The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

XX Contest Winners

Winner

• Gerald began – but was interrupted by a piercing whistle which cost him ten percent of his hearing permanently, as it did everyone else in a ten-mile radius of the eruption, not that it mattered much because for them “permanently” meant the next ten minutes or so until buried by searing lava or suffocated by choking ash – to pee. — Jim Gleeson, Madison, WI

The winner of the 2007 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is Jim Gleeson, a 47-year-old media technician from Madison, Wisconsin. Purportedly splitting his time between living in Madison and living in his own head, Gleeson claims to be working on a self-help book for slackers, “Self-Improvement Through Total Inactivity.” 2007 is the silver anniversary of the Contest that began at San Jose State University in 1982, making Jim Gleeson the 25^th grand prize winner.

Runner-Up:

• The Barents sea heaved and churned like a tortured animal in pain, the howling wind tearing packets of icy green water from the shuddering crests of the waves, atomizing it into mist that was again laid flat by the growing fury of the storm as Kevin Tucker switched off the bedside light in his Tuba City, Arizona, single-wide trailer and by the time the phone woke him at 7:38, had pretty much blown itself out with no damage. — Scott Palmer, Klamath Falls, OR

Grand Panjandrum’s Special Award

• LaVerne was undeniably underdressed for this frigid weather; her black, rain-soaked tank top offered no protection and seemed to cling to her torso out of sheer rage, while her tie-dyed boa scarf hung lifeless around her neck like a giant, exhausted, pipe cleaner recently discarded after near-criminal overuse by an obviously sadistic (and rather flamboyant) plumber. — Andrew Cavallari, Northfield, IL

Winner: Adventure

• As the hippo’s jaws clamped on Henry’s body he noted the four huge teeth badly in need of a clean, preferably with one of those electric sonic toothbrushes, and he reflected that his name would be immortalized by his unusual death, since hippo killings are not a daily occurrence, at least not in the high street of Chipping Sodbury. — Tim Lafferty, Horsell, Woking, UK

Runner-Up:

• “This is no time for safety,” Lance Steele thought to himself as he raced in hot pursuit of the evildoer through the cold night along the narrow road winding through the desolate twisting pass, the smell of burnt rubber rising from the macadam and the occasional spark bursting from the gravel heaved against the titanium guard rail, and he wished that he had remembered to turn the oven off, and that he were not on foot and wearing his new Florsheims. — P.C. Burchard, San Diego, CA

Dishonorable Mentions

• Miss Cardinal mused over the singularly decadent manner in which Master Hammond consumed the steak and kidney pie and was reminded of the practices of certain cannibalistic tribes with whom she had lived during her travels in Borneo, not New Guinea, although New Guinea is certainly nice this time of year, despite the fact steak and kidney pie is rarely served there, at least not the kind made from sheep or cows. — Brad R. Frazer, Boise, ID

• Agent 53986262.9 was strapped precariously to a giant Chinese firework, the fuse slowly shortening like a noodle getting slurped into someone’s pursed lips, and although he knew he was running out of time and still had no plan for escape, all he could think of was the song about the Muffin Man and how the word “polyurethane” made it sound like the material was made out of multiple urethras. — Allison Kelly, Great Falls, VA

Winner: Children’s Literature

• Danny, the little Grizzly cub, frolicked in the tall grass on this sunny Spring morning, his mother keeping a watchful eye as she chewed on a piece of a hiker they had encountered the day before. — Dave McKenzie, Federal Way, WA

Runner-Up:

• Mary had a little lamb; its fleece was Polartec 200 (thanks to gene splicing, a diet of force-fed petrochemical supplements, and regular dips in an advanced surface fusion polymer), which had the fortunate side effect of rendering it inedible, unlike that other Mary’s organic lamb which misbehaved at school and wound up in a lovely Moroccan stew with dried apricots and couscous. — Julie Jensen, Lodi, CA

Dishonorable Mention

• Out of a hole in the ground popped a bunny rabbit which had a long thick orange carrot between its teeth and a big splotch of mud on its back that had dried into a dirt clump the size of a tumor. — Veronica Perez, Palm Springs, FL

