Still dark, still stormy!
Great to see that the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is just as dark and stormy as ever: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2024
My contributions to this distinguished(?) literary(?) event(?) date back to 1988, when I won the Children's category.
From the "Children's" Category
"Can you say ‘webbed feet’?” asked Mr. Bodgers, unaware that he, a kindly media fixture for generations of Oakdale’s children, had unwittingly broken, with his gentle question about pedal appendages, a carefully constructed conspiracy ofsilence that had reigned since the night, four years before, when bright flashes and roars of thunder had been heard from the western outskirts of the now-unused nuclear power plant.
—Charles Hamilton
Baltimore, Md.
I was kicked out of Baltimore shortly thereafter. I wonder why?
The winner above, and these equally-brilliant (?) contributions were published in the long out-of-print It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: The Final Conflict: Yet More of the Best (?) from the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.
From the "The Way We Live Now" Category
Sigmund realized he’d better stop playing with the cat: the interviewers, seeing his horribly scratched arms and hands, would think he was a junkie, and he’d never get into med school.
—Charles Hamilton
Baltimore, Md.
From the "Lyttony III" Category
It was 3:24 of a snowy Saturday afternoon as Rick stared at the televised image of Marsha—she of the frowsy, split-ended, bleached blond hair, ghastly turquoise eye shadow, too much nose and not enough chin—cheering as her husband, Craig, caressed the enormous eagle-topped trophy, and wondered once again what kind of a woman would marry a professional bowler.
—Charles Hamilton
Baltimore, Md.
From the "More Vile Puns" category
This will be a marketing concept to rival mashed, preformed potato chips in a can, mused Merlin McDivot, Magician to the Masses, as he recalled his pride in perfecting the technique of preserving evil spells in thin metal packages; his dismay in discovering that the spells tended to go bad while his customers worked up their nerve to use what they had bought; and his joy in realizing that the problem could be overcome by replacing the package at a fraction of the cost of recharging the spell, so that the charms and cantrips could be stored indefinitely; the sign proclaiming his revolutionary method was, even now, being hung in his modest shop window—CURSES FOILED AGAIN.
—Charles Hamilton
Baltimore, Md.