IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT - 2014 

Below are some "winners" from the 2014 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

Please see the DARK AND STORMY NIGHT post for July 8, 2014 for an explanation of this contest.

Grand Panjandrum's Special Award 
As he girded himself against the noxious, sulfurous fumes that belched from the chasm in preparation for his descent into the bowels of the mountain where mighty pressure and unimaginable heat made rock run in syrupy rivers, Bob paused to consider the unlikely series of events that had led him to become the Great God Vulcan's proctologist.
Stan Hunter Kranc, State College, PA

Romance
The tears of her loneliness rolled from her cheeks and fell upon the steaming pavement outside  a second-rate shopping center in Torrance, California, those tears quickly evaporating in the heat and turning into molecularized water vapor that was gradually pulled into the upper atmosphere and slowly dispersed across the planet until, many years later, a few of the molecules descended upon  Riomaggiore, Italy, where they were inhaled by her soul-mate, Giorgio Abatangelo whom she would never, ever meet.
Michael Shaw, Rockville, MD

Raoul's deep slate eyes sucked Natalie in, and there she remained lodged like the wadded knee-hi clogging the tube of her Hoover Electrosuction Model 612 that once belonged to her grandmother, or some other dead relative, its vacuum bag so overstuffed with gunk, shed skin cells, and insect exoskeletons it nearly exploded like Natalie's heart bursting for Raoul.
Wendy White Lees, Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ

Western
"I guess you ain't from around these here parts, Mistuh," drawled Sheriff Cole McCabe, suspiciously eyeing the one-armed, scar-faced stranger with no name who had just stepped off the Deadwood stage and was now standing at the bar of the Last Chance saloon dressed only in a tutu, high-heeled shoes, holding a pink parasol and reciting passages of Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past to Mad Dog Kincaid and the Coltrane boys outta the Lazy K Ranch just south o' Tucson.
Ted Downes, Cardiff,

Dishonorable Mention
As Farmer Brown's train pulled out of the station at 10:00 a.m. traveling east at 50 miles per hour, he had no idea that at that very same moment Farmer Green was 100 miles away on a west-bound train heading straight for him at 60 miles per hour and that because of a tragic track-switching mistake he was going to die in a fiery head-on train crash at exactly ..... umm ..... well ..... err ..... sometime later that day.
Shanon Conner, San Angelo, TX

Pine trees stretched as far as the eye could see, which wasn't very far in Gerald's case, since he was overdue for cataract surgery with the only opthalmologist in town who still took Medicare patients, and their needles whispered gently in the breeze.
Paul Bayley, Walnut Creek, CA

Every once in a while Cletus would feel the inconceivable, unintelligible force of loneliness come down from the far reaches of the cold, dark universe and crush him in a manner that left him pondering the significance of his sad, meandering existence in the face of this meaningless mass of nothing we call life, but not today, because today is Taco Tuesday.
Tyler Miles, Waterbury, VT

Crime
The veteran investigator stepped out of the interrogation room, knowing full well that he was wearing his suspect down and that a confession was near - which he summarized to his colleagues by saying, "He's schvitzing like a mohel at his first bris."
Kelben Graf, Milwaukie, OR (adapted)

Vile Puns
Six months old, and already their love had picked up memories like lint, which, now that Maddie thought about it, was appropriate, since she and Brian met at the laundromat, when Maddie found herself hampered by a stubborn washing machine coin slot, but then snickered at the thought of being "hampered" while doing laundry, and then found herself explaining her snicker to the nearest laundromat patron, who turned out to be be Brain and who, better yet, turned out to have a sense of humor even, well, dryer than her own.
Kirsten Wilson, Superior, CO