Winner: Detective

• I’d been tailing this guy for over an hour while he tried every trick in the book to lose me: going down side streets, doubling back, suddenly veering into shop doorways, jumping out again, crossing the street, looking for somewhere to make the drop, and I was going to be there when he did it because his disguise as a postman didn’t have me fooled for a minute. — Bob Millar, Hässelby, Sweden

Runner-Up

• She’d been strangled with a rosary – not a run-of-the-mill rosary like you might get at a Catholic bookstore where Hail Marys are two for a quarter and indulgences are included on the back flap of the May issue of “Nuns and Roses” magazine, but a fancy heirloom rosary with pearls, rubies, and a solid gold cross, a rosary with attitude, the kind of rosary that said, “Get your Jehovah’s Witness butt off my front porch.” — Mark Schweizer, Hopkinsville, KY

Dishonorable Mention

• What shocked Juliette as she entered the room was not that there was an escaped convict under her coverlet snuggling with her best teddy bear, but that there was a knife through his back, “And who,” she wondered out loud, steadying herself against the faux-taffeta wallpaper, “would stab a teddy bear?” — Katie Alender, Studio City, CA

Winner: Fantasy Fiction

• Lady Guinevere heard it distinctly, a sharp slap, as if a gauntlet had been thrown, and yet it was hardly plausible that she, perched delicately on the back of her cantering steed, should be challenged to ride faster, since protocol determined that Arthur should ride in front, then she, then Lancelot, for that was the order prescribed by Merlin, ever since he invented the carousel. — Celine Shinbutsu, Hino City, Tokyo, Japan

Runner-Up

• Hiram had been a three-toed dragon, well on his way to a promotion to Imperial five-toed dragon, when he accidentally choked on the pink chiffon scarf of Princess Chloe’s hat, and his coughing set the new oaken parapet, on the old stone bulwark, ablaze, thereby earning a demotion to Troll 3 – now his only responsibility was to keep billy goats off the bridge. — Michael L. VanBlaricum, Santa Barbara, CA

Dishonorable Mention

• At Elvenheim there was great joy, in that the legendary Ring of the Nordlings had been retrieved from the evil Sudlings by the hero Bill Baggydrawers, who it must be said looked nothing like a hero, at least none I’ve ever seen, and the Ring had once again been placed on the middle finger of the left hand of the Elvenking, who did rather resemble a king, even if his buck teeth made him look for all the world like a great rabbit. — Wayne McCoy, Gainesville Fl

Winner: Historical Fiction

• Samson looked in the mirror and, when he saw what a fantastic haircut Delilah had given him, he went weak at the knees. — Neil Prowd, Charnwood, ACT, Australia

Winner: Purple Prose

• Professor Radzinsky wove his fingers together in a tweed-like fabric, pinched his lips together like a blowfish, and began his lecture on simile and metaphor, which are, like, similar to one another, except that similes are almost always preceded by the word “like” while metaphors are more like words that make you think of something else beside what you are describing. — Wayne McCoy, Gainesville Fl

Runner-Up:

• The highway coiled up and around the mountain like a snake ready to strike because it was being harassed by one of those annoying guys on “Animal Planet.” — Brent Sheppard, Morganton, NC

Dishonorable Mentions:

• Marilyn’s main feature was her mountainous breasts, with an associated sharp ravine of cleavage – the breasts not awesome like Everest, but like one of the Highland peaks near Balquhidder, where the notorious outlaw Rob Roy spent his last days. — John O’Byrne, Dublin, Ireland

• There was a numbing chill in the air – harsher than a localized anesthetic, far less jarring than your average epidural, but still effective at creating that tingly sensation which often precludes a general lack of feeling in one’s extremities or sometimes leads to uncontrollable drooling if administered within the confines of a dentist’s chair. — Randy Wilson, New Albany, IN

• The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife, not even a sharp knife, but a dull one from that set of cheap knives you received as a wedding gift in a faux wooden block; the one you told yourself you’d replace, but in the end, forgot about because your husband ran off with another man, that kind of knife. — Lisa Lindquist, Jackson, MI

• The inebriated sailor cast himself into the safe harbor of the diner, and once he had run aground in one of the orange Formica booths, without a nod of recognition or greeting brought the distracted waitress into the present by ordering in a voice both blustery and belligerent the vegetable soup, an unctuous amalgam of the kitchen’s leftover odds and ends sunk in a sulfurous sea of brine. — Jack Mac’Kie, Naples, Florida

