1996
Grand Prize Winner:
\"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
Winner: Historical#
Ulysses Simpson Grant, having just finished a meal of Virginia ham,
stretched out in his underwear of Mississippi-grown cotton, puffed on a
Georgia cigar, swilled straight Kentucky bourbon whiskey, and thought
how good it was to be in the Union Army.\
--Albert Klar Ogden, Stansbury Park, Utah
Winner: Adventure#
Buffy Goldsmith, emptying the last three rounds from the smoking
Parabellum nine-millimeter at the pursuing KGB operatives, reached into
her Kevlar standard-issue Model PK-38D brassiere for the disk of winning
lottery numbers with the intention of flinging it into the murky waters
of the Seine, only to remember she had left it under Uncle Arthur\'s
yarmulke at the kibbutz.\
--Vince Atkins, Seattle
Winner: Romance#
The flash of lightning startled her, making her breasts heave, and in
that instant of white light she thought of how M____, her young
lover from the estate\'s cheese works, had so marveled at the creamy
globes so delicately laced with blue veins that he had called the one
Bleu and the other Stilton, and she reflected that she would never hear
those sweet words again--at least not in that context, for come
tomorrow she would be Lady Vile-Conundrum.\
--D. J. Pass, Prospect, Nova Scotia
Winner: Urban Realism#
The city at night has a million stories, like the woman who, even now,
was weeping over the bloody corpse of her lover lying where she had
slashed him from neck to kneecap, or the twelve-year-old kid prostrate
on the sidewalk after a drug deal gone wrong, or the babe, desperate to
find the stuff that stopped your dress from sticking to your legs after
you ironed it and couldn\'t find a convenience store at this black hour
in a city without a name.\
--Michael Davies, Mississauga, Ontario
Winner: Rural Realism#
From the dilapidated porch, Hoover \"Hoo-Boy\" Hogwattle squinted at the
ducks scattered across the oily surface of the pond like the blackheads
across Cousin Joe-Bob\'s nose, and, spitting tobacco juice and
scratching incessantly, wished that Maw had remembered to use that new
downy-fresh fabric softener on the pink lace bra and panties he was
wearing under his grimy overalls.\
--Marsha Engelbrecht, Castaic, California
Winner: Detective#
It was a hot as a jalapeno outside, the smog hung in the air like bits
of pepper on three-day-old cottage cheese, and the Condiment Police,
after extricating themselves from one pickle after another, were running
late in their effort to ketchup with a bad egg named Sal Sodium who was
armed to the teeth and who was stalking a gorgeous tomato for the
twenty-four carrots on her finger, so they slipped into their flack
jackets with relish before moving in on a salt with a deadly weapon.\
--Michael Cunningham, Woodridge, Illinois
Winner: Purple Prose#
Nigel lifted his Mont Blanc pen and held it in brief repose as he gazed
past the conflagrative crackling in the hearth, through the triple-plate
bay window, watching the incandescence of the twinkling stars like the
detonation of a million flashbulbs, and the preponderance of frothy
snowflakes blanketing the earth as creamily as marshmallow fluff, then,
refreshed and inspired, he began to compose his annual Christmas form
letter.\
--Linda Gauer, Norton, Ohio
Runner-Up: Purple Prose#
Tess was a fallen angel with a heart as big and as golden as all
outdoors; a heart as big as all outdoors and all indoors; a heart as big
as a solarium, which is a room that is like outdoors but indoors; unlike
one of those bump-out kitchen greenhouse windows, which is neither.\
--Barbara S. Combs, Seattle, Washington
Winner: Vile Puns#
Because the Indians of the high Andes were believed to have little sense
of humor, Professor Juan Lyner was amazed to hear this knee-slapper that
apparently had been around for centuries at all the Inca hot spots:
\"Llama ask you this. Guanaco on a picnic? Alpaca lunch.\"\
--John L. Ashman, Houston, Texas
Runner-Up: Vile Puns#
Baron Frankenstein looked up from his sewing, smiled benignly across the
laboratory at his similarly-engaged creation and protege, and called,
\"Yes, yes! Put on a happy face; tonight will be your first date with
the rest of your wife!\"\
--Anthony Buckland, Vancouver, British Columbia
Winner: Westerns#
Following the unfortunate bucking of his horse when it was startled by
the posse\'s shots, Tex--who now lay in a disheveled heap in the
sagebrush--pushed back his sweat-stained Stetson from one deep-set blue
eye, spat a stream of tobacco juice at the nearest cactus, and reflected
momentarily that the men approaching him with ropes probably weren\'t
just out for a skip, and--if they were--his freshly broken ankle would
have to cause him to decline any entreaties to join them.\
--Becky Mushko, Roanoke, Virginia
Dishonorable Mentions#
The disillusionment of the members of the inner-city Boys\' Club with
their trip to the country began when they discovered that a hoe-down
wasn\'t what they thought it would be.\
--Tom W. Glaser, Hollywood, Florida
When the sound of Big Ben chiming the hour of the rosy-fingered dawn
struck my straining ears like a fire alarm, I threw the glockenspiel at
the haberdasher and ran for the door, never looking back to see if the
foul devil\'s spawn was giving chase through the impenetrably
thick--and terribly clammy--fog that clung to me like a sodden woolen
suit, slowing my flight to a crawl as interminable as this sentence.\
--David N. Fittinghof, Tracy, California
As she turned her grimy, tear-streaked face toward the window, quiet
sobs still shook the child\'s frail body, and her voice had the tone of
one whose life has been a continuing chronicle of deprivation and
disappointed hopes as she said plaintively, \"How come we can\'t stop at
the Seven-Eleven and get a slushy? I want a cherry slushy . . .\"\
--Karen Mulholland
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