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Best First Line Contest Round Four!
This contest is closed to new entries! Only those whose entries are posted below are invited to post again.
We have just over 35 entries moving on to round four. There is only one round left after this before the editors make their final choices, and we’ll be moving no more than 20 lines forward! Even with the smaller number of entries to choose from, still no line has been chosen by all 7 editors. However, less lines did get one vote only; over 50% had at least two votes (versus only about 30% the last round). I’ve noticed some editors have their favorites, and I’ve been a little tempted to guess which 7 will be the winners to see how well I know my editors ;)
Below, I’ve posted the comment # and the line. If your line is one of those posted, you have until noon on Friday to post, in the comments, your four lines. You must post both the first three lines, as well as the fourth line, but no more than that or your entry will be disqualified. You may not change the first three lines. They must be as posted in the first through third rounds. Please be very careful when posting—look for typos and errors before posting your entry. Please remember that this contest is for unpublished, uncontracted work as the “prize” is the chance to submit the work to the requesting editor at the end of the competition.
2 In dreams, he pushed her away. Never with much force and always with anguish darkening his fair features, but the rejection stung just the same. Betty spent a considerable amount of time over the last few years wondering where she’d be if reality instead mirrored her recurring dream.
3 Aneirin saved my life the day I met him, and saved it twice again before he finally killed me. It’s a chance encounter: I’m in a seedy little pub on the edge of Montmartre, drowning my sorrows in a pint of ale, when a stranger sits down next to me and slings his arm around my shoulders like we’re old friends. Beneath the table, I feel the point of a dagger press against my ribs.
4 Twelve inches separated Dr. Brad Berkowitz from heaven. Twelve inches, and a little thing called medical ethics.
Brad’s hand hovered twelve inches above the loveliest vulva he had ever seen –- not that he had seen many, but still: creamy brown like caramel flan, or maybe like his cafeteria coffee after he had added enough milk to make it drinkable.
5 Smoke snaked on languid currents around the sweat-glistening bodies of his clan-more than the people of his blood, they were now his responsibility. With the council in transition, Croma was claiming his rightful place as a tribal guardian. He hid his triumphant smile with his usual shallow sneer before anyone else in the common house noticed
6 The greatest king of Scotland, dead for nearly a thousand years, would be reborn in a woman’s dreams.
Malise looped her needle through the glittering warp and weft of her tapestry, embroidering the resurrection of her favorite monarch. “It’s been nine-hundred and fifty years since we lost the great ard righ.”
7 Just when Christine Abernathy thought life couldn’t get any worse, her umbrella collapsed. Icy Oklahoma rain cascaded down her head, drenching her clothes through the heavy winter coat. Perfect, just perfect.
8 The early spring day started out sunny and normal – not the kind of day that would end with me soaking wet and curled up in the trunk of my own car. But my life lately has been anything but normal.
I’m Elizabeth Montgomery Peacock – I know – I’ve heard all the jokes and even made up a few myself.
9 It’s frightening how similar a wistful smile is to a bitter one. A small turn of the lips, a twinkle of the eye hardening to glass. And yet we can still decipher the difference.
10 Claw marks separated the shirt into three pieces. Dark green blood dripped from the ends, hitting the cement in an annoyingly cheerful beat. Meg Summers rolled up the mess and tossed it into the nearest dumpster before shrugging back into her leather jacket.
12 Alexa Ranger knew when she was three years old that one day she’d meet a dragon. A gold one. So when he materialized out of the mist in the deserted back alleys of whatever North Suck-istan war zone she was in, she didn’t scream.
14 “How the hell am I gonna explain a dead body in the middle of my lawn?” I watched the fur fall from his broken corpse in thick clumps. Did I mention I hate werewolves?
15 The gown was the hue of aged claret, dark, rich, intentionally brutal in the colorless surroundings. It was the color of blood clotting in still night air, of shock, and of pleasure at its most arcane.
The sudden presence of such a thing in a room lit by candles and crowded with shadows stood out like a scream, like a rent in a world populated by the palest of the pale, the bluest of bluebloods.
