Soon-to-Be Famous First Lines

I am an invisible man. Call me Ishmael. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. These sentences are the first lines from novels firmly wedged at the top of the pantheon of American literature. Here are the opening lines from local WriMos' novels-in-progress that may someday join them.

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It was at precisely 8:07 a.m. on March 6th that Lucy Boots found a dead elephant in her garden.

-- "Freak Magnet" by Rebecca Gordon, Alexandria

After it was done, Omar sent a letter to each of the women whom he had allowed himself to touch immodestly in his youth, informing them that he had lopped off his hand.

-- Dan Fowlkes, Stafford

"God, I hate these cardio bitches," Beth murmured to Peyton.

-- "Bitches in Bikinis" by Karen Quintiere, Bethesda

Someday you will want to know the story of where you came from, and I won't tell you the old fairy tale about the stork with his long bony legs who clutched your sling in his fishy-breathed beak and carried you over oceans and mountains and then finally landed on our roof and dropped you down our chimney like Santa Claus, and when you hit the ground you magically bounced up into my arms and suddenly I was a mother.

-- Katrina Blodgett, Washington

There's a woman lying next to me, at least, I pray that it's a woman, but the outline is hazy.

-- "Vodka" by Pablo Paldao, Arlington