Sheila had trouble discerning old dreams from memories and would often get strange looks from relatives at family reunions when she would go on about being on stage with her cousin Ozzy Osborne or how on family vacations they would always have to escape the clutches of an evil witch.

The Civil War reenactment was going well for Sean until his cell phone went off while he lay sprawled out, ostensibly killed by a minié ball to the chest and from there it only got worse.

In the shimmering heat the two boys could barely discern the figure on the bridge, but as later events would show they were right in thinking the devil had come to bayou country.

For Sonny the Clown humor was the way he communicated, but sometimes, especially when he was drunk, his fists did his talking for him.

The birds soared higher and seemed to disappear against the sky so blue it hurt your eyes to stare at it and then they were gone like our friends who had been cut down too early.

While the grunts in the office continued to keep the business afloat, a never ending cast of half-wits, morons and those Stan barely considered Homo sapiens burned through middle-management on their way to a meagerly better gig up the company's creaking ladder or more likely to the unemployment office.

Teddy moved with the others towards the boy, unsure of what was going to happen next.

The night, moonless and overcast, held the promise of a long stretch of boredom studded with pain and fear for the cops who patrolled the streets.

They stared at each other from across the bar, both trying to project smoldering sexuality, but instead only making each realize how desperate the other seemed to be.

The telephone kept ringing and Adele pictured a number of different scenarios of what was going on on the other end of the line ranging from Jim being with another woman all the way to his being dead on the floor from an embolism.

The snow began falling faster, collecting in little mounds on the man's shoulders and even on top of his head, but he didn't notice since his focus was squarely on the woman who sat on the park bench shaking uncontrollably, wracked by spasms of tears and wailing.

The banging noise outside continued, frightening the old woman so much that she grabbed a carving knife and waited in her living room for whomever, or whatever, was obviously coming to get her.

The ships slowly passed by them like mourners at a funeral.

Chuck stood at the subway station near his house waiting for the train, concerned that there were even more young white kids there than last week, making him mummble aloud "there goes the neighborhood."

Butter Gardner didn't like guns, preferring his fists to get the job done, that is until he met a bigger, tougher man who convinced him otherwise.

Flying high on LSD the soldiers in the guard tower swore they saw enemy troops coming for them and began strafing the ground, but seemed unable to hit the hallucination.

When the sky opened up and a giant arm extended forth and plucked a man off the ground like someone picking a cherry, Joey knew it wasn't going to be a normal day.

The science teacher delighted in telling her students horror stories, including one about a woman she knew who had roaches living in her beehive hairdo, that had nothing to do with science except in the most tenuous ways.

The ball slowly rolled towards the pocket and abruptly came to a stop an inch away from its goal and now Slim would be living on the streets—and flat broke—once again.

"Cut bait," Cassie kept thinking, as she threw the last of her belongings into her car and prepared to leave behind the life she had worked so hard to build.

Grizz the performing bear was tired of the endless travel and of his master, but there was no point in trying to make a break for it until they had returned west to the forests were he could once again find solace.

Joey and his brother kept digging, convinced that they could make it to China, but even after an entire Saturday spent working, they had only gotten five feet deep and really no closer to seeing the wonders of the East.

The plants withered and the fruit dropped to the ground and rotted and with it Shawn saw his dreams die and felt that he had somehow let his forebears down.

"Hell, Drake," the defense attorney said to the DA, "every victim you get is a criminal, and every criminal has at one time been a victim...Let this one walk."

The moon's light shone brightly, throwing the street into high relief, allowing the man to clearly make out the tears running down the girl's cheeks.

"Man up," the detective told Chris, as he stood over him, his bulk blocking the light from the window.

Steve spent the last of his money on a new suit and a gun.

The old woman, deathly afraid that authorities would recognize her as a member of the 60s terrorist group the Weather Underground, screamed at the cameraman to leave her alone as his camera panned the anti-war rally.

"Death is like a journey into space" the old man told the boy,"but instead of a million planets out there there are a million souls, a million friends, waiting to welcome us home."

Tad looked in the mirror at his ever growing bald spot and decided on the spot to buy something big, red and fast.