Pippa won this competition in 1996 and her story was published in Orange Coast, The Magazine of Orange County in July 1996. Pippa wrote a story called: "Swan Lake in the Garden of Eden" (The first sentence was supplied by Orange Coast)
Eyeballs don't have corners, but if they did, chief executive Sherbet Fondue would have noticed the shoes from the corners of hers -- strappy, red, pumplike, possibly a size 13EE, surreptitious yet cognizable beside the bare feet of Tarmac LaDuke, her brilliant slab of a personal assistant who, despite the hour, acknowledged his boss's downward, pubpward glance with a come-hither waggle of his handsome, hirsute toes.
Those toes are like plump stubbly little grubs, she thought, Freudianly wondering if the 13EEs were symbolic of Eve's apple in the Garden of Eden, and if Tarmac's toes were dying to get into it, her...er...them. Tarmac examined his boss, externally. On the outside she was was wearing a ballerina's tutu, underneath which she had legs that went all the way down to her feet, and on top of which the rest of her body sat, which was slim, but not skinny, her br**sts were firm but not rock hard, small but not pimples and her shoulders were nakedly bare but not nude, though Tarmac was not the sort of person to notice such things. Female br**sts that is. On the inside, Sherbet was one heck of a tough lady boss and he knew it and respected her for it.
Tarmac wore dancer's tights and Sherbet watched as his g*nitalia squirmed and wriggled about under the skin tight fabric as he walked. Above the dancer's tights he was wearing nothing but his chest with its two ripe rosebud nipples, which inflated when she went to accidentally brush them with her downy-skinned, peachy-coloured ballerina's elbow. Did this mean he was aroused? she wondered to herself without inverted commas because she didn't want him to read her thoughts.
No, it didn't, because Tarmac was gay, even though he was endowed with massive g*nitalia that drove Sherbet wild when she saw them, er, it, under the aforesaid tights.
They were about to dance "Swan Lake" because they both adored classical ballet as a hobby (even though in their working lives Sherbet was Tarmac's boss, and even though this was not classical ballet where they wear ballet shoes, but barefoot ballet where they don't wear any shoes), and Tarmac was playing the role of the Prince, while Sherbet was a dying swan, one of the many who would be swept up by the currents of passion when Tarmac and his g*nitalia waltzed graphically onto the stage.
Then the exciting moment came. All the swans were busy, dying away happily, when Tarmac was supposed to make his grand entrance.
Suddenly it happened. The aforesaid mentioned strappy, red, pumplike, possibly 13EE shoes that Sherbet should have seen but didn't see because her eyes didn't have corners, were obstructively in the way. Tarmac tripped and mutilated his mighty member. Suddenly he screamed excruciatingly and suddenly the music and dancing stopped abruptly. Suddenly it was a very strange moment indeed, stranger than any of the preceding moments by at least 50 percent. So strange that Sherbet stopped dreaming and woke up, suddenly.
Illustration by Lucien Turner
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TOES, WOES AND
PUTRID PROSE
The stunning results of the 1996 Deadly Poets' Society bad-writing contest,
by the Editors,
Orange Coast Magazine.
As we scrape memories of Orange Coast's second annual Deadly Poets' Society Bad-Writing Contest off the bottom of our shoes, we are reminded of a passage from this year's winning entry: "It was a very strange moment indeed, stranger than any of the preceeding moments by at least 50 percent."
Pippa..., a creative writing tutor from Sydney Australia located the results of last year's contest on our website, and found them so amusing that she entered the contest this year. Her entry was distinguished mostly by the phrase "plump, stubbly little grubs" and her almost surreal attempts at self-censorship in a story filled with female br**sts" and squirming, wriggling "g*nitalia".
She receives our not particularly grand prize of $100 and the handsome, hirsute 1996 Deadly Poets' Society traphy, which, due to matters involving availability and radical discounting at a local trophy shop, is topped by a golden statue of a man hoisting an anatomically correct bull above his head. Due to the flawed design this year's tropy is dangerously top-heavy.