It was a dark and stormy night...

The Bulwer-Lytton 2005 Ficton contest results are up. There are two that had coffee on my keyboard:

I peeled my body off the alcohol-soaked carpet, spat the cigarette butts out of my mouth, licked my lips with a tongue that felt and tasted like a rat that had been lightly sauteed in lighter fluid, and after struggling to what a quick visual inspection confirmed were apparently my feet, decided that the next time a seven- foot-tall Lebanese fisherman called Bottomless Mary challenged me to an ouzo-drinking contest I wouldn't wear suede shoes.

And...

India, which hangs like a wet washcloth from the towel rack of Asia, presented itself to Tex as he landed in Delhi (or was it Bombay?), as if it mattered because Tex finally had an idea to make his mark and fortune and that idea was a chain of steak houses to serve the millions and he wondered, as he deplaned down the steep, shiny, steel steps, why no one had thought of it before.

Read them all, it's worth it.