the others who had agreed
to take part in his wife's holiday scavenger hunt had been assigned to find
stuff like a Phillips screwdriver or blue masking tape.
Joe Wyatt
Amarillo,
Runner-Up
In a flurry of flame
and fur, fangs and wicker, thus ended the world's first and only hot air baboon
ride.
Tony Alfieri
Dishonorable Mention
Karen Buffalo, sensing
that her 1894 Brassic & Middon .45 calibre revolvers, mounted
with mother-of-pearl grips and clasped by ivory buttons carved in the shape of
elephants at play, were no match for 'Duke' Bunton's double-barreled shotgun, muttered under her
breath "Darn that Parisian gunsmith in the Fourteenth Arrondisement!"
Mark A. Gray
Wokingham
Berks.,
Winner: Detective
She walked into my
office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in
Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on
both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she
wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those
birds usually aren't.
Eric Rice
Sun Prairie, WI
Runner-Up
The dame sauntered
silently into Rocco's office, but she didn't need to speak; the blood-soaked
gown hugging her ample curves said it all: "I am a shipping heiress whose
second husband was just murdered by Albanian assassins trying to blackmail me
for my rare opal collection," or maybe, "Do you know a good dry
cleaner?"
Tony Alfieri
Dishonorable Mentions
The appearance of a
thin red beam of light under my office door and the sound of one, then two pair
of feet meant my demise was near, that my journey from gum-shoe detective to
international agent had gone horribly wrong, until I realized it was my secretary
teasing her cat with a laser pointer.
Steve Lynch
After quickly
scrutinizing the two dangerously buff men coming toward her in the dark and
wondering whether she could take them both out, P.I. Velma Plusch mentally inventoried her
arsenal-two pistols, two stiletto-clad feet, two leather-gloved hands, two each
eyes, ears, lips, and breasts-and decided that she could.
Donna Kain, Ph.D.
Detective Pierson
mentally reviewed the group of suspects milling around the recent crime
scene-two young siblings eating gingerbread, a young girl in a red hoodie, a beautiful girl
with narcolepsy, and seven little people with the profession of miners-then
gave his statement of "It's a grim tale" to the press.
Shannon Gray
Wichita, KS
Darnell knew he was
getting hung out to dry when the D.A. made him come clean by airing other
people's dirty laundry; the plea deal was a new wrinkle and there were still
issues to iron out, but he hoped it would all come out in the wash - otherwise
he had folded like a cheap suit for nothing.
Lynn Lamousin
Baton Rouge, LA
I entered the bedroom
again, looking for anything the killer might have missed in his obvious attempt
to clean the crime scene, when it hit me, the victim hadn't been eating just
any potato salad, it was German potato salad, the kind usually served warm,
with bacon and although most people prefer the traditional American potato
salad, it was clear that this victim didn't, oh no, he didn't prefer it at all.
Lisa Lindquist-Perez
It was a quarter 'til
eight in the ninth precinct when I got the call of a possible two-eleven at a
nearby Seven-Eleven that turned out to be just a four-fifteen--that is until my
number two from the ninth discovered the one-eight-seven under the Tenth Street
Bridge, some two-bit mob soldier with a blossom of five .357's right in the
ten-ring.
Jeff Riley
Fort Worth, TX
Winner: Fantasy Fiction
A quest is not to be
undertaken lightly--or at all!--pondered Hlothgar, Thrag of the Western Boglands, son of Glothar, nephew of Garthol, known far and wide as Skull Dunker, as he
wielded his chesty stallion Hralgoth through the ever-darkening Thlargwood, beyond which, if he
survived its horrors and if Hroglath the royal spittle reader spoke true, his
destiny awaited--all this though his years numbered but fourteen.
Stuart
Seattle
Runner-Up
Towards the dragon's
lair the fellowship marched -- a noble human prince, a fair elf, a surly dwarf,
and a disheveled copyright attorney who was frantically trying to find a way to
differentiate this story from "Lord of the Rings."
Andrew Manoske
Foster City, CA
Winner: Historical Fiction
The Cunard "Carinthia"
glided through the starry waters of the Bering Sea, 843 passengers aboard,
including Harriet Dobbs, resignedly single for over a decade, while a nautical
mile due west slunk the K-18 submarine, under the command of lonely Ukrainian
Captain First Rank Nikolai Shevchenko: ships that passed in the night (although
the second technically a boat).
