1997

1997 Winners:\
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

Grand Prize Winner!

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 on 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, VA

---

Runner-Up

It all started when that rich SOB John Paul Getty commissioned me to
create the world\'s largest ice sculpture, not that I didn\'t realize
the challenges involved, but it wasn\'t until months later when the
iceberg, carved into the shape of a mammoth voluptuous nude, hove into
view off Newfoundland that the uproar started, and even later, after the
interviews in People Magazine and my appearance on Oprah, that I was
forced to concede defeat and hire the Knitter\'s League, who were still
crocheting away as my rapidly melting masterpiece was towed into New
York harbor, the six hundred and sixty-six knitters still desperately
looping lengths of videotape, linkin\' Getty\'s berg a dress.\

--Dan Rubin, Prince Rupert, British Columbia

Winner: Fantasy

Prince Oryza\'s determined, handsome countenance was reflected in the
gleaming, polished steel of his sword, Gowayoff, as he hewed valiantly
at the armored sides of the dragon, which could only be pierced by
gleaming, polished steel and not the regular kind of steel, which
doesn\'t gleam as much, and isn\'t polished quite as well, but does a
pretty good job against your smaller dragons.\

--J. N. Pechota, Dulzura, CA

Winner: Western

No one in Cisco City dared to question Jake Lattimer about the
disappearance of neighbor Jones\'s hogs, not only because Jake was the
best sheriff the town had ever seen, but also because his was the only
dental parlor in the territory where a man could buy himself a decent
set of slightly-used false teeth.\
\

--Mary Clare, Austin, TX

Runner-Up: Western

Once upon a time, before men were boys, before guns were toys, and
before music was noise, there was a dude ranch peopled by only the most
virile of males, except for Mama, who had, of course, clasped each of
them to her ample bosoms, and therein lies our story.\

--Chuck Myer, Colfax, CA

Winner: Romance

He stood looking at her, seductively naked except for bra and a pair of
pants, the smile on her face come-hitherish and inviting, but all he
could think was, \"Why are they called a pair of pants, much better
English if it were a pair of bras and a pant?\"\

--Jan Bundesen, Duncraig, Western Australia

Runner-Up: Romance

Veronica had had little experience of treachery when she first arrived
in Paris, so when Jean-Luc left her in the Rive Gauche with only a Bic
and a bock and a broken clock she was somewhat surprised.\

--Juliette Hughes, Northcote, Victoria, Australia

Dishonorable Mentions: Romance

The breeze was as cool and biting as a Roger Whitaker hit song,
whistling through the remaining shreds of her dress as easily as a prune
passes through a colon, when Tony stepped up and solicitously put his
jacket around her shoulders, saying \"Here, let me break the wind for
you.\"\

--Nick Bruechle, Fremantle, Western Australia

The love of her life, Cordelle Horstmussen, wasn\'t much to look at (he
had sunken, bloodshot eyes that were unevenly spaced, differed in color,
and--thank God--drew attention from his elfin ears and doubly cleft
chin, and his complexion was sallow and dotted with pimply blackheads,
so that it resembled month-old cottage cheese in the throes of a fungal
blitzkrieg, and he walked with an uneven, duckfooted, and halting gait,
like Charlie Chaplin with a case of bleeding piles), but he made her
laugh, and now that she realized why, she planned to dump him like a
truckload of chicken entrails.\

--Mark Watson, Cary, NC

Winner: Science Fiction

The cells divided at an alarming rate as Dr. Bob gasped in amazement and
told his lovely blond but intelligent assistant, \"Eureka! this is
really neat, a baby monster is now growing in our hi-tech, whiz-bang
laboratory--I wonder if our hi-tech, whiz-bang containment field will
contain this new, monstrous really ugly, man-eating being so it can\'t
get out and destroy the world when it gets real big.\"\

--Robert D. Stottle, Jr., Huntsville, AL

Runner-Up: Science Fiction

Captain Richard Probe stood toe-to-claw with the female alien on the
bridge of his star ship as she aimed her laser gun at his navel, knowing
full well as his eye-level gaze surveyed her three breasts, that in
order to save his crew he needed to overcome the stirrings of his
manhood, which was soon made easier by the realization that indeed his
pants were only getting tighter because her laser was shrink wrapping
his uniform.\

--Maggie Moris, Woodbury, MN

Dishonorable Mentions: Science Fiction

\"Ah swearta God!\" moaned Melody-Sue from the depths of her misery,
staring glumly past that quivering, pulsating bulb of a belly, while her
overstretched womb delivered an apparently endless stream of
salamanderkins (sixty-seven? eighty-five? she had lost count) onto the
growing heap of squirming sluglets between her outstretched knees, \"if
evah agayn let a Venusian Toad-Boy sweet-talk me inta lettin\' him
fraisshen mah drink with sqrzzl-root juice, New Year\'s party or no, ah
oughta have mah haid examined!\"\

