The meter was running out on his life and he was stuck in traffic.

The organization was a leaky battleship that couldn't keep its own secrets, much less the ones it stole.

They were driven to the city for what they were told was an exam, but were given no other information.

Susie savored her Bingo victory and flaunted her winnings by buying her friends and enemies alike at the American Legion post new trolls, the trinkets they all believed to bring them luck during the tempestuous tourneys.

The crows warred with the seagulls while the pigeons watched and waited.

They lay among the torn gift paper and frayed ribbons, exhausted from both wrapping the presents and unwrapping them.

It was Christmas morn, at least technically, when the kids woke everyone in the house at 12:01 a.m., ready to open their gifts.

It wasn't Santa delivering toys that Christmas morn, it was the cops breaking down the door to execute a warrant.

He made his annual pilgrimage to the art museum to reinvigorate his work, although some might say he just went to steal ideas from the masters of the past.

The kids swore they saw Santa on the neighbor's roof, but I knew it was just Mr. Johnson drunk again, precariously clinging to the house top, hiding from his raging wife.

Their excitement rose day by day as each date was checked off on the calender that December.

The morning after the holiday party was filled with regret, shame and the fear of dismissals.

He left the saloon life behind, preferring to drink in the company of his cats, who were less noisy than the barflies.

The cocktail shaker kept time with the crowd's swaying.

She showered gifts on her friends and curses on her enemies.

It took two weeks to dig out.

Dana considered herself a literary gossip whose job was to peek in on the characters she dreamed up and report the news to the world.

Leslie was a long-legged model with porcelain skin who desperately wanted to be an oddball.

His brother lived the adventure-filled life Jasper wrote about from the comfort of his desk.

Jake the hound hated, in descending order, squirrels, cats, dogs on the television screen, and baths.

They found her buried beneath a pile of designer shoes.

Voted most likely to end up with an STD by his classmates, all were surprised to see Bo in the vestments of a Catholic priest at their 25th reunion.

Harry was handsome, debonair, a real man about town, so much so that folks often forgot he was a monkey.

The searchlight swept over her, but no matter how much Brandy yelled and waved her arms, her would-be rescuers passed her by.

The neon-tinged night called to them.

That night, sleeping on $1,000 sheets, Phil wondered when the shoe would drop and he would once again be living out on the street.

They tore open the box to find not cash, but a smaller container with the international symbol for radiation stamped on the top in a garish yellow paint. 

Their vacation to the sunny south of France was a wind-whipped, soggy misadventure.

Ralph was a painter who hated artists, a poet who despised poesy, a gentleman farmer who disliked animals and plants.

I stood in a darkened corner of the school yard, achingly aware of my patched, second-hand clothing and what I imagined was the smell of poverty clinging to me.

She hated being seen unless dressed to the nines, hair and make-up perfect, so when Becky accidentally locked herself out of the house that morning before her ablutions, she was forced  to hide out in the yard for the next eight hours waiting for her husband's return.