Dr. Sarah Cockram
Edinburgh,
Runner-Up
On a fine summer
morning during the days of the Puritans, the prison door in the small New
England town of B----n opened to release a convicted adulteress, the Scarlet
Letter A embroidered on her dress, along with the Scarlet Letters B through J,
a veritable McGuffey's Reader of Scarlet Letters, one for each little tyke
waiting for her at the gate.
Joseph
Kirkland
Winner: Purple Prose
The gutters of
Eric
Allentown
Runner-Up
Warily-as if his hands
were a green-bean casserole in a non-tempered glass dish that had just come out
of the freezer, and the patient was an oven that had been preheating for a good
75 minutes at 450F-the surgeon slowly reached into the incision and groped for
the bullet fragment in the pancreas, at last finding it nestled near one of the
Islets of Langerhans like a small wrecked
lifeboat foundered on a sandbar as it floated in the fog, adrift in the Sea of
John's Innards.
Christin Keck
Dishonorable Mentions
Mortimer froze in his
tracks; the rhythmic clicking on the stones of the path (well . . . not really
a clicking sound so much as a kind of clinking sound, more like the noise made
by shaking a charm bracelet filled with Disney characters to a salsa beat) made
him suddenly realize he had forgotten to buckle one of his galoshes.
Rick
Waconia
Without warning, their
darting tongues entwined, like a couple of nightcrawlers fresh from the baitshop--their moist, twisting bodies finally
snapping apart, not unlike an old man's muddy galosh being yanked away from his
patent leather shoe.
Matt
Erie
She expected a
beautiful morning after the previous night's hard rain but instead stepped out
her door to a horrible vision of drowned earthworms covering the walkway --
their bodies curled and swirled like limp confetti after a party crashed by
firefighters.
Rita Hammett
Boca Raton,
The first time I saw
her she took my breath away with her long blonde hair that flowed over her
shoulders like cheese sauce on a bed of nachos, making my stomach grumble as
she stepped into the room, her red knit dress locking in curves better than a
Ferrari at a Grand Prix.
Harol Hoffman-Meisner
He slowly ran his
fingers through her long black hair, which wasn't really black because she used
Preference by L'Oreal to color it (because "she was worth it"); her
carrot-colored roots were starting to show, and it reminded him of the time
he'd covered his car's check engine light with black electrical tape, but a
faint orange glow still shone around the edges.
Lisa
Willoughby
Their relationship hit
a bump in the road, not the low, graceful kind of bump, reminiscent of a
child's choo choo train-themed roller
coaster, rather the kind of tall, narrow speed-bump that, if a school bus ran
over it, would cause even a fat kid to fly up and bang his head on the ceiling.
Michael Reade
It was a dark and
stormy night, well, not pitch dark so much a plumby, you know, that time of night where it turns
into that kind of eggplant color, which I hate-- eggplant not the time of night--and
it wasn't stormy so much as drizzly, like a cold that's not so bad but really
annoying, where you sound a little plugged up and all your mucus just sort of
hovers at the edge of your nostrils or drips down the back of your throat, it
was like that.
Maisey Yates
Winner: Romance
Melinda woke up
suddenly to the sound of her trailer being pounded with wind and hail, and she
couldn't help thinking that if she had only put her prized hog up for adoption
last May, none of this would be happening, no one would have gotten hurt, and
she wouldn't be left with only nine toes, or be living in a mobile home park in
Nebraska with a second-rate trapeze artist named Fred.
Boston
Runner-Up
The first time I saw
her she took my breath away with her long blonde hair that flowed over her
shoulders like cheese sauce on a bed of nachos, making my stomach grumble as
she stepped into the room, her red knit dress locking in curves better than a
Ferrari at a Grand Prix.
Harol Hoffman-Meisner
Dishonorable Mention
As she slowly drove up
the long, winding driveway, Lady Alicia peeked out the window of her shiny blue
Mercedes and spied Rodrigo the new gardener standing on a grassy mound with his
long black hair flowing in the wind, his brown eyes piercing into her very
soul, and his white shirt open to the waist, revealing his beautifully rippling
muscular chest, and she thought to herself, "I must tell that lazy idiot
to trim the hedges by the gate."
Kathryn
Bronx
Winner: Science Fiction
The golden, starry
wonders of the dark universe unfurled before the brave interstellar vessel
"Argus" like a black flag of victory with a whole bunch of holes in
it as the mysterious mission buoyantly commenced that would one day resolve
critical questions about space, time, and the appropriate ratio of nuts to
chips in a perfect chocolate chip cookie.