--Richard Raymond III, Roanoke, VA

The crimson crushed-velvet dress--with the contrasting gold-piping,
dainty hint of lace caressing sleeves\' end, and scandalous neckline
which plunged dramatically to just above the sterling belt buckle
exposing yards of flesh--was tailored to cling seductively to every
contour of the wearer\'s body, and Captain Kirk looked ridiculous in
it.\

--Ernie Santilli, Drexel Hill, PA

Winner: Adventure

It was, presumably, Dr. Livingstone who emerged into the clearing from
the dense rain forest beyond, although it was difficult to tell for
certain just WHO it was beneath the layers of leeches clinging to his
limbs, the spiders covering the surface of his sun helmet, the bounty of
bugs on his body, and the multitude of mites crawling on everything from
his Mont Blanc pen to his machete though, as he had recently employed
the latter in hacking his way through the jungle while he had long
abandoned his diary, the pen was somewhat mitier than the sword.\

--Jan Wolitzky, Madison, NJ

Runner-Up: Adventure

Howard lay benumbed in the shallow crevice where he had collapsed,
encrusted with ice from the freezing rain, exhausted from trudging
through snow drifts, and frozen by the relentless winds of the freak
later-winter storm; and glancing down he noticed the diving watch his
wife had given him on their trip to Jamaica, which now seemed a remote
memory from another lifetime, but, as he finally succumbed to
hypothermia, he was extremely distressed to notice that the watch\'s
crenate bezel had abraded the cuff of his shirt to the point where it
would, indubitably, have to be discarded.\

--Bob Trapnell, Huntsville, AL

Winner: Detective

With the last rays of sunshine silhouetting her slim form, and the still
smoking pistol clutched in her trembling right hand, Cora knelt beside
the body at her feet, only to be brought up short by the sudden
awareness of that unmistakable creeping-insect-like feeling of a run
ripping up the back of her left stocking.\

--Marcia E. Brown, Austin, TX

Runner-Up: Detective

As Lt. James \"Jocko\" Flannery methodically surveyed the freshly
sketched chalk outline on the oily pavement with his steel-blue eyes,
his mind wandered to that night\'s poker game--jeez, he had forgotten
to pick up the Macanudos--because that\'s what happens when you fight
your way up from street cop to Chief of Homicide in the City with Big
Shoulders: you stop being angry; you\'ve seen too many cheap hits, too
many gutless punks, and too many brazen calling cards like the one over
there--a wad of peppermint chewing gum clinging to the gutter that told
him everything he needed to know--that little blond brat from around
the corner had maliciously scribbled this pink hopscotch thing on his
newly sealed driveway.\

--Robert A. Perry, Milton, MA

Dishonorable Mentions: Detective

He was the best prepared cop in the precinct, never leaving without a
hundred-dollar bill in his shoe, an extra magazine for his .45 in his
back pocket, a condom in his wallet--he was ready for anything; he was
Lieutenant Justin Case.\

--Mike Davies, Toronto, Ontario

Bjorn Petersen, the big Swede, swaggered into the private detective\'s
office, shouting and swinging his fists, obviously bruising for a fight,
so Sam Shovel stood up, neatly fooled him with a quick right feint while
flooring him with a left hook, then thought to himself, \"There\'s a
Bjorn suckered every minute!\"\

--Colin Eyssen, Toronto, Ontario

Winner: Purple Prose

\"This is the end,\" Alfalfa sobbed, clutching at her heaving bosom and
pausing only occasionally to scratch her itching left armpit while her
sapphire eyes, brimming with salty tears, turned helplessly towards the
gibbous moon that hung in the brooding sky like a tobacco-stained nail
paring.\

--Niki Wessels, Centurion, South Africa

Runner-Up: Purple Prose

It was the last of times, it was the first of times, it was the age of
intelligence, it was the age of the intellectually challenged, it was
the epoch of reality, it was the epoch of insanity, it was the season of
Salt, it was the season of Pepper, it was the spring of health, it was
the winter of the flu, it was a period when a bunch of really opposite
things were being compared.\

--Sarah Marks, Grand Prairie, TX

Dishonorable Mentions: Purple Prose

Day broke like an enormous egg cracking over the rim of the great,
jagged-edged bowl of the Grand Canyon, its bright yellow yolk of
sunshine pouring runnily into every crag and crevice, suffusing the
early morning air with the same ocherous brilliance as it had for
millennia while the mighty Colorado River cuts its way to the stratum of
the present valley floor.\

