Lyttony of Grand
Prize Winners
The camel died quite suddenly on the
second day, and Selena fretted sulkily and, buffing her already impeccable
nails--not for the first time since the journey began--pondered snidely if this
would dissolve into a vignette of minor inconveniences like all the other
holidays spent with Basil.
--Gail Cain,
The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of the
warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarous tribe now stacking wood at her nubile
feet, when the strong, clear voice of the poetic and heroic Handsomas
roared, "Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my steel through your last
meal."
--Steven Garman,
The countdown had stalled at T minus 69
seconds when Desiree, the first female ape to go up in space, winked at me
slyly and pouted her thick, rubbery lips unmistakably--the first of many such
advances during what would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space
voyage of my career.
--Martha Simpson,
The bone-chilling scream split the warm
summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly
balmy and calm and pleasant for those who hadn't heard the scream at all, but
not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream,
discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your
ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you
know.
--Patricia E. Presutti,
The notes blatted skyward as the sun rose
over the Canada geese, feathered rumps mooning the day, webbed appendages
frantically peddling unseen bicycles in their search for sustenance, driven by
Nature's maxim, "Ya wanna
eat, ya gotta work,"
and at last I knew Pittsburgh.
--Sheila B. Richter,
Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned
and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit
molding her body, which was as warm as the seatcovers
in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps,
and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman
driven--fueled by a single accelerant--and she needed a man, a man who wouldn't
shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road, a man like Alf
Romeo.
--Rachel E. Sheeley,
Professor Frobisher couldn't believe he
had missed seeing it for so long--it was, after all, right there under his
nose--but in all his years of research into the intricate and mysterious ways
of the universe, he had never noticed that the freckles on his upper lip, just
below and to the left of the nostril, partially hidden until now by a hairy
mole he had just removed a week before, exactly matched the pattern of the
stars in the Pleides, down to the angry red zit that
had just popped up where he and his colleagues had only today discovered an
exploding nova.
--Ray C. Gainey,
Dolores breezed along the surface of her
life like a flat stone forever skipping across smooth water, rippling reality
sporadically but oblivious to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum,
sank, due to an overdose of fluoride as a child which caused her to lie forever
on the floor of her life as useless as an appendix and as lonely as a
five-hundred-pound barbell in a steroid-free fitness center.
--Linda Vernon,
Sultry it was and humid, but no whisper
of air caused the plump, laden spears of golden grain to nod their burdened
heads as they unheedingly awaited the cyclic rape of their gleaming treasure,
while overhead the burning orb of luminescence ascended its ever-upward path
toward a sweltering celestial apex, for although it is not in Kansas that our
story takes place, it looks godawful like it.
--Judy Frazier,
As the newest Lady Turnpot
descended into the kitchen wrapped only in her celery-green dressing gown, her
creamy bosom rising and falling like a temperamental souffle,
her tart mouth pursed in distaste, the sous-chef
whispered to the scullery boy, "I don't know what to make of her."
--Laurel Fortuner,
She wasn't really my type, a hard-looking
but untalented reporter from the local cat box liner, but the first second that
the third-rate representative of the fourth estate cracked open a new fifth of
old Scotch, my sixth sense said seventh heaven was as close as an eighth note
from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, so, nervous as a tenth grader drowning in
eleventh-hour cramming for a physics exam, I swept her into my longing arms,
and, humming "The Twelfth of Never," I got lucky on Friday the
thirteenth.
--Wm. W. "Buddy" Ocheltree, Port
As the fading light of a dying day
filtered through the window blinds, Roger stood over his victim with a smoking
.45, surprised at the serenity that filled him after pumping six slugs into the
bloodless tyrant that mocked him day after day, and then he shuffled out of the
office with one last look back at the shattered computer terminal lying there
like a silicon armadillo left to rot on the information superhighway.
--Larry Brill,
Paul Revere had just discovered that
someone in Boston was a spy for the British, and when he saw the young woman
believed to be the spy's girlfriend in an Italian restaurant he said to the
waiter, "Hold the spumoni--I'm going to follow the chick an' catch a
Tory."
--John L. Ashman,
"Ace, watch your head!" hissed
Wanda urgently, yet somehow provocatively, through red, full, sensuous lips,
but he couldn't you know, since nobody can actually watch more than part of his
nose or a little cheek or lips if he really tries, but he appreciated her
warning.
--Janice Estey,
The moment he laid eyes on the lifeless
body of the nude socialite sprawled across the bathroom floor, Detective Leary
knew she had committed suicide by grasping the cap on the tamper-proof bottle,
pushing down and twisting while she kept her thumb firmly pressed against the
spot the arrow pointed to, until she hit the exact spot where the tab clicks
into place, allowing her to remove the cap and swallow the entire contents of
the bottle, thus ending her life.
n Artie Kalemeris,
The corpse exuded the irresistible aroma
of a piquant, ancho chili glaze enticingly enhanced
with a hint of fresh cilantro as it lay before him, coyly garnished by a
garland of variegated radicchio and caramelized onions, and impishly drizzled
with glistening rivulets of vintage balsamic vinegar and roasted garlic oil;
yes, as he surveyed the body of the slain food critic slumped on the floor of
the cozy, but nearly empty, bistro, a quick inventory of his senses told
corpulent Inspector Moreau that this was, in all likelihood, an inside job.
--Bob Perry,
Through the gathering gloom of a
late-October afternoon, along the greasy, cracked paving-stones slick from the
sputum of the sky, Stanley Ruddlethorp wearily
trudged up the hill from the cemetery where his wife, sister, brother, and
three children were all buried, and forced open the door of his decaying house,
blissfully unaware of the catastrophe that was soon to devastate his life.
--Dr. David Chuter,
The heather-encrusted Headlands, veiled
in fog as thick as smoke in a crowded pub, hunched precariously over the moors,
their rocky elbows slipping off land's end, their bulbous, craggy noses thrust
into the thick foam of the North Sea like bearded old men falling asleep in
their pints.
--Gary Dahl,
A small assortment of astonishingly loud
brass instruments raced each other lustily to the respective ends of their
distinct musical choices as the gates flew open to release a torrent of tawny
fur comprised of angry yapping bullets that nipped at Desdemona's ankles,
causing her to reflect once again (as blood filled her sneakers and she fought
her way through the panicking crowd) that the annual Running of the Pomeranians
in Liechtenstein was a stupid idea.
--Sera Kirk,
On reflection, Angela perceived that her
relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride
but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs
crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it
back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained.
--Rephah Berg,
They had but one last remaining night
together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined
string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a
bland Cheddar and the white . . . Mozzarella, although it could possibly be
Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn't taste distinctly dissimilar
from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it
differently.
--Mariann
Simms,
She resolved to end the love affair with
Ramon tonight . . . summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of
a shrimp's tail . . . though the term "love affair" now struck her as
a ridiculous euphemism . . . not unlike "sand vein," which is after
all an intestine, not a vein . . . and that tarry substance inside certainly
isn't sand . . . and that brought her back to Ramon.
--Dave Zobel,
As he stared at her ample bosom, he
daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire,
highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the
intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the
oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter
seven of the shop manual.
--Dan McKay,
Detective Bart Lasiter
was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his
super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've
had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose
eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.
--Jim Guigli,
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,
Theirs was a
24/7, steam rising from their
bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole
covers stamped “Forged by DeLaney
Bros.,
--
Folks say that if you listen real close at the height
of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off
Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin'
for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the
crew of
the “Ellie May,” a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night
when the rum was flowin'
and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the
first
of several screaming contests. (2009 Winner)
--David McKenzie,