Robert Friedman
Skillman, NJ
Runner-Up
George scratched his
head in abject puzzlement as he tried to figure out where he'd parked the
rocket this time in the 100-acre parking lot of Nallmart 75B, but then he remembered that a ship-boy
had taken his DNA key-but which one, the kelly toned humanoid or the atmosphere-of-Rylak-hued android;
scanning the horizon, he at last turned to Babs and asked "how green was my valet"?
Leigh A. Smith
New
Winner: Spy Fiction
Oliver Smith, spy on
Her Majesty's service - not that she knew about it, because that tended to
spoil the whole secrecy thing and really, who'd want an un-secret spy, anyway?
Not to mention that any spy worth his salt would kill anybody who knew his
identity . . . so I wouldn't go around mentioning that I read this if I were
you - looked both ways before crossing the street.
Rafaela Canetti
Runner-Up
The serrated butter
knife tossed capriciously onto the 38th Street sidewalk amid the detritus of
Salem cigarette butts and a Mentos box was devoid of zero trans fat margarine,
but glinted invitingly in the sunlight nonetheless, poised for the opportunity
to be repurposed to cut up a Snuggie, and Vladimir took it.
Amy E. Gross
Winner: Vile Puns
Using her flint knife
to gut the two amphibians, Kreega the Neanderthal woman created the first pair
of open-toad sandals.
Greg Homer
Placerville, CA
Runner-Up
Medusa stared at the two creatures approaching
her across the Piazza and, instantly recognizing them as Spanish Gorgons,
attempted to stall them by greeting them in their native tongue, "Gorgons,
Hola!"
Eric Davies
Dishonorable Mention
Eyeing the towering
stacks of food colouring that formed the
secret to his billion-dollar batik textile empire, grumpy Old Man Griffington was forced to admit
that dye mounds are a churl's best friend.
Janine
Busselton
Winner: Western
He was the desert
nightmare whose name no one dared breathe, this deadly gun-slinger Garth Tedder, whose face struck
terror in the hearts of man and beast, its macabre, round, maroon cheeks almost
exactly like the pickled beets that farmers' wives force-fed their horrified
families.
Brett Hawkins
Burleson, TX
Runner-Up
There stood Tex Omaha,
fillin' his canteen with his
last bottle of Fiji water -- a case of which, oddly, he'd got off an Irishman travelin' west on the railroad
-- 'cause it's good water, better than the dirt-brown stuff at the waterhole
that tastes like a rusty nail, worth the two buffalo hides he traded for it,
and it'll keep him cool, calm and well-hydrated while he's huntin' down that dirty,
no-good Scots-English cattle rustler, Angus 'Shorthorn' Hereford.
George M. Calger
Saint Paul, MN
Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions
"I want you to
follow my husband," said my newest client, the enigmatic Mrs Yogi, estranged wife
of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Steve
Taylors
Automotive power and
the color red proved fatal to Santino; Sophia found his body wrapped around the
exposed custom pistons of his ruined Ferrari Testarossa, and remembered the morning she found a sowbug on her red anthurium, a racy flower with
an exposed pistil.
Denise Welding
As Laurel made her way
through the plaza, she couldn't help but notice the gorgeous co-anchor for the
morning news show, out yet again signing autographs, smiling broadly, and
infusing everyone around her with happiness, and she wondered, just for a
second mind you, how good it would feel to punch her right in her stupid little
face.
Nikkia Daniel
Marietta, GA
"They clang to me
like horse flies on cow dung," said angry, shivering onion farmer Jesper Lunk, whose clothes had
been eaten off him by a plague of locusts except for his boxer shorts, which
were a comfortable cool blend of rayon and nylon in a floral pattern with a
three-button fly and a snug elastic waistband.
James Macdonald
From my car I took
thorough stock of the loose group of illegals standing around outside the Home
Depot--plasterers, roofers, painters, all for hire . . . girls, too--and
fingered the FEMA money in my pocket ruminatively; my house was a mess, but so
was my love life--what was my pleasure?
Jeff Eller
As Oedipus watched his
mother gracefully glide across the great hall, he felt a stirring in his loins
which he immediately regretted but then quickly dismissed, for he knew if these
wanton desires for his mother were wrong then someone would have named the
condition by now, thus proving once again that where his emotions were
concerned there was only one description for Oedipus . . . complex.
