A Darker and Stormier Night

About a year ago, I posted about the 2018 Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest, in which one of my entries was a runner-up in the Crime/Detective category. Well, this year I did better (or worse?) – I won in the Fantasy & Horror category!! Here is my entry:


Driven from the sea by pollution, Aglaope the Siren found an economy apartment in New York City with the hope of luring the big city buses to their doom, but to her dismay she found that her song was drowned out by police cars, fire trucks and jackhammers, except for one joyous day when she was fairly sure that she caused a skateboarder to crash into a light pole.
           –Arlen Feldman, Colorado Springs, CO


But wait, there’s more — I also got another dishonorable mention in the Crime/Detective section!


As he pounded on the door, Billy ‘Four-Toes’ Capalone, wondered, not for the first time, if he wouldn’t have been better off in the joint, or even taking a concrete nap, but instead, he straightened his tie and gripped his bible, determined not to blow his cover in the Jehovah’s Witness Protection Program.
           –Arlen Feldman, Colorado Springs, CO


Here’s the 2019 grand prize winner:


Space Fleet Commander Brad Brad sat in silence, surrounded by a slowly dissipating cloud of smoke, maintaining the same forlorn frown that had been fixed upon his face since he’d accidentally destroyed the phenomenon known as time, thirteen inches ago.
           –Maxwell Archer, Mt Pleasant, Ontario, Canada


And here are a few of my not bad enough entries:

  • Nigel had always wanted to be a hard-bitten detective, but life had not worked out that way, and he now worked at the San Fernando zoo–though when he discovered that he’d accidentally been locked into the lion cage with the anesthetic on his patient wearing off, he realized that he was soon going to be a hard-bitten veterinarian.
  • His professor recommended against protesting against the hate group’s planned speech, saying that you shouldn’t give them oxygen, but since the school was located on the moon, John interpreted that to mean that he should open all of the airlocks.
  • Professor Banes eventually won the Nobel prize for his ground-breaking work combining ruminant biology with sub-atomic physics, after his surprise discovery of the Higgs Bison.
  • She was the girl of his dreams, right down to the polka-dot flippers, the lobster claws, and even the bowl of strawberry-banana Jell-O.

6 Comments on “A Darker and Stormier Night

  1. One of my friends linked me the 2019 Winners page, and I was so surprised to see your name there! We worked together at Cherwell many moons ago. As someone whose Call of Cthulhu pod just wrapped up a second season prominently featuring sirens who weren’t great at sirening (yet), hat’s off to your win! I thought it was fantastic.

    • To be honest, I was surprised too — I think they only notify the grand prize winner :-).

      Nice to hear from you, and thanks for the nice words about my bad writing! I just was looking at the site for your podcast, and will definitely have to listen when I have a chance!

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