[Michael Cantor]

They smelled the town before they saw the town, that familiar blend of popcorn and burnt flesh that had hung heavy in the air at the site of every octoplex bombing, and without even thinking formed a single line as they moved toward the smoldering ruins, the horses picking their way through the first piles of rubble, the six men shapeless within the triple layers of their biohazard gear; the group of them following the path that had started in a shopping mall near Austin, and then taken them to a wind swept mesa outside of Santa Fe, and then to a California forest where they had caught their only glimpse of the red-headed midget and his bicycle, and then quickly back east to the FBI lab in Maryland, and now they were here, and here was where they were. Suddenly, a trumpet sounded.

[Holly Martins]

Sam, I fell asleep halfway through your paragraph - was this good?

[Jim Hayes]

Thanks for this Marion-
here is what I sent in;

The wan, crepuscular rays of the winter sun (for it was winter) illuminated
Flaherty through the window, giving him a crinkled, blue-bottle-tinged peat colour, making Abigail, resplendent in really black widow’s weeds, think how well he looked- considering he’d been dead for years. Thirty years ago the waxing gibbous phase of the moon one sees best at night provoked Abigail’s annoyance. She’d woken; disturbed, light streaming on her face. ‘Flah’ was snoring again. Today, decades later, the Sultanabad Brunschwig drapes with that intricate design reminiscent of scrimshawed corduroy, if corduroy could be scrimshawed, along with lace curtains which now hung like strands of mummified filigree mucus, were open once more. Living so long, if living it was, with a silent, desiccated corpse killed by a single swipe of a brass-plated tin coal bucket, bought in McSquidson’s hardware when reduced to £1/17/6, had finally dissipated her anger.

[John Whitworth]

But Jim, this won't do at all. I long to know what comes next. Give us the SECOND paragraph. Incidentally, the worst opening paragraph I know is Nabokov's to 'Laughter in the Dark'. It signals quite clearly that this is goingto be a really depressing read and effectively prevented me from going on - ever. And I'm a Nabokov junkie as a rule.

[Jim Hayes]

Alright John, just for you here's the second paragraph;

Initially she’d felt sonically assaulted then hurt when confronting Flah’s’ (her name for him) snoring and damning betrayal. She was confused, and ashamed. Flah (and Morgatroyd, now that she thought of it,) was the only man she’d ever known. Why did Morgy leave the bed quietly--so stealthily? At all? With growing conviction, she’d understood what must be done-- to him, to Eudora, especially Eudora, to them all! Abigail would have revenge, from men, from the world! Morgy meanwhile, was downstairs making his way towards the coal bucket with a stop by the refrigerator. Somehow he must be stopped! Morgy was putting on far too much weight and it was only one of those boxbeds, so called because a lot of people think it looks like a box and has a three ply base that one sees advertised with easy payments and not designed for one grown-up not to mention, well, just not to mention... Flah was still snoring as Abigail came to a fatal decision.

[Janet Kenny]

Cynthia and Crystal examined their vaginas with mirrors as they sat in the lotus position. Sister Miriam explained how they must know their own bodies before they could know their souls. Cynthia was short sighted and had removed her glasses in order to seem more spiritual. She wondered would this spoil her chances of enlightenment?
Sister Miriam sprang to her feet, raised her arms in the air and cried: "Life! Life! Life!" All the women sprang to their feet and joined in the chant.
The floor shuddered with the weight of middle class rapture.
Marigold Watson said: "I only joined this class so I could lose weight". Nobody paid her any attention. "It's a long way and I have to change my bus twice." Silence.
"We come by the Stockport route and pass by the meat works. It's quite nice but it doesn't half smell. I do the shopping after so it's handy."
Sister Miriam embraced her and said: "Simplicity is closer to the divine spirit. Marigold, lend us your simplicity!"

(Gawd--I could go on like that for hours.)

[Roger Slater]

Remember, the rules call for appalling and repellent, not just bad. Jim does mention bodily fluids, but only briefly, and Janet's first line was actually riveting. Let's see some appallingness! Repel me!

[Jim Hayes]

Bob it's appalling and repellent in the sense of bad, over the top effusive fictional writing not a horror contest, Janet's submission sounds like it could be true so probably won't qualify.
viz

Dept. of English & Comparative Literature
San Jose State University
One Washington Square
San Jose, CA 95192
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
2008 Results

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

Garrison Spik
Washington, D.C.

[Garrison's other submissions]

The winner of 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is Garrison Spik (pronounced "speak"), a 41-year-old communications director and writer from Washington, D.C. Hailing from Moon Township, Pennsylvania, he has worked in Tokyo, Bucharest, and Nitro, West Virginia, and cites DEVO, Nathaniel Hawthorne, B horror films, and historiography as major life influences.

Garrison Spik is the 26th grand prize winner of the contest that began at San Jose State University in 1982.

An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."

[Terese Coe]

removed at least temporarily by tc

[Terese Coe]

Jim and Sam,

Thanks for the big laughs this morning!