Ted
Lexington
Rosalita came in looking, with
a look of surprise not unlike that of Hedy Lamarr in the 1947 version
of "Samson and Delilah" when she learns that Samson will marry the
woman, portrayed by Angela Lansbury, but with less fervor than that of Joan
Crawford's 1948 version of "Mildred Pierce" discovering her daughter,
played by Ann Blythe, was to run away with her, (Mildred's) boyfriend, to
discover that Ernesto had once again left up the toilet seat.
James Biggie
As Lieutenant Baker
shrank his lips back to their normal size, he tried desperately to think of a
situation in which his new-found power might be useful, as have I, your
narrator.
Dan
Glenview
She had whispered
wantonly, "Come to bed, Yul," but was now staring in utter disgust because the
green lava lamp was too revealingly bright as he fumbled to adjust his new Merken, a $300 pubic toupee
that had looked like a steal on eBay, but now looked just like a wet Tribble that had inexplicably
crawled up his crack from an old "Star Trek" episode.
Barry
Allentown
Her kiss grasped his
lips like an aroused sea barnacle; her breath smelled like wet feet mated with
ham-marinated, salty, delicious; and the sea wailed
around them like lovers in a trailer park.
Matthew Brady
Seattle WA
Peter shaded his eyes
from the brilliant April morning sunlight as it suddenly illuminated the Bunny
Trail, contemplated his handiwork, (separating all of those pearly white
chicks-to-be from their mothers) and prepared for the final task to complete
his mission-yes, this was a good day to dye.
Trent Bristol
There were earthquakes
in this land, terrible tsunamis that swirled flooding torrents of water
throughout, and constant near-blizzard conditions, and not for the first time,
Horatio Jones wished he did not live inside a snow globe.
Rich Buley-Neumar
Amityville, NY
Grimly aware of the
rapidly approaching disaster, Spiderman leaped from rooftop to flagpole, from
flagpole to fire escape, hurling himself recklessly from building to building,
darting glances through every window in his desperate search for one vital
room, while silently cursing the fact that the last thing he had done before
donning a one-piece skintight costume, was to eat a large bowl of hot chili.
David J
They said that his
writing was rich in metaphor . . . not the type of rich that one likens with
the amassing of great wealth, but rather the richness that one might associate
with a Pot Pourri pasta meal available
at Spaghetti Factory, featuring a mix of Brown Butter and Mizithra Cheese, Meat, Clam,
and Marinara sauces-yes, that's how rich his metaphors were! (for John Updike-RIP)
John Drew
Santa Clarita, CA
Before she was Tabloid
Sally, the impossibly foxy movie star who destroyed marriages like a busty ball-peen
hammer, before she was Nobel Sally, the mercurial chemist who cured chronic
halitosis, and before she was Pulitzer Sally, the honey-dipped scribe who
brought Washington to its knees, she was just little Sally Barns from Crow's
Neck, Neb., Bill and Margie's daughter, a doe-eyed pixie who loved fairy tales
and onion rings.
Roger Collier
I awoke in my sleeper
on the way from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, my nightmare riven by a train of thought
that abruptly stopped me in my tracks with cataclysmic, explosive, and yet
equal and opposing force, like a train on its way from Rotterdam to Amsterdam;
then I realized I was on the wrong train and headed for Rotterdam, instead of
Amsterdam.
Joe Dykes
Denver, CO
The skydiver jumped
out of the plane and felt his skin being pulled back like that of a dog
sticking its head out of a car going 110 on the highway, owned by a driver
rushing to be on time for work or else he would get fired by his boss with the
curly mustache who owned a large speedboat.
John
Queensbury
Swain had always come
out of bar fights unscathed, built as he was like a '70 Dodge pickup (with that
"Adventurer" styling package), but after tangling with Big Luther
tonight, he felt like he'd been in a wreck, not a five-car pileup, exactly, but
a pretty bad fender bender, busted headlights, maybe a bumper knocked loose,
and, for sure, his tailgate dragging.
It was a dark and
stormy night, dark like the inside of a spare tire in the trunk of a 1957 Chevy
sitting up on blocks in a tumbledown barn somewhere in rural Ohio, and stormy
like the romance of Pete Kimball and his girlfriend Betty Lou, who used to make
out in the back seat of that Chevy when it was new and shiny and the
Dell-Vikings were singing "Come Go With Me"; but this is not their
story, it just starts out dark and stormy like that.
