The 99th Not-So-Annual Miss Ellis County Beauty Pageant

The 99th Annual Miss Ellis County Spring Queen Beauty Pageant took place on April 2nd, 1954.

Rebecca Leeman and Lisa Swenson came in at an honorable second and third place, respectively. But of course, the town sweetheart, Amber Atkins, was crowned Miss Ellis County Spring Queen. Or rather, would have been, if the crown hadn’t been eaten in the 98th Annual Miss Ellis County Spring Queen Beauty Pageant.

And of course, it was no contest.

With her curled, raven locks of hair, sparking blue eyes with flecks of green and her curvaceous frame, Amber was the most desired young lady in all of Ellis County. And with her smile that lit up a ballroom and her silver tongue, she was easily the most beloved daughter of our humble municipality.

Indeed, Amber was far more deserving of her coronation than the last poor girl.

Poor, poor Jessie Sugar.

The Annual Miss Ellis County Spring Queen Beauty Pageant stopped being so annual after what happened to her and those other poor, poor girls.

The pageant came about on the first anniversary of the County’s founding in 1845. The idea was to celebrate our humble county that produced the finest, juiciest peaches in the state. In fact, as they approached the 50th Annual Miss Ellis County Spring Queen Beauty Pageant, the county council considered changing the name to the Annual Miss Peaches Contest, if only because saying The Annual Miss Ellis County Spring Queen Beauty Pageant was quite a mouthful.

The town declined.

Everyone liked things exactly as they were. Right up until that terrible, horrible, gosh darn day.

The 98th Annual Miss Ellis County Spring Queen Beauty Pageant had taken place on April 2nd, 1944. The week leading up to it was just an average, beautiful, grace-be-to-God week. Nothing out of the ordinary as far as anyone could tell.

Well, except for the gossip around young Bobby Scott. Little did we know that it was those very same town whispers that would lead to such horrors.

Bobby was the town weirdo.

No other way to put it, really. He was smart, sure, We all figured he would be just like that Einstein fella. But as smart as he was, he just wasn't well liked. Always using words no one understood. Sometimes those words caught him a whuppin. Nothing so bad. Just a black eye and a broken wing here and there.

He was kind of funny around girls though. And Jessie Sugar in particular. 

Lord, what made him think he could ask out the prettiest girl in the county, I will never know. Neither did Jessie. She made sure the whole town knew that he would never have a date with her. He'd never get any girl for as long as he lived.

And so Bobby went home in tears. He figured that if he couldn't get a girl, he would build him one. He called it Annie.

He called it an au-tom-aton. Just looked like a damn robot alien to me.

But instead of doing what boys do with women, Bobby decided to use Annie the robot for a bit of revenge. He made it prettier than Jessie, hoping it would take her crown in the Pageant.

Damn thing almost won, too. But while Annie the robot was prettier, Jessie was popular. She was always going to get her crown.

That sent Bobby into a rage. He used a little device in his pocket and Annie's eyes turned red. Her jaw unhinged and she bit the head clean off of Susie Hunt. The bodies of the beauty queens piled up as the crowd stampeded.

Of all the girls, Jessie Sugar fought the hardest. While it was munching on the femur of little Tanya Henson, Jessie took the bloodied brassiere of one of her fallen competitors – the carnage made the owner hard to identify– and jumped on its back, attempting to strangle it with the lead-lined pair of women’s unmentionables. Then it ate her too.

Sheriff David got damn near to killing the thing. He shot it twice in the chest, before it tore his arm off and beat him to death with it.

In the end, it was Deputy Joe who took it down. We try to ignore the fact that it was entirely by accident. See, Joe was a terrible shot. Instead of her chest, he accidentally shot her in the leg. Must have been something important there, because she just fell right over and onto Joe. 

Shame he didn’t make it either.

Bobby pled guilty to one count of building a murderous robot alien; a law which weirdly had been on the books since 1897.

It was another ten years before we had the 99th Annual Miss Ellis County Spring Queen Beauty Pageant. Just to be safe, we required medical proof from all contestants of not being a damn robot alien.

So far, so good.