Caught on a never-ending merry-go-round of memory, thoughts of the present and future lost their handhold.

The hung jury was lynched with the blessings of the hanging judge.

Irene's in-born pessimism had turned to nihilism by her teenage years.

We waited until nightfall.

The old man kept up a steady stream of dirty jokes while we drank together in the bar bathed in late afternoon light.

Dale played it close to the vest in matters of love but when it came to hate he threw all his chips in.

The idea of clothes being anything more than a utilitarian object, like a screwdriver or a watch, had never occurred to me until seventh grade when my father's old Army jacket I'd worn for years was suddenly in vogue.

Her search for the perfect word stymied her literary output.

One hand on the wheel, the other trying to hold back the blood from his wound, Jerry drove blindly heading anywhere as long as it wasn't back to where everything had gone wrong.

She no longer recognized the old neighborhood with its new glass-and-steel-fronted shops and young people who reminded her of magazine ads.

The light shone down through the shattered church window.

James stumbled across one of his father's essays and was briefly reunited with the man he barely knew. 

Our ministrations were all for naught.

Ike went to prison to get an education.

She dreamed of cataclysms.

Doc decided he would be the last bastion of the English language and fought the texting generation to a standstill in his classes, forcing them to the edge by disallowing even the use of contractions.

He moved like a jungle cat, the crowds of the city streets parting at his approach. 

 Watching the rich and famous play they seethed and prepared.

We flaunted our new freedoms with abandon.

"I realized how soft we had become, the toughest couldn't shine a candle to our forefathers," Mark told me as he packed up his things and headed into the wilderness.

It was bad enough he was facing murder charges, but Derrick just couldn't comprehend how God could allow him to suffer with hay fever, Kleenex shoved up his nose to stop the dripping, at trial.

Sometimes it got so bad he slept in his boat to avoid going home.

Their paltry possessions were dumped on the lawn during the eviction.

It was twilight, when the shadows fade and stars begin to wake.

Dave paid for her breast implants, then she left him.

He danced alone in his bedroom, transistor radio in hand.

The shot rang out and reverberated through the nation, through time, through race, creed, color.

They found the book -- "Behavior Modification: Principles and Procedures" -- tucked beneath Fifi's dog bed.

We shot pool, drank American beer, and listened to the tunes from home on the jukebox while outside the war continued to rage.

Felix was easily fooled and so dreaded the first day of April.