--Mary Christensson, San Mateo, CA

The waning moon looked like a giant yogurt-covered raisin that someone
had sucked on for two or maybe three minutes.\

--Joe Andrews, Chicago, IL

Winner: Vile Puns

As the monstrous thug\'s forearm was about to crash down on his noggin
for yet another time, Brinzinger realized that his worst fear had come
true: this was indeed an encounter with a member of that mercilessly
mayhem-minded Swiss motorcycle gang, based in the capital of Switzerland
and also in a city in southwestern France, whose dread signature tattoo,
which Brinzinger was able to make out just before he lost consciousness,
read \"Bern-Toulouse.\"\

--Calvin Cahan, Austin, TX

Runner-Up: Vile Puns

\"Holy mackerel, we cod advertise Eddie Fisher to reel in suckers, then
if we\'re accused of bait-and-switch tactics and face a herring our
squid pro quo lawyer could clam the embarracudasing incident was a
fluke, nothing to carp about--though we\'d be eel-advised to take a
wade-and-sea attitude or angle for a mistrout,\" bubbled Salmon Rushdie,
sardine \'cause he shad have knocked off the crappy puns a minnow
earlier, giving scallop\'s honor he didn\'t do it on porpoise and to
enshark us it won\'t harpoon again.\

--Ernie Santilli, Drexel Hill, PA

Dishonorable Mentions: Vile Puns

Not long ago I came into possession of a certain Malaysian lizard and by
sheer good luck it accidentally walked through some wet paint and then
across a sheet of paper and made such a mess that an art expert said it
was \"Neo-reptilian,\" so now I plan to move to Spain where it will be a
cinch to con the artsy types with this fly-eating Van Gogh who is being
called (I\'m not making this up) \"El Gecko.\"\

--John L. Ashman, Houston, TX

As she slipped into her bicycle shorts and regarded her bum in the
mirror, Princess Diana reflected on her years with Prince Charles, their
period of separation and, ultimately, the Final Divorce Decree, and,
with a sigh of resignation, said to herself, \"Well, I may have lost the
\'Royal Highness\' but at least I saved the \'Wales\'.\"\

--Gregory H. Ward, San Jose, CA

Thinking that she was plain vanilla and this would be a piece of cake, I
turned on the heat while I buttered her up with sugary words and floury
phrases, but I soon realized that it was a half-baked idea when her
nuts-to-you attitude told me that even though she turned out to be a
quite a dish, we didn\'t have all the ingredients necessary to make this
relationship anything more than pie in the sky.\

--Barbara A. Duncan, Houston, TX

\"It\'s a mystery wrapped up in a riddle embedded in an enema,\" thought
Dr. Calvin McNurph as he headed back to the proctologist\'s convention,
hoping to get to the bottom of the problem at once and rectify the
situation.\

Larry Sherman, Fremont, CA

Try as he might, the coroner was unable to find the cause of death, so
he called in the word famous Los Angeles psychic Madam DuBois, who
determined that Julie Andrews had been killed by a precisely
administered dose of lethally bad breath, so the next morning\'s
newspaper headlines trumpeted, \"Super California Mystic: Expert
Halitosis.\"\

--Ross Borden, Victoria, British Columbia

It was with no small degree of trepidation that Mapping Sciences teacher
Geo. G. Raphy peered pensively at the seventh-graders (who were working
feverishly on their in-class assignment of drawing their favorite
English isle) and rued his rashly made but fateful decision to allow the
two impish Chinese twins to complete the assignment together--for he
knew, deep within his soul, the brilliant brothers would seize this
opportunity to prove that, at least on some occasions, two Wongs can
make a Wight.\

--Jim Crozier, Lakewood, CO

Torn between scheduling the basketball star or the famous chef, the
network executive finally chose to spare the Rodman and spoil Julia
Child.\

--Kaye Bellot, Modesto, CA

Brother Paul had spent twenty years in his primitive cell correcting
thousands of religious texts until he suddenly realized that not only
was he anti-semantic but that he had become a religious phonetic.\

--Richard W. O\'Bryan, Perrysburg, OH

He wasn\'t the brightest guy around: he drank only a diet cola-like
soda, ate nothing but red, shiny fruit, and bawled constantly; he was,
after all, the moron Tab and apple crier.\

--Paul Walker, Seattle, WA

When I was a green as a baby\'s pooh, and as inclined to run everywhere,
I learned that, unless you attain solid consistency, you\'re liable to
get wiped away by the rough hand of society wielding a wad of
tissue-thin rationalizations, and flushed down the s-bend of life.\

