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Overloading the Machine

Parked

Lila couldn't remember where she parked, in general.

Specifically, she put her key in the wrong Camry, and it worked. She started to drive away, but stopped when a man belly-flopped onto the hood, his eyes ringing with consumer terror. Through the glass, she read the obscenities from his lips and forgave him vigorously for denting her hood. She mouthed an apology, and returned his car to a similar parking spot. He said his name was Alan.

After the hood dent was pulled—she paid for half, over pad thai—and they were married, she drove his Camry all the time, and often forgot where she parked it, even while she remembered the story or lost her keys.

Usually, Lila didn't forget where she parked their house. Looking everywhere, she found some keys in his pocket. No key worked so she turned around, tripping over a bush that shouldn't have been there, and caught her balance in a patch of wet paint on the side of the house. She didn't like the tone, but coping was easier when she realized it wasn't her house, or her smudged jacket.

It took her a while to get home from there, but after her and Alan were divorced, the wrong house went up for sale, and repainting. She bought it with her share of the assets, and moved in. She had her own keys made, and tossed his into the bush.

Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit moulding her body, which was as warm as seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven -- fueled by a single accelerant -- and she needed a man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road: a man like Alf Romeo.

  -- Rachel Sheeley, winner The hair ball blocking the drain of the shower reminded Laura she would never see her little dog Pritzi again.

  -- Claudia Fields, runner-up It could have been an organically based disturbance of the brain -- perhaps a tumor or a metabolic deficiency -- but after a thorough neurological exam it was determined that Byron was simply a jerk.

  -- Jeff Jahnke, runner-up Winners in the 7th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest. The contest is named after the author of the immortal lines: "It was a dark and stormy night." The object of the contest is to write the opening sentence of the worst possible novel.