I'm guessing you, like me, haven't been keeping up with Lit Idol 2005. Last year, the concept was at least amusingly novel; now, its title feels dated, which is why annual contests aren't usually named after TV shows. Nonetheless, a winner has been named, and what a great name he has: congratulations, Otis Twelve.

Read an excerpt from Twelve's winning submission, On The Albino Farm, after the jump.

Speaking of losing interest, this isn't how these kind of things are supposed to start. There's supposed to be a body, isn't there? The preference is for a female body. This is the spot for what they call in the movies, the money shot. Hey, I'm a slave to convention. So that's how I'll start.

There was a dead girl sprawled across a little hump of matted down prairie grass up on a hill overlooking the city of Tirawa. Of course that doesn't go far enough, does it? The girl is supposed to be naked. I've seen a lot of those committee-written slasher flicks, and there's always some artful lighting or milky white skin. The nubile corpse is posed provocatively with all the naughty bits exposed. In the "R" rated scripts, words like "cadaver" are replaced by flashier nouns like "vixen." Stains and fluids are described in the verbal haze of a soft-core porn air-brush. There's a sexual excitement to the discovery that strikes me as odd as a fishstick swimming upstream. [More>]