It was a dark and stormy night (with cheese)JUL 18 2003

Mariann Simms has won the 2003 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, "a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels". Her submission:

They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white...Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn't taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently.

The contest is named for Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, a Victorian novelist whose opening to Paul Clifford is widely regarded to be just a bit over-the-top bad:

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 which 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.

When not winning contests, Mariann runs HumorMeOnline.com.