Torn between his lust for worldly power and his religious fervor the young minister chose the former while paying lip service to the latter.

The discovery of life on the strange little planet was a great disappointment when it was learned the creatures there were even dumber than us.

Her adrenalin-fueled adventures were replaced with the daily challenges of getting dressed and shuffling around the house, which had become akin to scaling a very tall mountain.

Becky returned home from her years-long search for meaning after realizing the secret to happiness was nothing more than sitting in a sun-filled room with a good cup of coffee and a cat dozing on your lap.

The jackals came a-calling.

It started with Geraldo and ended with Donald.

Looking back, perhaps he should have tried harder, but it was exhausting to keep going when all anyone cared about was the latest TV show even as the world slid past the point of no return.

When I again looked up from my drink she had left the bar taking my heart with her.

When the rains stopped the work began.

It took years, but he finally understood how the world worked after seeing so many of the brightest talents stumble and fall, while marginally clever artists succeeded wildly thanks to the right connections and a fat bankroll.

"Sometimes death came creeping in the night and other times it walked right up to you in broad daylight and shook your hand like an old friend," Dorothy recalled of those turbulent times.

There were no accolades for her, only the deep-rooted connections she had made with a few other lost souls.

It was the end of the road for TJ as he fell in a hail of gunfire until, that is, the director yelled cut and he was given a second chance at dying with style.

Focused on the latest Hollywood gossip the news channels ignored another in a series of natural disasters, like Nero and his fiddle.

They thought of themselves as the best and brightest but in reality were just middling and had been told otherwise by their parents.

Winter came suddenly as if we had fallen into a deep sleep in summer to find a blanket of snow covering the world.

As the days got shorter the businesses along the boardwalk began to close up shop one by one.

"Try as I might, I could never quite buy into this war," Smith said, standing over the body of the lieutenant he had just fragged, smoking a cigar saved for the occasion.

The room was silent as the entire household stared at their various devices, cut off from each other as they attempted to connect to the larger world outside their door.

Feeling fat and happy, his face and belly sunburned, Stan sat on the deck as day faded to night and the sound of birds was replaced by that of crickets.

The reluctant duelists shakily raised their guns and fired without taking aim.

On that misty morning, under a gun-metal sky, a single boat drifted across the slowly undulating water.

The seagulls fought among themselves for the scraps that were then stolen by the craftier crows.

Too late to run we hunkered down in the fallow field to wait for the planes to pass overhead.

The rain hid her tears.

Everybody loved a comeback story almost as much as the kind where the hero falls from glory.

"Back in my day at that age we would just listen to music in our bedrooms and get stoned," the old man remarked as they passed by some rowdy teenagers who were loudly yelling obscenities.

He only read the violent parts of the Bible, skipping over the boring sections about loving thy neighbor and other such claptrap.

The issues were buried beneath a landslide of mud and glitz.

She was sick of unsociable media and the vitriol that spilled out into the real world.