The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the toad’s deception, screaming madly, “You lied!”
-Barbara Kroll
Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
An entry to the 1983 Bulwer-Lytton Contest, where people attempt to write an intentionally bad opening sentence to a novel, in honor of Bulwer-Lytton who un-intentionally did that many times in his career during the late 1800′s. I found the book on the street. Let me explain:
There were two brown grocery bags full of books on the curb by a parking meter as the wind died down and no longer ruffled the stiff handles, (the lack of rustling can’t be said to have caught my eye as much as the still presence of bulging bags of free stuff, for isn’t anything left on the curb free in a big American city?) so I stopped in the calm air of this Thursday morning to inspect the contents and I had one bag emptied and stacked into a keeper pile and a leave behind pile when a homeless looking guy came out of the market that is almost on the corner but not quite, the one that sells frozen yogurt too now, and he starts shouting towards me that those are his books but who would leave two bags of books on a curb and walk up the block almost to the corner to buy smokes if you, or he, really wanted them?
BTW greensward means “surface layer of ground containing a mat of grass and grass roots sod, sward, turf”