I woke up that morning feeling like the ground beneath me was shifting, with my parents now dead my past life was over and I was no longer a child.

In their war-torn land there was no love, only lust and expediency.

He woke up in a black mood to another grey dawn in a red state.

Dale's lottery money went fast, spent on strange items like a massive million dollar gear that he found attractive and the 1,000 statues of himself he planned to be buried with, which he had commissioned from a famous Chinese artist.

Averse to any confrontation, Priscilla exclusively wrote puff pieces for the paper, but found that whatever subject she chose there was always some reader who had a problem with it.

The short, wrinkled and hairless old lecher looked like a naked mole rat and elicited pity rather than shock when he flashed passers-by.

After the freeze, the men prepared to go out on the river to begin cutting the ice, the threat of falling through always in their minds.

Amidst the smoke, mud and blood he recognized his brother across no-man's land.

The barbarous bar owner was known for throwing flaming shots in the faces of unsatisfied customers.

The world was in shambles, but the band played on.

Behind the podium he was like a god, the crowds emotions rising and falling with the cadence of his words.

The songwriter had been in a slump until he was inspired by the rhythm of the dripping water from his leaky roof as it hit the pot he had laid out to catch it.

Star-struck by the washed-up, third-rate child actor the waitress slipped him extra bacon and hovered near his table, coffee pot at the ready.

Fallen from grace, he turned his deceit into a million-selling tell-all.

The psychologist had a breakdown.

She had worked for every fly-by-night, work-at-home company in existence, but as a shut-in with no friends the products just piled up as her money dwindled.

They emerged into the stinging light after weeks underground, their lives and health shattered.

His head wrapped in foil to prevent the mind control rays from influencing him, Tate called a reporter at the local paper to tell him what he knew about the imminent invasion.

Lost in the Ramble of Central Park at dusk he kept stumbling over strange men standing in the shadows, waiting.

They rose up against their captors — the movement began in the gerbil cages and quickly spread throughout the pet store — and took to the streets, gathering force from the newly escaped zoo animals.

The war, now in its second decade, had become the norm, a slight hum above the everyday din of life.

Judy fell for him believing he was a starry-eyed poet, but discovered he was a hard-drinking womanizer who happened to write verse.

The cashier was a sullen, sallow girl whose skin was so pale it appeared translucent.

He controlled his paper route like a personal fiefdom, paying other boys a pittance to do his bidding.

When the hearse got stuck in traffic the belief held by Blake's friends — that he indeed would be later for his own funeral — was fulfilled. 

She was held under the waves by the mass of bodies above her desperately trying to get to the shore.

Solidad surreptitiously worked for her boss' greatest enemy, his ex-wife, on the weekends, to both make ends meet and to secretly stick it to him.

Turner's lawyer had a bigger rap sheet than he did, but no one was better at working the system.

The tambourine player never had any luck with the ladies.

She missed the ticking of her father's watch.

A year's worth of chicken scratch on random scraps of paper was all Adele had for her editor.