Our thoughts were fleeting, our lives even more so.

The drunken chef was known for interrupting diners with impromptu magic shows.

Johnny D., was the worst kind of psychic since he could only see his own upcoming disasters, but couldn't figure out how to avert them.

It wasn't the blatant mismanagement of the nation, the brutality or the crushing poverty that brought the people out into the streets, but rather the government's accidentally pulling of the country's favorite show during the season finale that led to the eventual downfall of the regime.

The games soon took a serious turn.

He was tired and when he got tired he got sloppy and when he got sloppy people died.

Until that night the community center had remained untouched by the violence that seemed to circle it like a shiver of sharks.

The transformation from an appearance of school-girl innocence to that of coquette only took as long as the train ride from Westchester to New York.

The heat in the apartment from the number of bodies inside was like a warm, wet, filth-soaked blanket.

Gene, after stumbling while trying to hop the freight, watched all the possessions he had in the world swiftly disappear towards the horizon, his shins and elbows throbbing from the fall.

Brady, a five-year-old Schnauzer, did all he could think of to wake his owner.

Phil spent his time blogging about his past exploits as a writer, like a snake slowly consuming itself from the tail up.

The shadows looked like wraiths across the expanse of shimmering white.

The locusts blackened the sky, a dark cloud descending.

Nadine's life, while seemingly careening out of control from the outside, was following her pre-plotted timeline with pinpoint accuracy.

The old buzzard watched the men hammer away at one-another, biding his time, waiting for the loser.

Taylor was shunned at the dog park after naming his new pitbull Michael Vick.

When Dora's foot went through the floorboards, she began to have second thoughts about the purchase she made, sight unseen, during those dizzying days of the housing boom.

The death, mud, muck and mayhem sometimes got to Billy, but it was the letters from home that hurt the worst.

They drank beer and watched the waters rise.

I stumbled along blindly across an endless expanse of white, my tears freezing to my wind-whipped cheeks.

Kelly knew her career was in peril when no one noticed her leaked home sex tape and she was passed over for a celebrity reality show that had stars living in wolf packs in the Arctic.

When Travis got out everything had changed—the slang on the street, the clothes people wore, the things they cared about.

The creaking of the old house kept in time to his creaking old bones.

The salt sea splashes stung their faces and hid their tears.

"Look I'm as nice as the next guy," said the man, his forearm pushing further into my windpipe, "but if you don't leave this alone maybe next time I won't be so nice."

Living under the train trestle wasn't the worst, thought Smitty, it was the class of people one met that was so depressing.

With all the gadgets in the world at her fingertips Sally still couldn't seem to make it anywhere on time or remember her family's birthdays.

Billy Bourque was always coming up with new ice cream flavors, from peppermint-pepperoni pizza to chocolate covered black beans, but his crowning achievement was the combination of tastes that, when consumed, made one feel slightly dizzy and as giddy as a child on a roller coaster, but unfortunately left your tongue swollen and slightly blue.

The dining service with complimentary champagne continued despite the falling bombs.

A purported stigmata was the last thing Father Boyle needed that day.