• The car headlights were pale – like a struck match viewed through a piece of smoked glass which you think you remember using to watch a solar eclipse around the time Alison and the children were still living here, which would have been the year before you got the job at the all-night bakery, twenty humid summers ago – because the alternator was faulty. — Richard Preddy, London, England

• His feelings for Lydia became a jumbled mess, like when the pen slips out of the hole on a Spirograph wheel, ruining the drawing you have been working on for hours, or possibly, the pen running out of ink during the process, snagging and tearing a hole in the 110# cover rated vellum of his heart. — Russell Wren, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

• She had curves that just wouldn’t quit, like on one of those car commercials where a stunt driver slides a sexy new sports car around hairpin turn after hairpin turn while some poor musician, down on his luck and having been forced to sell out his dream of superstardom for a lousy 30-second ad jingle, sings “Zoom, zoom, zoom” in the background. — Amber Dubois, Denver, CO

• Her hair was the color of old copper, not green with white streaks like you see on roofs and statues where birds have been messing, but the kind you find on dark pennies from back in the nineteen-forties or fifties after God knows how many thumbs have been rubbing Abe Lincoln’s beard. — Michael A. Cowell, Norwalk, CA

• Stanley frowned, his brow wrinkled like the furrows of a newly ploughed field in the far reaches of East Anglia, England’s prairie, when the mighty Massey Ferguson has just completed its traverse of God’s good soil in the heat haze of a late August afternoon, and wondered for the umpteenth time where on earth he had left his reading glasses. — Pamela Hibbert, Crowthorne, Berkshire, England

• The moon rose in the east, a thin, yellow sliver like a fingernail ripped off with a jagged edge that goes to the quick and hurts like the dickens, making Selena wince as she looked on from Dirk’s strong embrace and, recalling the last time she clutched at something so hard she broke a nail, brooded as she remembered that tomorrow was her annual pap smear. — Kathleen Luisa, Falls Church, VA

• Karl awoke with a start, his heart pounding away like a drum, not a well mannered tympani such as one might hear in a Boston Pops rendition of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” but rather more like a snare drum in the hands of Terry Bozzio during the time when he was performing with Frank Zappa. — Christopher D Brunkhorst, Oxford, NJ

Winner: Romance

• As her quivering lips met his, and her eyelashes fluttered softly on his sweating cheek, Dr Robbins reflected, “I didn’t realize she had upper dentures … in fact, her slippery plastic palate reminds me of going down a waterslide that hasn’t been properly chlorinated, as evidenced by the distinct nitrous and sulfurous emanations, or could it be sinus trouble?” — Philip Bateman, Kenilworth, South Africa

Runner-Up:

• There was a pregnant pause – as pregnant as Judith had just told Darren she was (about seven and a half weeks along), which was why there was a pause in the first place. — Tracy Stapp, Santa Ana, CA

Dishonorable Mentions:

• She clung to the memory of their love like those tiny bits of used tissues he always left in his pockets, which mostly ended up in the dryer lint basket although enough of them welded themselves to her favorite navy blue, polar fleece pullover, rendering it as permanently flawed and unappealing as his name tattooed on her butt. — Pamela Patchet Hamilton, Beaconsfield, Quebec, Canada

• He held her desperately in his arms and stroked her silken hair, and as he drew her full red lips to his, he ravenously smothered her with lots of smooches. — Bill Kerschbaum, Ann Arbor, MI

• Ruthanne felt as though she was frozen in time, staring into Steve’s eyes, deep turquoise pools of Tidy-Bowl blue, reflecting back the deep passionate love that Ruthanne felt in her heart because Steve certainly didn’t feel anything, being in a coma as he was, so what Ruthanne had reflected back to herself was what she herself felt, bouncing off Steve’s eyes, because there was absolutely zip going on behind those eyes. — Linda Morgan, Manassas, VA

Winner: Science Fiction

• What a pity Dave was too young to have seen “2001: A Space Odyssey,” for he might have been able to predict what would happen next, when the ape standing next to the big black slab picked up the tapir bone. — Ann Medlock, Lenah Valley, TAS, Australia

Runner-Up:

• “So that was your Earth emotion ‘love’,” gasped Zyxwlyxgwr Noopar, third in line to the holo-throne of S-6, as he hosed down his trunk and removed the shallots. — Mike Bollen, Brighton, UK

Dishonorable Mention:

• Racing through space at unimaginable speeds, Capt. Dimwell could only imagine how fast his spaceship was going. — Gary Smith, Florissant, CO

Winner: Vile Puns

• I was in a back alley in Fiji, fighting desperately and silently for my life, fighting desperately for oxygen, clawing at the calm and almost gentle pressure of the fabric held over my face by implacable, ebony thighs when I realized – he was killing me softly with his sarong. — Karl Scott, Brisbane, Australia

Runner-Up

• The droppings of the migrating Canada geese just missed the outdoor revelers at the inaugural Asian math puzzle competition, marking the first time that dung flew over Sudoku Fest. — Kevin P. Craver, Lakewood, IL

Dishonorable Mention:

• He was often found lurking behind the bakery, begging for scraps and practicing his rap, which is why he was known locally, as the synonym bum. — Ed Harrison, Lyman, ME

• Upon discovering that his chief executioner Dr. Szekely had been secretly releasing prisoners, Vlad the Impaler ordered him to be skewered on one of the good doctor’s own fiendish spears, when suddenly, not recognizing the type of wood that was slowly advancing through the screaming victim, the nutty Romanian ruler quipped “What’s up doc?” — David K. Lynch, Topanga, CA

• A rather youthful Billy Joel was fascinated when he entered the Green Room at the Tonight Show and saw a group of matronly nuns hastily applying hair color to the noggin of the show’s next guest, Neil Young, whose agent offered an explanation from the corner of the room: “Only the good dye Young.” — Joe Wyatt, Amarillo, TX

• Determined to slip the leash, Everett reflected upon his folly, for he had followed the dusky Doberman of his desire into the kennel of lust, telling himself that here, at last, was the perfect pedigree for him, only to learn that she was a Bichon wheels. — Frank Kahren, Danville, CA

• Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. — #

Winner: Western

• The easy and comforting roll of the saddle was second nature to Luke, and as he gazed off into the distant setting sun, he wondered whether he had enough change for one more ride at the supermarket before he had to return to the home. — Glenn Lawrie, Chungnam, South Korea

Runner-Up

• Slim pulled the branding iron away from the yearling’s seared flank and looked up to see Tuffy Edwards, the boss’s daughter, trotting towards him on her sorrel mare, Brandi, wearing absolutely nothing but tight blue jeans and a green tank top – her gi-normous, heaving, unrestrained hooters resembling nothing so much as a pair of fat Charolais heifers trying to beat each other through a loading chute. — Syler Womack, Eustace, Texas

Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions

• A par on the final hole would clinch the U.S. Open for the in-form Tiger Woods but, in truth, this mattered little to Herbert Cruddle as a gigantic wave swept him over the side of his floundering shrimp trawler. — Terry Drapes, Taipa, Macau

• Morty, a dedicated track and field athlete, was disqualified and charged with animal cruelty after giving Viagra to his 20-foot boa constrictor and using the snake to pole vault. — JL Strickland, Valley, AL

• Nothing looked good on the two young celebrities, Scarlett Johansson and Kiera Knightly, as they posed on the cover of a fashion magazine, with their lips the color of a Big Ben Hybrid Teas Rose, and flawless complexions, but they could not compare to the one with Jennifer Lopez with her smoky gray diaphanous blouse, high heels, and a black leather belt that would leave a nasty red mark if she were to spank you with it. — Wayne Spivey, Huntsville, TX

• The stench would have been too much for most people to take, but Karl was used to it, having served as a Mess Specialist on board the “U.S.S. Constitution,” an aircraft carrier that launched planes off its deck like so many maggots off a hot skillet. — Lupe Amezquita, San Jose, CA

• His hat fit his head as snugly as a manhole cover does the thing it fits into. — Steve McAllister, Austin, TX

• The small boat pitched violently upon the heaving bosom of the ocean, causing Johnson to reflect that, although he generally liked bosoms, he was getting really tired of the ocean’s bosom, and wished that it would at least drop from a 44D to a 34B. — Mr. William J. Harvey, Midwest City, OK

