More winners of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for pretentious writing — the best of the worst.
2013
GRAND PRIZE WINNER
She strutted into my office wearing a dress that clung to her like Saran Wrap to a sloppily butchered pork knuckle, bone and sinew jutting and lurching asymmetrically beneath its folds, the tightness exaggerating the granularity of the suet and causing what little palpable meat there was to sweat, its transparency the thief of imagination.
— Christ Wieloch, Brookfield, Wisconsin
GRAND PANJANDRUM’S SPECIAL AWARD
“Don’t know no tunnels hereabout,” said the old-timer, “unless you mean the abandoned subway line that runs from Hanging Hill, under that weird ruined church, beneath the Indian burial ground, past the dilapidated Usher mansion, and out to the old abandoned asylum for the criminally insane where they had all those murders.”
— Lawrence Person, Austin, Texas
WINNER, ADVENTURE CATEGORY
“I told you to wear sensible shoes, but no, your vanity would not allow it!” he yelled at me, as if that had something to do with the airplane crashing into the jungle and all the bodies draped in the trees, but it was just the sort of nonsense I was used to from him, making me wish one or the other of us was hanging dead above us, instead of Rodney.
— Thor F. Carden, Madison, Tennessee
WINNER, CRIME CATEGORY
It was such a beautiful night; the bright moonlight illuminated the sky, the thick clouds floated leisurely by just above the silhouette of tall, majestic trees, and I was viewing it all from the front row seat of the bullet hole in my car trunk.
— Tonya Lavel, Barbados, West Indies
DISHONORABLE MENTION
The dame was stacked, both conventionally and in that she was the third of five bodies piled against the wall, the wall’s earth tones reminding me of Grandmother’s house, which figured, since it was her house, she having stacked the bodies there after poisoning them, so I studied the bodies as I munched on Grandmother’s ginger snaps and felt a twinge in my stomach.
— Kenneth Bennight, San Antonio, Texas
DISHONORABLE MENTION
The dame that walked into my office was statuesque and looked like she ought to be standing on a bed of roses… in other words, she looked exactly like the garden gnome my ex-wife had stuck in our flower bed, next to a bird bath that attracted a whole lot of bills, much like my in-tray, which was lousy with them.
— Jackie Fuchs, Los Angeles, California
2014
GRAND PRIZE WINNER
When the dead moose floated into view, the famished crew cheered — this had to mean land! — but Captain Walgrove, flinty-eyed and clear-headed thanks to the starvation cleanse in progress, gave fateful orders to remain on the original course and await the appearance of a second and confirming moose.
— Elizabeth Dorfman, Bainbridge Island, Washington
WINNER, ADVENTURE CATEGORY
“Listen, Control!” snarled Captain Dan McMurdo across the ether, “I’ve got one engine shut down, the other running on fumes, a seriously wounded co-pilot who won’t last an hour, 53 refugee orphans down the back, and a nun for a radio operator, so turn the goddam landing lights on goddam pronto — sorry, Sister.”
— Gavin Dobson, no address
WINNER, PURPLE PROSE AWARD
He was a stolid man, prone to excessive and extended bursts of emotionlessness; but when Maurice loved, he loved with the passion of a dog itching its face against the grain of a firm-pile carpet.
— Stephen Sanford, Seattle, Washington
DISHONORABLE MENTION
My name is Caroline, and if you’re reading this I’m either dead or I’ve gotten lost in some alternate dimension where Liverpool has exploded and been replaced with a fancy water park… though it’s probably the first one.
— Aiko Baker, Murfreesboro, Tennessee
DISHONORABLE MENTION
I will not repeat what she said when she came home and found out I’d been spraying Endust on her dog and throwing treats under the bed to get him to harvest the dust bunnies, but you wouldn’t think a young lady would even know any words like that.
— J. Andrew Cleland, Gray, Tennessee
DISHONORABLE MENTION
“One cannot easily shake off old habits,” was all that retired Detective Tim O’Hara could say when, after rifling through the dead old man’s pockets (which, as he expected, were all empty), inspecting his throat, and forcing open his cold, stiff hand to get fingerprints, he was gently but firmly pulled away from the coffin by his brother Harry and piloted out of the parlor under the perplexed stares of Uncle Mel’s friends and relatives.
— Jorge Stolfi, Campinas, Brazil
With that, you are fully up to date on the BLFC. The winners for 2015 will be announced soon.
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