Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2005

CNN covered it. Slashdot /.ed it. I am gonna blog it. Here are some of the openings I found amusing.

Children's Literature
Dishonorable Mentions:
Because of her mysterious ways I was fascinated with Dorothy and I wondered if she would ever consider having a relationship with a lion, but I have to admit that most of my attention was directed at her little dog Toto because, after all, he was a source of meat protein and I had had enough of those damn flying monkeys.

Randy Blanton
Murfreesboro, TN

"What are you doing in my bedroom at this time of night, Ernie, and why are you grinning at me with those sharp teeth and how come you've been spending so much time with the Count lately, and why has Big Bird disappeared, and you should really do something about that breath, or my name isn't Bert the muppet."

Vicki Nunn
Gladstone, Queensland, Australia


Detective
Winner:
Patricia wrote out the phrase 'It was a dark and stormy night' exactly seventy-two times, which was the same number of times she stabbed her now quickly-rotting husband, and the same number of pages she ripped out of 'He's Just Not That Into You' by Greg Behrendt to scatter around the room -- not because she was obsessive compulsive, or had any sentimental attachment to the number seventy-two, but because she'd always wanted to give those quacks at CSI a hard time.

Kari A. Stiller
College Station, TX


Historical Fiction
Runner-Up:
A column of five hundred Roman foot soldiers - a column held together by the plaster of courage -- advanced on a teeming sea of rebellious slaves -- slaves who had, ironically, built most of Rome's columns, although they actually used lime and not plaster to cement the structures, and though it is perhaps more historically precise to describe the soldiers' column as bound by the lime of courage, that doesn't really have the same adventurous ring to it.

Mark Hawthorne
Rohnert Park, CA


Romance
Dishonorable Mentions:
Sandra had waited and wished for Gary to come sweep her off her feet, feeling just like Lois Lane waiting for her handsome, masculine Superman to come fly her away from the humdrum of everyday life, but Gary had never come, and so she'd ended up with Herman, a man as bald as Lex Luthor with worse eyesight than Clark Kent and the maturity level of Jimmy Olsen.

Mary P. Potts
Bradenton, FL

Looking sideways at Thomas, Mireille slowly removed her scarf, waiting . . . hoping . . . praying that when he came close enough to smell the delectable fragrance of her long, luscious waves that he wasn't going to start sneezing or sniffling or rubbing his eyes, because those were tell-tale signs of his allergies acting up, and if they did, he would know that she had been out rolling around in the lavender fields with Luc again.

Keriann Noble
Murray, UT


Science Fiction
Winner:
Long, long ago in a galaxy far away, in General Hospital born I was, and quite happy were my parents, but when a youngling still I was, moved we did.

Mary Potts
Oneco, Fl


Vile Puns
Runner-Up:
Max thought the night-time burglary at the California surfing museum would be a safe caper, but that was before he spotted the security cop riding a bull mastiff, blond hair blowing in the wind, and noticed the blue-and-white sign wired to the cyclone fence, "Guard dude on doggy."

Jim Dehn
Clovis, CA


Western
Winner(and my favourite as well):
As soon as Sherriff Russell heard Bradshaw say, "This town ain't big enough for the both of us," he inadvertantly visualized a tiny chalk-line circle with a town sign that said 'population 1,' and the two of them both trying to stand inside of it rather ineffectively, leaning this way and that, trying to keep their balance without stepping outside of the line, and that was why he was smiling when Bradshaw shot him.

Keriann Noble
Murray, UT


Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions
For the fifteenth time that evening my narcoleptic lover opened his eyes, smiled at me, and said, "Good morning!"

Becca Mallary
Bradford, VT

Inside his cardboard box, Greg heated a dented can of Spaghetti-O's over a small fire made from discarded newspapers, then cracked open his last can of shoplifted generic beer to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his embarkation on a career as a freelance writer.

Lawrence Person
Austin, TX

Derwin Thoryndike vowed to place a 14-carat engagement ring on the finger of Glenda-Sue Ellington, so now all he had to do was save up enough money to buy the ring, get it inscribed, and then locate a person named Glenda-Sue Ellington and convince her to marry him.

Harvey McCluskey
Vancouver WA

James found "Spider-Man 2" to be quite an average movie, like a superhero episode of "Dawson's Creek," but not from the excellent first season, nor from the horrible final seasons, but rather from somewhere in the mid-run of the show, when it wasn't as good as it used to be but it didn't totally suck yet.

Edo Steinberg
Beer-Sheva, Israel

They ask me if it was dark that night the hyenas showed up and ate the little beagle as he sat typing away on his dog house and then ate all the little round-faced kids, and I tell 'em, "no," it was not even stormy, kind of a calm, half-moon lit night where you'd sit on your deck having some peanuts, until the hyenas arrived of course and then it got so noisy you had to go in the house.

Bill Crowley
Santa Rosa, CA

It was Angela's 96th birthday party, and as she leaned over to blow out the candles on her cake and thought back on her long, long life, the children she'd given birth to, the man she had married and then sadly buried, she thought to herself, well no matter what at least I've grown old with dignity, then the nursing home attendant pointed out that her breasts were dipping in the trifle bowl again.

Micheal Rossiter
Usworth, Washington, Tyne and Wear
England

A warning to the reader: Tom dies in the end of the story so don't get too attached to him.

Sam Gerring
Lexington, KY