16 Do you think I won’t find you?
Kendra Douglas jerked awake, almost feeling Adam’s heavy breath on her neck. She froze, listening for any movement, and heard only her own jagged breaths.
17 The child on the bench puzzled me. Her long, powder blue party dress and matching bonnet did not seem appropriate for the carnival at all. Looking more intently, I realized the dress did not fit the decade either—perhaps not even the century.
19 Bubble bath made terrible camouflage. Myra St. James tilted her legs, trying to get the fast- disappearing bubbles to better cover her lower half.
“Come on, love, there’s nothing there I haven’t seen before,” Miles said in his smarmy British accent.
20 He had barely touched her when it triggered. A fiery blackness shrouded his vision, burned through his chest, and smothered his heart. Agony lashed his mind, bone and tissue dissolving to viscous sludge while she laughed.
21 Half awake, Sabine felt incredibly relaxed — until a lazy stretch nearly toppled her off the sturdy tree branch supporting her naked body.
Naked?
Her eyes snapped open and she grabbed frantically at the trunk of the rough-barked tree.
24 “Good evening, madam,” he said, as he approached with the drink tray, and shot her. It would have been rude to finish the workday without a simple social convention. Etiquette and good manners was something that should have been chiseled on to the stone tablets, in place of “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”
25 “I’m not the kind of girl you can just run up and lick.” Delilah held up a hand to fend off the rodent bathing her face with love. She thought he’d given up until she realized he’d only stopped slobbering on her long enough to snatch the meatball from her paper plate.
26 An ordinary person would consider a lack of vampires to be a good thing. I, however, could only think of three increasingly terrifying reasons for their disappearance.
Lowest on the panic scale was the possibility they’d found out about me – and I was only clinging to that piece of self-importance because I really hated the other options.
27 Science probably used thousands of words to describe the beauty and horror of colossal star pulsing in its final moments before going supernovae, but as a linguist, a preservationist, Esmé Domair could think of none. The holographic images alone reduced her to a respectful silence, but the knowledge that she would soon be within distance to observe the phenomenon first hand gave her a particular chill of fear.
Above her desk, the translucent star-model flared and dimmed as if it were a living thing gasping for breath.
28 The Reverend Mother used to tell acolytes that if men were going to brawl, they should at least be naked and glistening with oil.
Leda’s money was on the hulking brute with the Cydian blade, but right now she needed the other guy to win. That one had information she needed, and she wasn’t going to get it if he got himself killed.
29 It was the kind of day that poets never write about. Jimothy could think of half a dozen ballads, at least four epic poems, two sonnets, and a limerick, all of which related to the weather, but none of them recounted the sort of relentless drizzle that had assailed him since before dawn. He knew the tale of a blasted, desert country, cursed by its own gods.
30 On an average day in the US, you would never walk out your front door and find a llama waiting for you. The sun shone like a ball of white fire overhead, making me squint at the tequila bottle in my hand for a moment, but no, not a hallucination — he still stood right beside my trailer, wearing a straw hat and aviator glasses. This could mean only one thing.
31 Except for being dead, he looked like every other tall, dark and drunk guy in the bar. Police detective Rick Morgan glanced at the knife and the puddle of blood and knew the guy slumped in the chair, whoever he was, would not be getting lucky tonight.
“Is he really dead?” asked the hot brunette with the short skirt, wide-eyes and bad luck to be found hovering over the stiff.
34 “The dog shoplifts.”
Sandra Morton eyeballed the German Shepherd sitting on the sidewalk outside her house — a glossy black-and-tan, big-boned beauty and, according to Seeing Eye liaison Tom Crane, a terminal kleptomaniac.
Tom shifted his weight from foot to foot precisely twenty times and pleaded, “Don’t say you can’t cure him.”
36. I forgot to breathe the minute I set eyes on him, as if by not exhaling I could savor the image. Crazy, maybe, but if you’d seen him in the hotel that day, you would have been breathless, too. Slim hips, broad shoulders, confident smile… one dimple — all packaged in a dark, tailored suit and posed in front of a picture window, late afternoon sunlight shimmering over his blond hair.
