The howling mob was singing his tune.

The mourning dove's cry was in tune with her mindset that morning.

He was the banker of choice for burglars, gangsters, pickpockets and pimps, but preferred the company of gentler souls.

The storm rattled the shelter's steel doors and muffled the screams of the people outside.

Billy drank and caroused in the hopes of improving his songwriting.

She awoke that day and felt that a veil of cobwebs had been lifted from her eyes and she saw, as if for the first time, her fat, drunken husband, the cheap furniture and the cracks in the walls.

He left the house, got in the truck, kept driving until the gas ran out and then just walked, walked, walked.

The string once pulled unraveled the world.

I watched the shark circling nearby and wondered if it would be the last thing I saw.

They spent seconds debating their pay raise, a motion that passed, then tabled the discussion on raising the minimum wage.

She was hated for her tenaciousness, unbending will and certainty that she would outlive her enemies.

He gave the blood-soaked money to charity.

Tricky was a hustler, his hand in any money making street venture, but what he most wanted was to be a preacher, the job he considered the biggest hustle of all.

The priest picked up the pistol, his hand shaking.

"I woke up one day to discover that the world had left me behind — the music, the slang, the clothing styles — but it wasn't long before culture was recycled to the point where I was once again hip," the octogenarian told the reporter.

Time was a ticking time bomb for Teddy who was unable to manage it.

He heard the chain snap, saw the truck begin to roll back down the mountain towards them and wondered how he would be killed — crushed, decapitated, thrown. 

Dark days were ahead.

After running out of original ideas, Lane turned to 70s sitcoms for inspiration.

They found the sign —THE END IS NEAR —covered in dust by the side of the road, but the old man who for 20 years had carried it back and forth on the highway median was gone.

The activist misspelled "fascist" in spray paint on the side of the city's Republican headquarters and as people drove by they wondered what a "face-ist" was. 

When their voices disappeared the world turned to the artists and writers to fill the silent void with words and images.

He saw himself as an old man, sitting alone on a park bench and decided to ask Corine to dinner.

Robert knew he could lie, cheat on his wife, and take bribes and still be re-elected as long as he toted the party line and browbeat the liberals.

He was on the fast track to unemployment, alcoholism and jail.

Lucile, going door-to-door hawking faux leather bound Bibles, wondered if this was the redemption she had been seeking.

Tracey had been killed off time after time, but managed to get herself written back into the soap by cajoling, carousing with, and generally making herself a pain in the ass for a succession of producers and writers.

"Hollywood got its grubby little hands on my masterpiece and turned it into mindless drivel and, Goddamn it, it became hot,hot,hot!" shouted the drunken novelist to the rest of the bar, flinging $100 bills from his pockets.

I remember standing on the dark street corner watching her grow smaller in the distance wishing I could ball up the universe and throw it into a trash can.

Their heyday long since passed, they continued to tour, trading youthful rebellion for middle-aged nostalgia.

Her love of humanity was being sorely tested that week after a series of run-ins with crass, cranky, rude, psychotic, fascist, and generally annoying people.