The Worst Romance Novel Ever Written by H. M. Mann

“Here we go,” Johnny whispered.
    “ Life,” Gunn thought aloud as he moved realistically away from Cat’s grave like molasses in February. “Life has a way of getting rosy.” He stood beside the new Geo Storm and took out a Cuban cigar, lighting it and—
    Johnny then remembered that it was raining and snowing at the cemetery. He deleted his last sentence.
    He stood beside by the new Geo Storm. He took out a Cuban cigar but didn’t light it out of respect for the dead around him who were probably dying for a smoke and the fact that just owning a Cuban cigar could get him into trouble with the Feds. He chomped on the cigar while he mused about life.
    “ Life is, indeed, a rose,” Gunn said in a lifeless manner. “You have to feed it expensive plant food, these little pebbly things that look suspiciously like a little boy’s boogers, but if you feed the rose too much, it will wilt like Republican hopes for the presidency through 2016. Life is thorny, especially if you live in the country where a simple walk in the woods can tear the snot out of your clothes. Life sometimes smells good, and sometimes life smells like rotted rose petals dripping with snail slime and half-digested berry-filled pigeon poop.”
    A single ray of golden light broke through a crevice in the clouds. The crevice looked exactly like the scabby scar on Cat’s forehead. It was a ray of silken blonde, which didn’t match Cat’s hair at all except for a few strands she had bleached once on a whim when she was at band camp as a teenager. All the kids were doing it, so Cat streaked her red hair with blonde. She looked like the top of a merry-go-round for several weeks. Whenever she spun around quickly in a circle, her head would look like the world’s largest orange.
    “ And now,” Gunn said juicily, “I’ve been sun-kissed.”
    He bathed in that golden ray, he worshiped it, he burned in it.
    “ My poor, poor, poor Cat. I wish we hadn’t fought over the Pomeranian. I will buy one in your memory and name it ‘Ouch,’ you know, that romantic word you’d utter whenever I hugged you. If we hadn’t fought and I hadn’t stormed out, I would have been home with you at the time of your death, which the police have said was 1:34 AM because of Cat’s smashed Mickey Mouse watch. Little did the police know, but Cat’s watch needed a new battery and always said 1:34. I would have protected you with my secret arsenal of mostly illegal weapons the NRA has let me legally own so I can hunt freely in this land of the free and the home of the Atlanta Braves.”
    Johnny threw his head back in shame. “Gunn would have had an alarm system! Duh!” Johnny decided to write his way out of it.
    Gunn hugged Cat’s marble tombstone. “I wish that category five hurricane and that 7.5 earthquake that I slept through last night hadn’t knocked out the power to the entire East Coast, thereby disabling my state-of-the-art alarm system.”
    Gunn chewed his cigar in a virile, manly manner. “The police are looking for a girly man with a limp, but if I find him first, he’ll be toast. He’ll be burned toast. He’ll be burned heel toast. Why don’t people eat the heels of a loaf of bread? They are just as nutritious. Americans waste too much good food, don’t they? And when I am done with Cat’s killer, he’ll be so crusty he’ll look like barnacles encrusted on the bottom of a bass boat beached in Barcelona. He’ll be so crispy I can serve him with two family side dishes at KFC.”
    Maybe, Gunn thought, Cat’s killer limps because he only has one leg. I will find him and disarm him, too.
    The word “taut” flashed through Johnny’s mind. He knew he had to build suspense. He also knew that he must use excessive foreshadowing for several pages to add to his page count.
    These thoughts naturally gave way to thoughts of Cat’s final moments. Who would kill Cat? Who? Who? Who? Why would anyone kill her? Why? Why? Why? She was completely, totally, wholly