39 If there was one thing that Kelly Rawlins knew, it was that when you got home from work on a Friday night, you were not supposed to find the man that took your virginity and dumped you the next day sitting on your couch. So when she saw Jake Caine lounging against the cushions, his eyes caressing her with wicked delight, she froze for what felt like an eternity before her gaping mouth closed with an audible snap.
“It’s good to see you, Kelly,” he said, standing to approach her with a long, lazy stride.
40 Only one thing could have brought her back to Vienna from her self-imposed exile—Mozart’s death. The haunting, stringed lilt of his Requiem Mass played through the bitter metallic tang of her rage, a fitting mental accompaniment to the pulse of revenge already stirring in her blood. If Mozart had been murdered, that vengeance would have been easy: a silent visit in the depths of the night, fraught with lovingly administered justice and festooned with rivers of flowing blood.
41 Sam felt the engine sputter and then die — exactly according to plan.
Of course, this may not have been his best plan ever.
Through the windshield he could see the deserted country road shimmer in the afternoon heat, the nearest gas station at least a mile away — why the hell was he doing this?
42 The son of a bitch was going to kill her with sex…_again_, but what else could she expect from a rogue sex demon. Even while Cassandra “Raven” Caledre reveled in the feel of Fallyn’s perfect body gliding against her naked flesh, she lifted the ceremonial dagger, determined to kill him before the demon finished releasing her soul.
His small, sharp fangs bit lovingly into her shoulder as Fallyn whispered directly into her mind, Let me pleasure you, little Raven, and I swear, with your next life, the surrender will be mine .
45 Seated across the bar from Mariana was her target, the most dangerous pirate in the galaxy. He was here now, weeks before she’d expected him to take the bait, and neither his decade-long reputation nor the grainy holos in his Unipol dossier had prepared her for the sheer physical presence of the man. Jared LaFleur wasn’t the tallest or the strongest man she’d ever met, but his implacable air of command and wintry dark gray eyes had her fidgeting in her borrowed waitress’ uniform and wishing she were anywhere but here.
46 When the media called Michael Brannon the big bad wolf of the courtroom, they had no idea just how close to the truth they were.
The crowd parted automatically as he stalked me, the nightclub patrons scurrying out of his way like prey they didn’t realize they were. Even though Michael hadn’t been Two-Natured long, he treated humans the same way most of our kind did.
47 “I tried to tell you I wasn’t cut out to be a soul sucking bitch.” Melody avoided her boss’ compelling eyes, afraid of the look.
Being summoned to the depths of hell for an impromptu job performance review wasn’t her idea of fun.
48 The damned walls would’ve burst into flames if not for Aedan’s rigid control of his Sru. Even so, tendrils of power evaded his grasp to let wicked fire lick the hallway. The brickwork hissed and popped, mingling with the sound of his footsteps to create a heavy rhythm of impatient fury.
# 14
“How the hell am I gonna explain a dead body in the middle of my lawn?” I watched the fur fall from his broken corpse in thick clumps. Did I mention I hate werewolves? I sucked in a breath and all I could smell was the blood soaked earth, my own sweat, and the rest of the pack skulking in.
. The early spring day started out sunny and normal – not the kind of day that would end with me soaking wet and curled up in the trunk of my own car. But my life lately has been anything but normal. I’m Elizabeth Montgomery Peacock – I know – I’ve heard all the jokes and even made up a few myself. My parents are to blame for the first two names, not knowing that by the time their daughter was in elementary school, a more famous Elizabeth Montgomery would be twitching her witchy nose on TV.
In dreams, he pushed her away. Never with much force and always with anguish darkening his fair features, but the rejection stung just the same. Betty spent a considerable amount of time over the last few years wondering where she’d be if reality instead mirrored her recurring dream. She’d not have been sent away from her family “to be educated,” that much was certain, for no frontier settlement could afford to lose an able hand.
Alexa Ranger knew when she was three years old that one day she’d meet a dragon. A gold one.
So when he materialized out of the mist in the deserted back alleys of whatever North Suck-istan war zone she was in, she didn’t scream. Of course, a well-trained spy wouldn’t scream anyway.