• As master luthier Francesca turned the night-black ebony tuning pegs of her latest creation, a flamenco negra guitar with glowing palosanto back and sides, she thought about Vicente, his manly left hand soon caressing this same fretboard in an outpouring of mournful tarantas and siguiriyas, and at that very moment her g-string snapped. — Jim Holman, Gresham, OR

• Joshua was as dumb as a bunny and not at all like the egg-carrying one, more like the one who has never gone to middle school, or even the schools at either end. — Patrick Baker, Caledonia, Ontario, Canada

• The poetry teacher’s bullet-riddled body lay sprawled on the verandah floor like a patient etherized upon a table. — Michael D. Bess, Nashville, TN

• There was only one thought in Kurt’s mind as his trembling hand and timid fingertips edged closer to the neck of Annabelle’s silk blouse, his heart pounding ever faster in syncopation with her panting breaths, gentle cries coming from her slightly-parted lips, her pleading eyes wide with a primitive emotion – if only he’d kept a tighter hold on that gerbil. — Jonathan Blay, Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada

• Clark Kent, in his alter ego known as Superman, the Man of Steel, huddled deep into the doorway to escape the pelting spring shower, well knowing that wearing wet clothes for any length of time would give him surface rust, which he would have to remove by bathing in dilute phosphoric acid, and then sanding with 400-grit wet-and-dry sandpaper. — Roger Bond, Whittlesea, Victoria, Australia

• Allison sipped her tea as she thought about the Isabella Rosselini types – tiny, fragile, etiolated, willowy creatures of ethereal beauty whose delicate spaghetti-strapped sundresses seemed to hover about a quarter of an inch above their skin, while Alison’s sundress cut into her flesh at the straps and bound at the waist or it ballooned out like the muumuu it really was. — Katy Brezger, Dowagiac.MI

• Hector had just met Sabina minutes before, and yet there they were, knees touching, faces just inches apart in the dimly-lit room, and her gazing deep into his eyes, which should not have been a surprise to either of them given that she was an ophthalmologist and he was a boxer whose left retina may have become detached the night before when “Mad Dog” Washington clocked him with a vicious right cross. — Ray Campbell, Redwood Shores, CA

• It was pleasant for Zandra to remember the beach at Cannes where she and Jean-Yves had lain, his pianist hands touching her in patterns of the Rachmaninov he’d played at Languedoc, to recall the scent of his lavendar mosquito repellant, his deep laugh when she’d said: “Tu es le premier homme pour jouer la musique classique sur mon estomac,” and his reply: “C’est dommage, Zandra.” — Ellen Diamond, New York, NY

• Maurice slathered on the cherry colored lipstick continually, like some transvestite from a low-budget, 70’s rock opera, and plotted his next escape attempt, as he watched carefully once again while the absent-minded guard turned the knob to his prison with such ease, and cursed his Creator for giving him a luscious, silver, hairy back, but no opposable thumbs. — Cale Dempster, North Las Vegas

• Miles Otterman thought he could get away with carving his initials on the old oak tree in the town square – and he just might have if Sheriff Mitchell hadn’t recognized his MO. — Terry Drapes, Taipa, Macau

• If you think that the resemblance between the characters in this book and any person living or dead is only coincidental, you’re just not trying hard enough. — Janina Eggensperger, Conway, AR

• “Send an ambulance; I’m glistening profusely … bosom heaving . . . luscious, ripe orbs threatening to burst the seams of my black lace bodice … pulse galloping apace like a knight’s sleek steed … exquisite pain radiating down my graceful, alabaster arm, shooting upward to the finely chiseled jaw … I shall swoon – oh, my address?” the romance writer gasped into the phone before collapsing. — Linda A. Fields, Framingham, MA

• It was dark that night, dark as the hood of a black ’77 Firebird and with the same glossy feel as rain had washed the Big Easy, but New Orleans did not seem any cleaner, just hot and sweaty like the back of a French Quarter stripper. — Marc "Zeke" Kossover, San Francisco, CA

• Everything about Randy proclaimed him to be a man’s man, though neither in the sense of being the kind of man women are drawn to and men want to be nor in the homosexual sense, rather, in the sense of being a highly efficient and well-compensated valet. — Barbara Lauriat, Oxford, England

