Be afraid. Be very afraid.

These are some of "the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels" I submitted to the 2001 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, with the hopeful expectation that something might be mistakenly selected for inclusion in the next volume of 'winners' [sic]. Further information about the contest can be found
here.

The winners have been posted on the BLFC website! I'm not one of them! I'll do worse next year, I promise you.

Science Fiction / Science Fact - You Decide

Phyllis gasped once more as the Betelguesian uncoiled yet another huge tumescent sucker-covered tentacle and slid it bit by slime-oozing bit alongside the others wrapped so interestingly around her nether parts, and wondered for the millionth and not the last time to herself that day why on earth (ha! “Earth” ha!) she had chosen to leave the bubble that morning without wearing her control-top pantyhose with the sandalfoot toes with her eyes wide open.

Westerns of the Old West

As I recollect, I was just a kid the day that Terpsichore Jones first waltzed into town with a swagger to his shootin’ iron that made all the cowboys tremble and all the cowgirls weak.

Naw, it weren’t so much what Santy Ana said what got folks so all riled up, it was the way he sat up there on his high horse twiddlin’ his mustache and thinking in that uppity way of his that we were gonna believe him when he said, “Read my lips: no new Texas!”

Drugstore Paperback Romances

Unfortunately, considering what happened later, it was the worst possible time for the chainmail to pinch me there like that.

The rough-hewn and finely-chiseled features of Clarisé von Vanderdön split the waves as the dreadnought Vengeance Is Mine Sayeth Me bore down on the doomed victims below, the leering and maddened grin in her eye reminding them of the skull and crossbones high overhead in the steely sunlight few would ever see again snapping in the wind like trout snapping at flies in a river somewhere in upstate New York late last fall - the same fall that saw the swinish and hunky lout who ransacked her heart and left her to a life of soggy and misbegotten ravings walk out on her and leave the door standing ajar behind deaf to her unheard pleas.

“I am way so in trouble,” thought young Muffy thrashing futilely on the bed, the ropes and handcuffs unforgiving in their tight embrace, her skirt pushed up to the waistband of her 'TummyTamer' pantyhose and the large rubber ball adhesive-taped in her mouth stifling any hope of communication save for the occasional “mmmpf” and the desperate thoughts behind her pleading eyes saying something like: “Oh my gawd, I hope Sissy unties me before she finds out how, like, easy it was to find her self-bondage videos.” - but, sadly, that was not to be the case.

Vile Puns

Finally, as the last of the patients was being evacuated onto the flimsy rescue boats surrounding the sinking psychiatric hospital while the violent floodwaters savagely continued to rise unchecked, the bullhorns shrieked: ”Water! Water everywhere!” and even the shrinks did board.

A long time ago, in a chivalry far, far away, the Scot had developed an annoying habit of repeatedly sticking his dagger into the Round Table whenever he had a tale to tell and deemed it time to tell it; which of course led to Arthur and the lads muttering amongst themselves how tedious it was: a dirk-and-story knight.

Generic Stuff That Has No Home

Staring out at the life before her over the rim of the over-filled and often-emptied martini glass, Jill reflected on bridges unburnt both before and aft, and abruptly her thoughts turned to napalm.

Marsha screamed repeatedly into the unanswering air as the skidmarks of her wheelchair left the trail, careened heavily off the rocks and lunged sickeningly into the silent void to crash unnoticed, unremarked and unfound in the woods far, far below, and thought how glad she was to get rid of the damn thing and walk home.

Horrors of the Horriblest Kind

It is with dread and rapidly-failing strength that I hear the incessant drumming grow steadily nearer and louder as I recall how childishly innocent it seemed when I stumbled into the fez-maker’s tiny shop by mistake that fly-filled and sweltering day but a few weeks past on my way to rendezvous with my fiancee and her unsuspecting family for an afternoon of snooker-that-was-never-to-be under the ceiling fans on the dappled veranda.

Tightly and completely bandaged into silence and immobility, the remaining members of The Young Lady Adventurers’ Club of Upper Herefordshire blinked to each other their new-found resolve never to dismiss the Mummy’s curse in the future as the tomb’s entrance slowly, slowly ground shut.

Hardboiled Detective Potboilers

The cat (about whom no further mention shall be made) entered the room in much the same way that Mr. Dweedle approached most things in life, for it was full of rocking chairs.

“It’s one thing to come home after a crappy day at work to find your better-half strangled with your new Vasserette bra in the rumpus room; it’s quite another thing to come home from a crappy day at work to find your better-half strangled with your new Vasserette bra in the rumpus room after (we assume) she had written “No, Helen, no!” on the wall in Hookers’ Red Passion lipstick.” mused Helen distractedly.

The Latina intrigued me: maybe it was her whiskey-and-Tiparello breath spiraling up to the slowly circling fans in the ceiling; maybe it was anticipating the feel of her red silk lingerie and hungry lipstick against my sweaty skin; or maybe it was the sultry señorita way she had of prodding her sawed-off shotgun against my gringa skirt.