5 Smoke snaked on languid currents around the sweat-glistening bodies of his clan-more than the people of his blood, they were now his responsibility. With the council in transition, Croma was claiming his rightful place as a tribal guardian. He hid his triumphant smile with his usual shallow sneer before anyone else in the common house noticed
They swayed, chanting in their ceremonial dress, oblivious to his thoughts.
#3
Aneirin saved my life the day I met him, and saved it twice again before he finally killed me. It’s a chance encounter: I’m in a seedy little pub on the edge of Montmartre, drowning my sorrows in a pint of ale, when a stranger sits down next to me and slings his arm around my shoulders like we’re old friends. Beneath the table, I feel the point of a dagger press against my ribs.
I know what he wants, of course — money — and it’s a pity for us both that I have none.
Twelve inches separated Dr. Brad Berkowitz from heaven. Twelve inches, and a little thing called medical ethics.
Brad’s hand hovered twelve inches above the loveliest vulva he had ever seen — not that he had seen many, but still: creamy brown like caramel flan, or maybe like his cafeteria coffee after he had added enough milk to make it drinkable. Flan, coffee, either way he figured he had never seen such a miracle of perfect symmetry.
Just when Christine Abernathy thought life couldn’t get any worse, her umbrella collapsed. Icy Oklahoma rain cascaded down her head, drenching her clothes through the heavy winter coat. Perfect, just perfect. She sprinted from her assigned parking place in the far reaches of Leftshwich’s lot toward the main building, veering to miss one puddle, but only succeeding in placing her stiletto ankle boot into an even deeper hole.
Wow! This is so exciting… here’s my entry:
19 Bubble bath made terrible camouflage. Myra St. James tilted her legs, trying to get the fast- disappearing bubbles to better cover her lower half.
“Come on, love, there’s nothing there I haven’t seen before,” Miles said in his smarmy British accent.
Drawing her knees to her chest, Myra shifted uncomfortably as her ex-fiance grinned, folded his arms across his chest and tilted his head as if to get a better look.
#28
The Reverend Mother used to tell acolytes that if men were going to brawl, they should at least be naked and glistening with oil.
Leda’s money was on the hulking brute with the Cydian blade, but right now she needed the other guy to win. That one had information she needed, and she wasn’t going to get it if he got himself killed. She was just about to intercede when her quarry tripped on his feet and knocked himself out cold.
“The dog shoplifts.”
Sandra Morton eyeballed the German Shepherd sitting on the sidewalk outside her house — a glossy black-and-tan, big-boned beauty and, according to Seeing Eye liaison Tom Crane, a terminal kleptomaniac.
Tom shifted his weight from foot to foot precisely twenty times and pleaded, “Don’t say you can’t cure him.”
Over the past several months, her Powwower’s empathy had already alerted Sandra that in the revitalizing neighborhoods of Philadelphia and beyond, anxiety disorders were the new black.
#21
Half awake, Sabine felt incredibly relaxed — until a lazy stretch nearly toppled her off the sturdy tree branch supporting her naked body.
Naked?
Her eyes snapped open and she grabbed frantically at the trunk of the rough-barked tree. What the hell was happening to her?
It was the kind of day that poets never write about. Jimothy could think of half a dozen ballads, at least four epic poems, two sonnets, and a limerick, all of which related to the weather, but none of them recounted the sort of relentless drizzle that had assailed him since before dawn. He knew the tale of a blasted, desert country, cursed by its own gods. He was positive that he could sing at least a song apiece about hail, sunshine, snow, and even ordinary overcast skies.
Only one thing could have brought her back to Vienna from her self-imposed exile—Mozart’s death. The haunting, stringed lilt of his Requiem Mass played through the bitter metallic tang of her rage, a fitting mental accompaniment to the pulse of revenge already stirring in her blood. If Mozart had been murdered, that vengeance would have been easy: a silent visit in the depths of the night, fraught with lovingly administered justice and festooned with rivers of flowing blood. The chill kiss of a snowflake brushed against her cheek with the touch of a lover as from the closed doors of St. Michael’s church glorious, soaring music suddenly traced a tender counterpoint to her immortal wrath.
