Her hazy days of summer were due to more than just the weather.

Topeka Slim found it hard living with the law.

He smiled as the flames licked up from the pile of cash, knowing that his no-good kids would be getting nothing.

Harry was dragged into the modern age by his grandson, who bought him his first computer, but when no one was around it mostly served as a tea tray.

The tattered sails rattled against the mast.

The old-timers sat around telling Stanley about how much better things were way back when, but failed to mention the slew of incurable diseases, lack of amenities and the long hours of work needed for the simplest tasks.

The farmer, in a fit of frustration and anger, walked toward the bank worker, his finger on the shotgun's trigger.

She listened to the neighbors as they gossiped about her and was secretly thrilled at the idea they thought her life was so risqué.

The howling kept up through the night as they watched their fire slowly die out.

Sasha's blood-red nails clicked against the gun metal as she drummed her fingers and waited.

"Look, I'm not going to lie," he lied, "I'm a born fibber."

His (former) friends in high places seemed not to him so far below.

Tears and snot poured forth as she loudly confessed her misdeeds.

The whitecaps should have been a warning.

Hollowed out by the harrowing tales he heard daily he tried to fill the hole with booze.

Newman's sex scandals behind him, he embarked on his second career in porn.

He thought of himself as a new Robin Hood, but in his heart-of-hearts Slade knew he was just a hood.

The flat, sun-baked earth stretched for miles.

Tonight Lucy needed stronger stuff than her usual glass of dandelion wine.

Rudy the dancing bear was the greatest, but hated the lights and applause and daydreamed about torturing his trainer.

Felice was a fundamentally good person who was continually in deep with the wrong people.

The guy had juice with the cops and courts and put the squeeze on Drake to keep his name deep-sixed.

Names, ideas, faces began to slip away leaving only jumbled memories.

She believed the Devil had entered her body, but it was really just the flu.

They felt the rumbling of the tanks in their bones.

Locked in the bathroom, the gun heavy in my sweaty hand, I stared into the mirror and willed myself to go through with my plan.

Vincent could not abide the unkempt masses and longed to live among the chapeau and cravat wearing dandies of the world.

He tossed his phone and credit cards into the river and returned to the wild where he was from.

The nefarious Dr. Thompson, considered a crackpot by his contemporaries, eventually won society over to his ideas and went from pariah to messiah.

She was wild for the night.

The legislators were drunken pirates on the sea of state.

The revolution ate its own children.