David G. La
Perry had come a long
way in the nine years since being arrested by a park ranger in his '81 Firebird
tenderly holding a spiral-cut, honey-glazed ham (with the bone removed).
Jesse
Goodyear
Crickets chirped in
the lawn, katydids made that annoying grating sound in the trees, a mosquito
whined near the ceiling, squirrels snuggled down in wherever it is they sleep,
somewhere -- probably Africa -- a lion roared, ants gathered together in their
underground tunnels like so many, well, whatever, and -- in spite of the fact
that it was night (dark and stormy) -- Jimmy cracked corn and no one cared.
Dorinda
Chesterton
If she wasn't the
poster girl for the word voluptuous, with her not exactly "bedroom,"
but definitely "walking-down-that-hallway" eyes, her hair a palomino
mane rather than platinum blond, lips reminding me of Marilyn Monroe not
Angelina Jolie, and that slow hip-swaying walk that sweet-talks a man's
thoughts into dim, smoky rooms where R & B is played, she should've been.
Sandra
Yakima
Lady Rowena, fresh
from her bath, knew she had time to be ready to meet the Prince at 6:00 o'clock
even though the mantle clock was striking six, because the brass escapement
lever mechanism that engages the teeth of the large gear which drives the smaller
gears that send the hour and minute hands on their circular paths, was worn.
Frank J. Weidler
Placentia, CA
On a lovely day during
one of the finest Indian summers anyone could remember--a season the Germans
call "old wives' summer," obviously never having had Native Americans
to name things after, but plenty of old wives, and "Indian summer" in
German would refer to the natives of India in any case, which would make even
less sense than the current naming system--on such a day, however named, John Baxter
fell in the creek and drowned.
Deanna Stewart
Heidelberg,
Fenwick was concerned
when his voices returned, but they hadn't been troubling him much until
now--now that they were singing an old tune by the Shirelles, or the Crystals, or
the Ronettes, or the Angels, or
the Chiffons, or one of those damn girl groups he couldn't keep straight, the
uncertainty making him very agitated again, although he had to admit the
harmonizing was quite good, really.
Jim Seamon
Punta Gorda, FL
As my darling
Jean-Claude entered the salon, with a single rose bud bouquet, I felt a wave
wash over me, like the full brunt of Napoleon's forces at 9:05 am on the second
of December 1805 ripping through once fertile fields to the Prutzen Heights, and I knew
that Paris in printemps would be to my
liking.
Andrew Pitt
Paris, France
As always, that
morning he awoke to the melodious sound of a stream of water cascading into a
still pool, punctuated by several ominous silences-- and he could judge, by the
length of the silences and the volume of the cascade, just how much of his
three-year-old son's urine he would have to wade through to get to the sink.
David Pellicane
Highland Park, NJ
Tinkerbell landed softly on the
bedpost in a sparkle of Industrial Light & Magic, handed the packet of
cigarettes to a rather stubbly 'Pete' Pan and, seeing his little green tights
strewn carelessly on the floor and a still sleeping Wendy lying naked beside
him, quickly realized they were now a very long way from Never Never Land.
Hugh
Bath
Harvey placed the muzzle of the
.45 against his head, and as the cold steel touched his temple a sudden shiver
raced along his spine, and the hair-trigger took on the frisson, his brains
missing Marlene's photo, where he wanted it to go, and splattered across his
burgundy nightgown, so he got the color combination right.
Edward Vincent Tennant
It could have been no
more than midnight's icy incipit when Clifford, stumbling in hitherto sanguine
emprise through the tombstone teeth of the raven lit Kirk-yard like some
well-performed but lichen-hushed human bullet-catch, heard the manifest bactrian vociferation which
betrayed with desperate flourish the inexplicably wretched fact that his camel
was out there, out on the ice - and she was in mortal peril.
Mr. S. J. Crawford
Redlynch, QLD,
No man is an island,
so they say, although the small crustaceans and the bird which sat impassively
on Dirk Manhope's chest as he floated
lazily in the pool would probably disagree.
Glen Robins
Brighton, East Sussex,
A dark and stormy
night it was; in torrents fell the rain --except at occasional intervals, when,
by a violent gust of wind was it checked, as up the streets it swept, (for in
London it is that lies our scene), along the housetops rattling, and the scanty
flame of the lamps fiercely agitating, that against the darkness, struggled.
(The story of Paul
Clifford, is Yoda, to a padawan telling)
Jay
Berkeley, CA
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