OMGs! Another step closer…and enjoying every step foward! (Is this what the famous mean when they say “it is an honor to be nominated”? LOL)
#17
The child on the bench puzzled me. Her long, powder blue party dress and matching bonnet did not seem appropriate for the carnival at all. Looking more intently, I realized the dress did not fit the decade either—perhaps not even the century. Platinum blond curls touched the sash on the back of the dress as her delicate legs bounced with the rhythm of the calliope music coming from the carousel in front of her.
Claw marks separated the shirt into three pieces. Dark green blood dripped from the ends, hitting the cement in an annoyingly cheerful beat. Meg Summers rolled up the mess and tossed it into the nearest dumpster before shrugging back into her leather jacket. A slight cut down its left sleeve and a broken zipper were the extent of the damage the ghoul managed before she’d killed it.
#30
On an average day in the US, you would never walk out your front door and find a llama waiting for you. The sun shone like a ball of white fire overhead, making me squint at the tequila bottle in my hand for a moment, but no, not a hallucination — he still stood right beside my trailer, wearing a straw hat and aviator glasses. This could mean only one thing.
My archenemy, Finneas Q. Rucker, (well, if I cared enough these days to devote myself to a nemesis, it would be him) was back in town.
#25
“I’m not the kind of girl you can just run up and lick.” Delilah held up a hand to fend off the rodent bathing her face with love. She thought he’d given up until she realized he’d only stopped slobbering on her long enough to snatch the meatball from her paper plate. Delilah was in serious danger of dumping her plate trying to hold on to the wiggling meatball thief festooned in slippery red satin.
#6
The greatest king of Scotland, dead for nearly a thousand years, would be reborn in a woman’s dreams.
Malise looped her needle through the glittering warp and weft of her tapestry, embroidering the resurrection of her favorite monarch. “It’s been nine-hundred and fifty years since we lost the great ard righ.” She paused and traced a fingertip over the stitched profile of a kneeling woman with long red hair and the shadow of a sarcophagus behind her.
42 The son of a bitch was going to kill her with sex…_again_, but what else could she expect from a rogue sex demon. Even while Cassandra “Raven” Caledre reveled in the feel of Fallyn’s perfect body gliding against her naked flesh, she lifted the ceremonial dagger, determined to kill him before the demon finished releasing her soul.
His small, sharp fangs bit lovingly into her shoulder as Fallyn whispered directly into her mind, Let me pleasure you, little Raven, and I swear, with your next life, the surrender will be mine.
Letting the dagger fall, she accepted his bargain and held onto his strength with both hands lest she be lost to the delicious sensations he evoked with every touch.
#31
Except for being dead, he looked like every other tall, dark and drunk guy in the bar. Police detective Rick Morgan glanced at the knife and the puddle of blood and knew the guy slumped in the chair, whoever he was, would not be getting lucky tonight.
“Is he really dead?” asked the hot brunette with the short skirt, wide-eyes and bad luck to be found hovering over the stiff.
Rick knew remorse when he heard it and this wasn’t it.
Sam felt the engine sputter and then die — exactly according to plan.
Of course, this may not have been his best plan ever.
Through the windshield he could see the deserted country road shimmer in the afternoon heat, the nearest gas station at least a mile away — why the hell was he doing this?
He knew the answer though, and it wasn’t the need for gas that had him walking down the road, empty gas can swinging at his side.
An ordinary person would consider a lack of vampires to be a good thing. I, however, could only think of three increasingly terrifying reasons for their disappearance.
Lowest on the panic scale was the possibility they’d found out about me – and I was only clinging to that piece of self-importance because I really hated the other options.
If vampires were being drawn to another place – were flocking somewhere – then the human population might be about to wink out, one town at a time.
#27
Science probably used thousands of words to describe the beauty and horror of colossal star pulsing in its final moments before going supernovae, but as a linguist, a preservationist, Esmé Domair could think of none. The holographic images alone reduced her to a respectful silence, but the knowledge that she would soon be within distance to observe the phenomenon first hand gave her a particular chill of fear.
