Sloppy Seconds

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When I entered my first World Horror Convention Gross-Out Contest in Chicago back in 2002, I had very little idea of what to expect. I made it to the finals the year before in the now-defunct Delirium webzine's first and last online gross-out contest, but that didn't prepare me for the spectacle that is the WHC Gross-Out Contest. I was expecting some tiny room with maybe a couple dozen people. I walked into an auditorium that seemed to house half the convention's attendees. The list of competitors was nearly two pages long. The previous years had been dominated by such giants of the genre as Brian Keene, Mark McLaughlin, and Ed Lee. I was fully prepared to be out of my league but luckily, none of them entered that year.

I sat in the back, listening to the other competitors spin off their tales of gore and disgust while I continued to refine my own story, whittling it down further and further until little remained but the horrific descriptions as I prepared for my illustrious debut. Little did I know that the style I was developing, as I edited and re-edited, would become the style of gross-out readings to come.

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