Writing Challenge: Terrible Opening Sentences

[Kerrin]

This thread has the same objective as The Bulwer-Lytton contest, which ran from 1983 - 2024: Namely, to write the worst possible opening sentence for a novel (or, alternately, the opening sentence to the worst possible novel). Selected examples posted below for illustrative purposes:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind that swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness." - Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1830)

"The tall, slender seductress had Tom Pauley wrapped around her little finger, and she had James McGee hanging from a necklace, but the police were still waiting for the lab results to determine whose body parts she had used to make her earrings and that stunning tennis bracelet." - Julian Calvin, Atlanta, GA (2023)

"Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories." - Sue Fondrie, Oshkosh, WI (2011)

"Seeing how the victim's body, or what remained of it, was wedged between the grill of the Peterbilt 389 and the bumper of the 2008 Cadillac Escalade EXT, officer "Dirk" Dirksen wondered why reporters always used the phrase "sandwiched" to describe such a scene since there was nothing appetizing about it, but still, he thought, they might have a point because some of this would probably end up on the front of his shirt." - Joel Phillips, West Trenton, NJ (2015)

"As an ornithologist, George was fascinated by the fact that urine and feces mix in birds’ rectums to form a unified, homogeneous slurry that is expelled through defecation, although eying Greta's face, and sensing the reaction of the congregation, he immediately realized he should have used a different analogy to describe their relationship in his wedding vows." - David Pepper, Hermosa Beach, CA (2012)

The entire archive of winners (and a large number of subcategories and dishonorable mentions) can be found here.

Now let's see what you've got...

 

[Louanne Learning]

As hard-shelled as a snippety crustacean, and with the steely-eyed cunning of a audacious master thief, Mortimer slithered into the damp, dark subterranean cave, and chortled with crazed aplomb as he temperamentally waded into the pernicious danger of the rank, putrid water, for he wasn’t made of salt, though he was salty, and would not dissolve.

 

[Kerrin]

Although not quite a virtuoso, Russell was nonetheless respected by fellow oboists for his speed, intonation, and ability to consistently fart the 432Hz tone - the latter of which had recently saved a performance of Milhaud's La Cheminée du roi René (Op. 205) midway through the fourth movement at the cost of Russell's wind quintet being unable to show their faces again in Albuquerque for the foreseeable future.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

The sun's yellow light oozed across the sky like semi-solid goo leaking from the broken yolk of a three minute egg.

 

[Stuart Dren]

Some of these openings are so coy that I have a hard time calling them terrible. Anyway:

Mar'ger Ida Mayflower rolled out of bed and looked in the mirror to make sure that she still had almond espresso skin, ash curly shoulder-length hair, and was five foot seven inches tall and twenty-three years and seven months old and a total Pisces. She put on her white tank top and mustard button down—but only did up like two buttons so she didn't look like a square—and then pants.

 

[Kerrin]

Some of these openings are so coy that I have a hard time calling them terrible.

Right!? My favorite ones are the ones that turn out accidentally good, like you'd actually WANT to read the story it's attached to and not out of morbid curiosity.

Anyway, in that spirit...

"In Sunday school we were taught that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and, having entered my wife’s body some thousand times since, I can confirm that the teachers weren’t lying."

 

[Louanne Learning]

The stocks-in-trade of bio-archeologist Rupert Fairweather were teeth and bones, and so he scavenged ancient burial sites in the northern arc of the Yukon Territory, toting ever-ready pickaxe and trowel, searching for, coveting, the hidden remnants of the long dead—skulls and long bones gave him shivers—but the irony was that poor Rupert could never get a boner—or so he thought.