Above her desk, the translucent star-model flared and dimmed as if it were a living thing gasping for breath. She squirmed in her chair as the death throes quickened, each doomed flicker piercing her heart like a futile cry for help.
The gown was the hue of aged claret, dark, rich, intentionally brutal in the colorless surroundings. It was the color of blood clotting in still night air, of shock, and of pleasure at its most arcane.
The presence of such a thing in a room lit by candles and crowded with shadows stood out like a scream, like a rent in a world populated by the palest of the pale, the bluest of bluebloods.
Mesmerized, William Lyon got to his feet, propelled upward by a ravenous, if untimely, pulse in this breeches.
It’s frightening how similar a wistful smile is to a bitter one. A small turn of the lips, a twinkle of the eye hardening to glass. And yet we can still decipher the difference. The human mind is terrifyingly perceptive.
#20
He had barely touched her when it triggered. A fiery blackness shrouded his vision, burned through his chest, and smothered his heart. Agony lashed his mind, bone and tissue dissolving to viscous sludge while she laughed. This was a rogue Death Spell, an illegal weapon meant to kill any ordinary mortal and destroy their soul, he was not ordinary.
If there was one thing that Kelly Rawlins knew, it was that when you got home from work on a Friday night, you were not supposed to find the man that took your virginity and dumped you the next day sitting on your couch. So when she saw Jake Caine lounging against the cushions, his eyes caressing her with wicked delight, she froze for what felt like an eternity before her gaping mouth closed with an audible snap.
“It’s good to see you, Kelly,” he said, standing to approach her with a long, lazy stride. His voice was just as deep and husky as she remembered and her breath caught at the sound of it.
I forgot to breathe the minute I set eyes on him, as if by not exhaling I could savor the image. Crazy, maybe, but if you’d seen him in the hotel that day, you would have been breathless, too. Slim hips, broad shoulders, confident smile… one dimple — all packaged in a dark, tailored suit and posed in front of a picture window, late afternoon sunlight shimmering over his blond hair. You can’t get better than that on a platter.
#24
“Good evening, madam,” he said, as he approached with the drink tray, and shot her. It would have been rude to finish the workday without a simple social convention. Etiquette and good manners was something that should have been chiseled on to the stone tablets, in place of “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” He had often wondered whether his classical education had made him a winner or a victim in today’s vulgar society.
#45
Seated across the bar from Mariana was her target, the most dangerous pirate in the galaxy. He was here now, weeks before she’d expected him to take the bait, and neither his decade-long reputation nor the grainy holos in his Unipol dossier had prepared her for the sheer physical presence of the man. Jared LaFleur wasn’t the tallest or the strongest man she’d ever met, but his implacable air of command and wintry dark gray eyes had her fidgeting in her borrowed waitress’ uniform and wishing she were anywhere but here.
Mariana cursed the slight tremble in her hand as she slid a shot of whiskey across the bar to him, remembering at the last moment to rotate her wrist so he could see her alexandrite signet ring.
#46
When the media called Michael Brannon the big bad wolf of the courtroom, they had no idea just how close to the truth they were. The crowd parted automatically as he stalked me, the nightclub patrons scurrying out of his way like prey they didn’t realize they were. Even though Michael hadn’t been Two-Natured long, he treated humans the same way most of our kind did.
Not saying that he treated them badly, he just didn’t have much use for them.
“I tried to tell you I wasn’t cut out to be a soul sucking bitch.” Melody avoided her boss’ compelling eyes, afraid of the look. Being summoned to the depths of hell for an impromptu job performance review wasn’t her idea of fun. She had ignored the warnings she’d received before so when her body dematerialized in mid stroke she hadn’t been all that surprised.
The damned walls would’ve burst into flames if not for Aedan’s rigid control of his Sru. Even so, tendrils of power evaded his grasp to let wicked fire lick the hallway. The brickwork hissed and popped, mingling with the sound of his footsteps to create a heavy rhythm of impatient fury.
How dare that bastard threaten my parents.
#16
Do you think I won’t find you?
Kendra Douglas jerked awake, almost feeling Adam’s heavy breath on her neck. She froze, listening for any movement, and heard only her own jagged breaths. Her gaze scanned the room.