The dog stood proudly in front of the torn comforter as a snowstorm of feathers swirled around the room, oblivious to the look of horror and quickly rising anger on the face of the human.

The snoring of the octogenarians vied for supremacy with the lecturer's droning voice.

The plans for the regatta were altered upon Coco's learning of a Jimmy Buffet concert—filled to capacity with the hoi-polloi beer drinking crowd no doubt—scheduled for the same weekend.

Dancer had been burned before and knew the bitter taste well enough to have a back-up plan, the main portion of which was snuggly tucked into the back of his jeans.

Lucy ate anti-depressants like breath mints.

Looking in the mirror the artist realized that she had become a caricature of herself, with her outrageous clothes and exaggerated eye makeup.

"People are always asking me my opinion about stuff, like the economy or global warming,"said the barber, his scissors snipping away, "but I'm not an economist or scientist so how would I know...I'm a barber, so ask me something about that and believe me I'll weigh in."

Mr.Ruggles preferred shouting to listening.

Yvonne wandered the halls of her favorite art museum, a woman so unnoticed in her plainness that she had been locked into the establishment after closing time on more than one occasion.

The bells rang out from the small church in the woods and were greeted by a chorus of geese on their way south.

He awoke most mornings with a feeling of dread, a gnawing, needling belief that he had screwed something up at work the night before.

After a casual comment to a friend Huck now finds himself face down, his nose turning sideways against the concrete, an unforgiving pressure bearing down from the several men piled on top of him, guns drawn.

A massive dust cloud and the sound of gunfire like distant thunder presaged devastation for the town that lay between the two warring city states.

The boy stared at the mummy, a child his own age, and had his first brush with the idea of mortality.

Christopher woke thinking about Pepita, a girl he had once known, but couldn't remember whether they had spent a wonderful weekend together, making love and fondly reminiscing about their high school days, or whether he was simply recalling the vague outlines of a dream he had 20 years before.

He thought of the end of their relationship as a cigarette that had finally burned down to its filter, an acrid odor wafting through an empty room.

El Borracho's wrestling career had seen better days.

The arc of her sadness over her mother's death was the opposite of what people thought it should be, as time went on she missed her more and more, while the rest of the world had already moved on.

The leaves began to fall.

The laws in the town were arbitrary at best, but no one was willing to take on the system, fearing retribution, or at least the stern glances of their fellow citizenry.

Always the last to be chosen for anything in school, Devon took great pleasure in his job as a middle manager in charge of hiring.

Rigorous training in the art of self-defense didn't help Ernie when he met Ernestine, a woman versed in the art of love.

The moth, a black silhouette behind the glass, continued to throw itself against the bulb, its wings beginning to pop and sizzle from the heat.

The pull of his homeland, battered and bedeviled as it was, gnawed at him, but his new life, where no roadside bombs or suicidal fanatics lurked, kept his feet firmly planted.

He haunted the mall, hoping someone, anyone, would recognize him, since he was, for God's sake, a pop star, albeit one whose career had ended 20 years ago.

They danced by the light of the flares to the sound of falling bombs.

Paul had entirely given up on making decisions, going so far as to let his dog Snuffy pick out what he wore to work by nosing in his dresser drawers every morning, which led to his often being seen wearing clashing clothes that smelled good to the canine snout, but not so much to the human.

"Mistakes were made," said Farber sharpening his knife with a steady, firm stroke.

They flipped a coin to see whether they would kill or negotiate.

On the day the talk show host finally ran out of questions she died.