The beauty of the moment overwhelmed Simone.

Little Joe despised his family for their inappropriate penchant for discussing others' personal grooming habits in public.

"Most people need a nail driven through their forehead," he thought, flipping through his fan mail.

Claire woke up that morning and realized with a start that she wasn't living the life she had intended and had become someone she didn't really know or like.

The thin walls hid nothing.

The surf tugged at my ankles, quietly commanding me further into the depths.

His dignity was stripped from him along with his belt and shoelaces.

Her addictions stole her soul.

One man got his wallet, the other got his gun, the third took his Stetson, the fourth is on the run.

The political parties, in the spirit of compromise, allowed the country to disintegrate.

The clock ticked off the seconds as Ralph's mind continued to refuse to give him the answer.

She waited outside his house not sure whether she wanted to rip his heart out or wrap her arms around him.

At trial he dreamed of the hills in springtime.

Florence let her bumper stickers and novelty t-shirts do her talking for her.

"Perhaps, perhaps," he said from between dying lips.

The moon looked like the devil and the clattering train sounded like freedom.

It started with the hamburger wrapper on the front lawn.

"In the end we always stick with our own tribe," said Vince to Emily as he swung the door closed and walked down the front steps for the last time.

What he thought was the end was just a point of departure.

The breakdowns came more quickly that summer, until Tatiana could barely remember a clear day amidst those long, languid, cloudless months.

They sat in their respective rooms in the boarding house plotting each others' doom.

She was a tinderbox to his gasoline.

The assayer's sneeze turned Dutch's nine months of grueling labor into a golden cloud.

I watched them playing together in the park as the sun began to set, a boy and a girl already old enough to know that their youth was slipping away.

The men sang a cheerful song as they marched to their inevitable demise.

As the politicians waffled and the media prognosticated, we stockpiled what would be needed for the coming war.

The shattered carapace revealed the soft insides of the creature that, under the right circumstance, could kill a man.

Phil "Porky" Chutnik lived by cheap beer and cheaper dates, the kind he met at his corner bar.

The lines had deepened in the intervening years.

Kimberly's parenting skills were a see-saw of punishment and reward, a balance she could never seem to get right.

He sat drinking with the judge wondering who would win a fist fight if it ever came to that.