The winners of the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced. Though this year’s entries seem, on balance, to be somewhat weaker than previous years’, Cathy Bryant’s grand prize-winning effort is positively sublime:
As he told her that he loved her she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, the tiny deodicids burrowing into his follicles to eat the greasy sebum therein, each female laying up to 25 eggs in a single follicle, causing inflammation, whether the eyes are truly the windows of the soul; and, if so, his soul needed regrouting.
Likewise the winning entry in the “Crime” category, submitted by Sue Fondrie:
She slinked through my door wearing a dress that looked like it had been painted on…not with good paint, like Behr or Sherwin-Williams, but with that watered-down stuff that bubbles up right away if you don’t prime the surface before you slap it on, and—just like that cheap paint—the dress needed two more coats to cover her.
