IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT - 2009

Below are some "winners" of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest of 2009. Please see the DARK AND STORMY NIGHT post from July 8, 2014 for an explanation of this contest.

Adventure
How best to pluck the exquisite Toothpick of Ramses from between a pair of acrimonious vipers before the demonic Guards of Nicobar returned should have held Indy's full attention, but in the back of his mind he still wondered why all the others who had agreed to take part in his wife's holiday scavenger hunt had been assigned to find stuff like a Phillips screwdriver or blue masking tape.
Joe Wyatt, Amarillo, TX

Detective
She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.
Eric Rice, Sun Prairie, WI

Romance
He slowly ran his fingers through her long black hair, which wasn't really black because she used Preference by L'Oreal (because "she was worth it."); her carrot-colored roots were starting to show, and it reminded him of the time he'd covered his car's check engine light with black electrical tape, but a faint orange glow still shone around the edges.
Lisa Mileusnich, Willoughby, OH

Their relationship hit a bump in the road, not the low, graceful kind of bump reminiscent of a child's choo choo train-themed roller coaster, rather the kind of tall, narrow speed-bump that, if a school bus ran over it, would cause even a fat kid to bounce up and hit his head on the ceiling.
Michael Reade, Durham, NC

Dishonorable Mentions
No man is an island, so they say, although the small crustaceans and the bird which sat impassively on Dirk Manhope's chest as he floated lazily in the pool would probably disagree.
Glen Robins, Brighton, East Sussex, U.K.

On a lovely day during one of the finest Indian Summers anyone could remember - a season the Germans call "old wives' summer," obviously never having had Native Americans to name things after, but plenty of old wives, and "Indian summer" in German would refer to the natives of India in any case, which would make even less sense than the current naming system - on such a day, however named, John Baxter fell in the creek, and, on stepping out, dripping wet, with that brackish,  polluted water, cursed like a drunken sailor.
Deanna Stewart, Heidelberg, Germany