• Jake entered the small suburban bank, his face as cold and frozen as Theodore Roosevelt’s on Mount Rushmore while at the same time his sweaty hands clenched and unclenched nervously in his pockets like one of those fast motion movies of flowers blooming and dying, to open a savings account. — Frank Leggett, Sydney, NSW, Australia

• As the budgies and parrots descended upon him, Rolf began to regret his decision to wear an outfit made entirely of cuttlebones; unfortunately, this was the first of many a fashion faux-pas resulting from Beatrice’s none-so-sensible advice. — Ella Meumann, Lenah Valley, Tasmania

• Cooter – prone to deep cogitation when troubling bouts of constipation resulted in long-winded visits to the loo – reflected sentimentally on the oft underrated pork rind, envisioned its golden “pigmentation,” its pleasingly rough exterior where marriage of deep fryer to fat-rendered skin hath borne progenies of crispy bubbles, deceptive in their parchment-skinned fragility – in reality a coordinated cacophony of crunch hitherto unmatched in the snack world. — Leslie Muir, Atlanta, GA

• It was a dark and stormy night, although according to meteorologists since the lightning density on the satellite imagery for the area was only about 0.5 strikes per square mile, it wasn’t stormy, and according to members of the American Society of Cinematographers because the lights from the city reflected off the clouds and created about 13 lumens of light, it didn’t really fit the technical definition of dark. — Steve Petermann, Plano, TX

• My tongue moistened my parched lips and my stomach started to churn as I hungrily admired Leslie’s hair, which loosely resembled my great aunt Betty’s daughter Cornelia’s famous tuna casserole – brown, dry and crisp around the edges, yellow and creamy in the center with just a hint of grease spilling out over the top. — Paula Price, California, MO

• With “Bambi” eyes and an angelic face made for singing “The hills are alive” while traipsing across an Alpine meadow, Heidi Weissbrot seemed as pure as driven snow to older folks around Peach Blossom, but among boys her own age, there was a nasty rumor that her purity was more akin to snow driven to the river in dump trucks after being scraped from roads and parking lots. — Tom Rohde, Minneapolis, MN

• The crater of the volcano glowed red against the black sky, looking as if God had taken a drag of His cigar – if He smoked – which of course, He didn’t. — Wendy Spoelstra, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

• John lay in the morning dew next to his sleeping love as the pink hues of the sun rose over the rolling hills, illuminating a tender scene where for the first time satisfaction had come for a happy couple, who had fought all manner of obstacles to come to this one glorious moment, defiant in the face of Montana’s repressive bestiality laws. — Dan Stuart, Burlington, VT

• “I love the library,” Hilary said for no particular reason except to hear her own soft voice among the myriad of books which contained characters as familiar and recognizable to her as the neighborhood bum she passed everyday, who looked like Ted Danson when he dressed up as Dracula in Three Men and a Little Lady. — Jessamyn Sudhakaran, New Boston, OH

• When Marcel sank his dentures into the tarte frappée aux moules demi-tantalisées à la provençale to be suffused not with a pot-pourri of gilded remembrances of infancy, nor with vignettes of past hurly-burlies on the chaise longue, but with a bland mélange of ephemeral insipidities of quotidian contemporaneity, “That takes the biscuit,” he thought, “Madeleine’s forgotten the salt, again.” — Graham Thomas, St Albans, Hertfordshire, England

• The Archbishop, imprisoned for ten years in various palaces where he was called “Traitor” instead of Christoph, returned home amid cheers of those who knew his happiness and stature soon would be cut short by the sword of the Black Knight, who was actually quite pale since sunlight doesn’t penetrate armor, chain mail, and woolen underwear. — Mary Ann R. Unger, Ewing, NJ

• Dane worked the Spyrograph furiously, first red, then green, then red again, and finally blue; the pattern he sought was in there somewhere, and the correct combination would open the doors to a euphoria only known to dogs getting their stomachs scratched and parakeets viewing themselves in the mirror. — Matthew Warnock, Elgin, IL

• “I’ll have a pack of cigarettes please, no, Marlboro 100’s … lights please, in a box, yeah, no, wait, give me a soft pack, no, not those, the ones right above them, no, no, right next to those, yeah, wait, make it two packs, no wait, how much are they … no, one pack will do me, and a lighter please, no the other one, yeah, that one will be fine,” he said quickly. — Shane Spears, Blytheville, AR