--Nick Bruechle, Fremantle, Western Australia

General Dishonorable Mentions

Leaning close to the UNICEF worker, Mother Theresa drunkenly confided,
\"For God\'s sake, if there\'s anything I\'ve learned after all these
years in all these stinky little countries, it\'s DON\'T FEED THE POOR,
\'cause once you do they just keep coming back and coming back, driving
you crackers whining at your door all night.\"\

--Laura Sebastian, Miami, FL

It was a beautiful, beautiful night, stars shining like the bright,
needy eyes of a million malnourished children, the wind blowing softly
like the breath of a favorite grandfather as he kissed you sweetly and
very affectionately yet somewhat inappropriately, goodnight.\

----Laura Sebastian, Miami, FL

Cat-on-a-Stick, with its enabling philosophy that anyone can perform
taxidermy on the remains of a beloved family pet if you\'re not too
fussy about the final results, soon gained a reputation as a place where
you walked out with a smile on your face, even if you had come in with
disaster writ large all over your puss.\

--Penny Downing, Scarborough, Ontario

She was in her element, tabletop with a St. Pauli Girl balanced on her
forehead, arms flailing and squawking like a gut-hooked catfish to
Abba\'s \"Dancing Queen,\" but Prestin Purvis, principal, peevishly
pursed his lips, watching the to-be school secretary he hired that very
day from the shallow shadows of the Shady Shack.\

--Steve Garman, Pensacola, FL

As Jennifer sucked her co-worker\'s brains out through a spiral \"Happy
Meal\" (TM) straw, she reflected on how much her career advancement
opportunities at the restaurant had improved since she became a Zombie.\

--George Walker, Beaverton, OR

\"Holy dessicated cat turds, Batman, these aren\'t Tootsie
Rolls--we\'re in Catwoman\'s litter box!\"\

--Kristen Kingsbury Henshaw, Vineyard Haven, MA

\"They didn\'t teach about this at Harvard Law School,\" muttered
Clement as he writhed on the living room floor--after another day of
dodging bullets and tax laws with shadowy clients in between trysts with
secretaries from rival law firms who smuggled in strategy papers for
upcoming trials in intimate clothing articles before revealing that they
had also smuggled in lady\'s-size handguns to order him to hand over his
own strategy papers before he got a chance to look at theirs--and
wondered if he would ever learn how to set the timer on the VCR.\

--Peter B. Smith, Albany, NY

The sun beat down, causing the stench of elephant sweat to drift into
Hannibal\'s nostrils as Tunisian gusts hurled sand into his food, making
the foul-smelling hummus gruel twist his stomach, so in disgust he
clutched his buddy, nearly retching out, \"You know, Hanno, I could
really go for Italian.\"\

--Michelangelo Saucedo, Sacramento, CA

The bizarre heat in the bazaar, aided further by the constantly
sweating, swearing, and swirling middle class population, or should we
say the servile class, prompted the sudden swooning of the \'foreign
returned\' Radha, who was immediately scooped up in the arms of the
ever-willing Sudama, jumping at this God-sent opportunity, while the
surrounding loudspeakers blared the contemporary superhit film song,
\"Aa jaa, meri bahon mein aa jaa!\"\

--Ankur Gupta, Mumbai (Bombay), India

\"So what should we pierce next?\" Charity purred, holding up the
piercing gun and leaning over him, her pouty cupid\'s bow mouth painted
a lurid screaming red, her black-rimmed eyes vacant yet kinetic, her
tattered and now blood-stained black mesh half-shirt falling off her
shoulder to reveal one pert, supple young breast; and Kevin knew fear,
but could not let her see it, for he was as enticed as he was terrified
by this wild, raven-haired teenager, and so, with a shrug and a smirk
that said, \"I know you\'re taking me on a fast, Bohemian joyride to
Hell and I like it!\" replied, \"There\'s still some room left on my
butt.\"\

--Kate Noonan, Cambridge, MA

Kevin blinked away the coruscating moisture on his eyelashes as he gazed
upon his contagiously narcoleptic lover, who peacefully dreamt under the
foehn that caressed their secluded bed of grass until awakened by
Kevin\'s sultry whisper, \"There is no apothecary for miles, but to
cheer you, I have fashioned this diadem of daisies in the traditional
Bacon family weave.\"\

--Sara Regan, Portland, OR

Tribes of primitive hunters, with rhinestone codpieces rampant, built
pyramids of Chevy engines--festooned in palm fronds and coconuts--to
exalt the ineffable and scintillating gods of low-tech--as was their
fashion--including an ode to holy refrigerator, Sears be its brand.\

--Jonathan P. Dowling, Redstone Arsenal, AL

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