Will tossed his homework, the thick manuscript finished last night, into the puddle ahead of her slender left foot. While less absorbent than the cavalier's handkerchief, it was more intellectual, and also thicker (so as to better elevate the lovely lady foot out of danger). He finished his follow-through with a dramatically upturned nose and a wistful gaze skyward.
Diane's sharp heel pierced the first few pages, drawing a bead of water from the puddle below to spread silt trails across the title page. Will gasped at the power wielded by the words he'd chosen to invoke the image of that exact heel in the third line of his second sonnet. Never before had his poetry so precisely summoned reality. He whipped the pad from his breast pocket and hurried to caputre a vividly imagined kiss in two perfect iambs, just as Diane stepped past him, a small corner of pentameter still flapping from her heel.
Awash with unfocused desire, Everett twisted the lobe of his one remaining
ear and felt the presence of somebody else behind him, which caused terror
to push through his nervous system like a flash flood roaring down the
mid-fork of the Feather River before the completion of the Oroville Dam
in 1959.
-- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton
bad fiction contest.
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