Back on October 25 at The Washington Post, the paper’s Style Invitational department put out a call for comically badly written endings to novels, in an inversion of the annual Bulwer Lytton contest.

And now they’ve announced the winners.

Here’s the ending that was judged to be the worst:

As the wail of the nearing sirens shook him awake, Todd rose from the charred remains of Rensfield Manor, wiped the ectoplasm from his brow and, stuffing the Amulet of Valtor inside his shirt, gazed ruefully at the venom-encrusted Sword of Darjan, realizing that this long night wasn’t over yet, because he still had a heck of a lot of explaining to do.

But I much preferred this one of the three runners up:

Oh, and by the way, Chapters 3, 8, 10 and part of 16 were all dreams, in case you hadn’t caught on.