The winners of the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced

The winners of the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced, and as usual there are some real doozies. Here’s this year’s winner, from Garrison Spik (Washington, D.C.):

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped “Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.”

However, I think this one’s my personal fave, from Camille Barigar & Jeff Blick (Twin Falls, ID):

As Kevin thumbed through the thick pages of the ancient manuscript lately found deep in the bowels of the Enzo family library in Castellino, with its depictions and detailed woodcuts of the morbid crimes committed during the Spanish Inquisition, he couldn’t help but marvel at the serene faces of the Florentine martyrs (Italians are so much tougher than they look!) and thought that his own expression would differ slightly if he were being sawn in half using the crack of his butt as a straight-line.