The dog sniffed the blade of grass like a snooty wine connoisseur at a tasting.

The words came hard and fast and had escaped his lips with barely a glimmer of realization from his overwrought brain.

They invited the stranger—a man with dark, cold eyes—in out of the storm.

The bone-jarring ride was half as bad as the back-breaking accommodations.

I watched as he made it on to the train and away as I continued to pull on my jacket sleeve that was stuck in the turnstile.

She did not recognize herself in the picture.

The air felt like it did on the night before the storm, an electric snap and crackle hung in the wind and there was a rich humidity that one could almost taste.

With the closing of the show, the geek was left to perform his act in the mirror, his eyes the only audience.

There seemed to be a set of scales in her life that only allowed for so much joy before something would come along to drag her back to earth.

They could hear the bomb's approach.

Cavalier to the end, Bertrand shook the hand of each of the members of his firing squad.

At 50, the Rock n' Roll lifestyle began to bore Desmond who turned back to his first passion, cultivating roses.

His belly rumbling, Phillip spent the last of his money on the entrance fee to the museum.

Julia and Julio's conversations were always self-reflective and their favorite word 'me.'

The banjo was out of tune and the home-made liquor sharp and bitter.

To this day they still had no idea how the chicken ended up in their Attic.

The church's unity was fraying more and more each week as the the two pastors, once married to one-another, began to craft their sermons to point out each other's flaws.

When the smoke cleared a war had begun.

The scenery flew by, brown grass, teetering houses and abandoned factories blending into a solid mass, a memory of desolation.

The kite jerked and shuttered its way towards the power line.

The twittering of the birds began to take on an urgency that soon rose to a scream.

"My granddad, he raised pigeons, this is back in Brooklyn," said Sal, sitting in the barber chair, "and he loved to cook so when he was making gravy for pasta he would throw a couple of em' in there and you know, I swear it tasted like chicken."

Giorgio's heart jumped when he uncovered what appeared to be a human head, but as he stumbled closer he realized what at first looked to be gray flesh was in fact stone.

"I don't know why you're always looking down your nose at me," the prostitute told the banker as they lay in bed, "since we're in the same business."

As I walked out, the light was blinding and the air almost too cool and fresh after my years spent under fluorescent light and breathing the stale chemical-cleaner laden variety.

Our joy was trampled, our hopes spit on and dreams laughed at by the men in power.

The clanking sound of the closing jail cell stuck with Ray until the end.

Jill hated to watch old white people dance, especially if they had been drinking, finding it both disturbing and mesmerizing.

Panic set in and in the rush towards the door her hand slipped from his.

The street appeared to be safe, but was narrow.