The PR men tried their best to spin the candidate's coke snorting and prostitute procuring habits into a pro small business stance.

Seth was as sober as a judge at his sentencing, but the judge was drunk.

Turner hoped they all lived to regret underestimating him.

Priscilla felt happiest in the presence of mirrors and admirers.

He could feel hatred and blood-lust emanating from the gathering crowd.

The cherry bomb in the toilet was the only topic of conversation in the teacher's lounge, superseding discussions on the school's deplorable test scores.

Always fastidious, Burt could not stand the thought of visiting his in-laws with their little piles of clutter found throughout the house.

The whole city smelled like burned circuitry.

In the no-man's land between the high life and oblivion Phil made his home.

The turncoat turnkey helped the prisoners escape only to stop them just outside the gates, guaranteeing a promotion and his picture in the paper.

She stole his heart along with all his valuables.

"The world went into the crapper when they introduced the leisure suit," the haberdasher insisted.

An inveterate tinkerer, the doctor discovered both a way to save millions of people through an innovative food production method, as well as a new chemical to wipe those same millions out with a single dose.

The wind-whipped willows looked like women waiting for their seafaring husbands to return home.

Trent had a hard time staying in the moment, a habit that often led to his getting lost.

The pestilence spread through the village with such rapidity that after the first day there was no one well enough to care for the sick and dying.

Off skylarking they did not hear the approaching troops.

The realization hit Todd hard: I hate my child.

It wasn't the landslide defeat at the polls that hurt, but rather that his own mother voted against him.

They gallantly galloped straight into the trap.

Through the blinding snow they saw their rival's flag and knew all the suffering was for naught.

All she wanted was for her husband's lies to stop, an impossibility during campaign season.

His body was soft and baby-like, but his eyes betrayed his true nature.

"Getting at the truth is a hard thing," McDermot told me over coffee, "and the best we can do is hold on to the bull's tail and see where that beast drags us."

All the gizmos and whirligigs of modern times could not stop the inevitable moment of impact between Brian and the cow that slipped her bounds and stood in the middle of the darkened road.

He went off his diet in a blaze of Ho Hos, Twinkies and Moon Pies.

They rolled up the driveway with the lights off, cut the engine and waited.

As the temperature plummeted the petty crime rose, committed by men with hopes of getting a warm place to stay until spring.

"In the end it comes down to dumb luck," thought Dawn as her car careened down the embankment.

Lance spent the day nursing a hangover, watching the petals of the lilies on his mantle slowly open up.

It came to him in a dream, a talisman for the second half of his life: "Let mortality be your guide."