Horribly Awesome Crappy Opening Sentences

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is an online writing contest in which participants create an opening sentence to the worst possible novel. Bulwer-Lytton is responsible for the often parodied (or simply copied) opening line: "It was a dark and stormy night..."

I decided to try my hand at it and for the past several months I've concocted some of the most ridiculous sentences I could imagine. I don't know if I followed the rules of the contest (for example, I don't think I write in any particular genre) but it's been fun. Now that I've written a bunch, I figured I'd share them with you because I have literally zero shame. Enjoy!

1) The metal ball protruding from the underside of Barnaby’s penis was caught in the seam of his underwear, causing each stride he took towards the boardwalk on Pier 57 to yank his foreskin painfully, a distraction that he almost welcomed as it helped take his mind off the fear that had been overtaking him since he received the call from the gravel-voiced, anonymous man who for some reason had his sister Barbara tied up on a boat—a situation confirmed by her screaming voice in the background—ready to make a long voyage to an unknown destination unless Barnaby showed up with 10 grand in crisp, unmarked Benjamin Franklins.

2) The worst thing about hanging upside down over the railing on the fifth floor was that the urine flowing freely from his shriveled manhood was streaming directly into his face, mixing with the blood from his busted lip and broken nose caused by the very behemoth holding his feet and screaming obscenities at him in Spanish, a fact he only knew because his childhood friend Pepe (who died from extreme blue balls as a 15 year old in an all boys prep school) taught him all the curse words.

3) The pimple on her left butt cheek was taking her mind off the boil on her right foot so at least Robin had that to be thankful for as she walked to the corner store to pick up a carton of eggs, the only thing she could currently afford and prepare for her family, even though her ex-husband owned the largest garden tool emporium in the state and drove a new Mercedes and spent long weekends in Thailand getting his taint tickled by teen prostitutes; she was happy.

4) The dog’s snoring was keeping Ronald awake but it also had a soothing, relaxing effect on him as he stared out his bedroom window at the trees rustling gently in the nighttime breeze, leaves flittering in the bright moonlight; it was almost enough to make him forget the bubbles in his stomach that were sure to erupt any minute now and send him to the cold ceramic bathroom toilet well into the wee hours of the night.

5) The blood had seeped through the abandoned house’s wooden floorboards on the second story and was now dripping on the floor below at the feet of the man who caused the blood to spill in the first place, a man who has seen his share of splattered blood in his life, a man who isn’t bothered by a few fresh red stains on his tennis shoes, a man who wouldn’t be out of place in a World War 1 movie, running through the trenches with a bayonet, stabbing any keisers on his path to glory; in fact, he had played that very role once, in his Oscar nominated performance from his first and last feature length film, a performance that directly led to his current performance as a hired assassin—except, of course, this was no performance.

6) He didn’t want to have sex with his best friend’s wife but he had made a promise before Terrence was beheaded by that frozen fish truck that he would take care of Sadie no matter what and do anything she asked, up to and including blasting her in the face with a creampie.

7) The alka seltzer plus nighttime tablets were starting to take effect and Donald wondered if he should have taken them when he got home rather than behind the wheel of his wife’s new Camaro that his mother in law had given to her as a gift in his name in exchange for a weekly ride with her son in law to a private hotel room of her choosing; and as his mind wandered to the yellowed curtains of the seedy highway motel they had met in last week, he shook his head to bring him back to the present moment, in which he found himself in oncoming traffic.

8) The boy with the ruffled gray hair looked at the plate in front of him in trepidation; he could not stand the thought of eating any more hastily scooped, lukewarm chili or trying to suck a little bit of juice out of the cardboard box with frozen orange juice concentrate, but he knew this was his only opportunity to get any nutrients today and going to bed hungry was a worse thought than scarfing down the beans in watery meat sauce.

9) He knew it was petty to hold a grudge against an adult for something done as a child but pettiness never bothered Constantine in the slightest (it was an insult his morbidly obese mother hurled at him frequently until she choked on a Cornish game hen) and he did not think twice about pressing the barrel of his glock 9 against his old elementary school chum’s temple, anxiously listening for the familiar sound of fear urine trickling down a grown man’s pants and filling his expensive Italian leather shoes.

10) The cold, biting wind smacked him in the face before he could zip his Carharrt jacket up past his chin and he immediately regretted his decision to make today the day he went to the gym and started to make good on his New Year’s resolution to lose the gut that he had steadily built over the last decade while watching old Family Matters episodes on Netflix and every single The Twilight Zone episode on his grandmother’s VCR.

11) The storm seemed to have subsided, leaving a thin white cover over everything as a reminder of the storm’s control over the conscious of the populace, its mythology spread far and wide by men and women with big mouths, small brains, and inexplicable power in the field of weather profiteering, convincing millions that their worst nightmares will become reality as mild precipitation precipitates an apocalypse more frightening than the scariest scenario that primetime network television’s (or even Amazon Prime’s)  writers could ever come up with, unless given a sizeable budget and proper motivation in the form of tickets to the Golden Globes and the E! network’s after party.

12) The song played over and over again in his head as he tossed and turned in his queen size bed, pulling the covers over his sweat-drenched body  then tossing them off; he couldn’t get comfortable and he couldn’t get the song out of his head and if he didn’t get some sleep soon he would be at work pouring hand soap into his coffee mug instead of creamer again and his boss already told him he couldn’t afford to be caught sleeping in the bathroom stall anymore or else he would be fired, and then he would have to return to working behind the register at his mother’s adult toy store with his step-brother with eczema and Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

13) Leaning on the side of the refrigerator, he opened the door and peered in, hoping that he would spot something he missed the previous 3 times despite the fact that he was the only one to use the fridge and he damn sure hadn’t bought any groceries in weeks so there was no chance of finding anything edible; it was possible that he was just biding his time until his starving mind allowed him to stick his finger in the bottle of expired Ranch dressing and lick the sweet, somewhat chunky sauce that kept staring back at him.

14) His balls itched like they never had before but the thick denim of his jeans wasn’t letting him effectively itch the correct spot and he couldn’t sneak his hand inside his pants without the woman sitting next to him on the bus calling the authorities or at least giving him a stern glance, which, truth be told, he feared more than any transit authority figure, so he simply shifted his weight continuously for a few minutes and thought about the scratching session he would have in the next bathroom he came across.

15) The sweat accumulating on his taint felt like warm diarrhea had somehow slipped out of his anus but he knew that wasnt possible because his sphincter was still tightly puckered after his girlfriend tried to get a little too frisky during fellatio last night, yet he still headed to the bathroom to give a cursory wipe or two; that’s when he saw Horatio. 

Let me know which one is your favorite!

I Love You All...Class Dismissed.