Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest – Pt 2

For those who have come in late – – –

Since 1982 the English department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.

Here are the 1990 through 1999 winners.

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Dolores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever
skipping across smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious to
it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an
overdose of fluoride as a child which caused her to lie forever on the floor
of her life as useless as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred-pound
barbell in a steroid-free fitness center.

–Linda Vernon, Newark, California (1990 winner)
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Sultry it was and humid, but no whisper of air caused the plump, laden
spears of golden grain to nod their burdened heads as they unheedingly
awaited the cyclic rape of their gleaming treasure, while overhead the
burning orb of luminescence ascended its ever-upward path toward a
sweltering celestial apex, for although it is not in Kansas that our story
takes place, it looks godawful like it.

— Judy Frazier, Lathrop, Missouri (1991 winner)
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As the newest Lady Turnpot descended into the kitchen wrapped only in her
celery-green dressing gown, her creamy bosom rising and falling like a
temperamental soufflé, her tart mouth pursed in distaste, the sous-chef
whispered to the scullery boy, “I don’t know what to make of her.”

— Laurel Fortuner, Montendre, France (1992 winner)
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She wasn’t really my type, a hard-looking but untalented reporter from the
local cat box liner, but the first second that the third-rate representative
of the fourth estate cracked open a new fifth of old Scotch, my sixth sense
said seventh heaven was as close as an eighth note from Betthoven’s Ninth
Symphony, so, nervous as a tenth-grader drowning in eleventh-hour cramming
for a physics exam, I swept her into my longing arms, and, humming “The
Twelfth of Never,” I got lucky on Friday the Thirteenth.

— Wm. W. “Buddy” Ocheltree, Port Townsend, Washington (1993 winner)
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As the fading light of a dying day filtered through the window blinds, Roger
stood over his victim with a smoking .45, surprised at the serenity that
filled him after pumping six slugs into the bloodless tyrant that mocked him
day after day, and then he shuffled out of the office with one last look
back at the shattered computer terminal lying there like a silicon armadillo
left to rot on the information superhighway.

— Larry Brill, Austin, Texas (1994 winner)
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Paul Revere had just discovered that someone in Boston was a spy for the
British, and when he saw the young woman believed to be the spy’s girlfriend
in an Italian restaurant he said to the waiter, “Hold the spumoni — I’m
going to follow the chick an’ catch a Tory.”

— John L. Ashman, Houston, Texas (1995 winner)
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“Ace, watch your head!” hissed Wanda urgently, yet somehow provocatively,
through red, full, sensuous lips, but he couldn’t, you know, since nobody
can actually watch more than part of his nose or a little cheek or lips if
he really tries, but he appreciated her warning.

— Janice Estey, Aspen, Colorado (1996 winner)
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The moment he laid eyes on the lifeless body of the nude socialite sprawled
across the bathroom floor, Detective Leary knew she had committed suicide by
grasping the cap of the tamper-proof bottle, pushing down and twisting while
she kept her thumb firmly pressed against the spot the arrow pointed to,
until she hit the exact spot where the tab clicks into place, allowing her
to remove the cap and swallow the entire contents of the bottle, thus ending
her life.

— Artie Kalemeris, Fairfax, Virginia (1997 winner)
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The corpse exuded the irresistible aroma of a piquant, ancho chili glaze
enticingly enhanced with a hint of fresh cilantro as it lay before him,
coyly garnished by a garland of varigated radicchio and caramelized onions,
and impishly drizzled with glistening rivulets of vintage balsamic vinegar
and roasted garlic oil; yes, as he surveyed the body of the slain food
critic slumped on the floor of the cozy, but nearly empty, bistro, a quick
inventory of his senses told corpulent Inspector Moreau that this was, in
all likelihood, an inside job.

— Bob Perry, Milton, Massachusetts (1998 winner)
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Through the gathering gloom of the late-October afternoon, along the greasy,
cracked paving-stones slick from the sputum of the sky, Stanley Ruddlethorp
wearily trudged up the hill from the cemetery where his wife, sister,
brother, and three children were all buried, and forced open the door of his
decaying house, blissfully unaware of the catastrophe that was soon to
devastate his life.

== Dr. David Chuter, Kingston, Surrey, England (1999 winner)