Soon-to-Be Famous First Lines

Torian Barber woke up in the back of his Escalade bound at the hands and feet, tied to the door handles, and naked; his clothes were burning in a pile outside the door--and the K-mart was just now opening up.

-- "Marry Me" by Mike Long, Burke

They didn't think that I could hear what they were saying in the kitchen, but I could.

-- "The Aluminum Album" by Jennie Quick, Washington

I would like to clarify at the outset that my motivation for writing this book is only, in part, to fulfill the community service hours sentenced to me by one Judge Elaine Reinhalter, the presiding sourpuss of the Circuit Court of Cook County, who has never tapped her cloven hoof to a single beat in the whole of her severe and unsmiling existence (how else to explain her "inability to grasp" how anyone could start a mosh pit at a Veggie Tales concert).

-- "Superfan Incorporated" by Christopher Kush, Washington

One more reason to drink . . .

-- "Moral Bankruptcy: A Story of Family, Friendship and Cosmic [expletive]," by Darlene A. Costello deVega, Temple Hills

Once.

-- "The Hungry Season" by Tammy Greenwood, Takoma Park

Some people believe that overexposure can desensitize a person: that a doctor, for example, becomes so used to seeing naked bodies and their various parts that he can no longer see the person lying next to him in his own bed; that the massage specialist becomes so tired of caressing the skin of her clients that she can no longer feel the touch of others as they caress her; some people believe that by teaching a soldier to kill, you make them forget the sanctity of life, or that a funeral home director no longer feels the sting of death when the life drains out of the ones he knows and loves.

-- "Dead Ends" by Eric D. Goodman

Tommy Dola was having a very bad day.

-- "A Baby's Bones" by Mary Wise, Burtonsville