I slowly opened the carved mahogany box then dropped it with a gasp as the severed hand, shriveled and grey, came tumbling out.

The forest suddenly grew darker and the trees' branches seemed to lurch towards the children.

The floor shuddered and opened and up popped a small man with a wicked grin and a pointed beard in a cloud of smoke and a whiff of sulphur.

Lana swung the bat at the head of the creature that had once been her lover and connected with a sound like someone thumping a watermelon to determine its ripeness, but much, much louder.

A strange woman with dark holes where her eyes should have been stood in the doorway of the bedroom calling him by name.

She watched in horror as the black thing, slick with blood, wormed its way out of her husband's ear.

"We heard the whispering voices as we approached the old house calling us closer...closer," she told me, her wild eyes staring straight ahead from a face drained of color but for the dark smears of dried blood streaking her cheeks.

His cold smile revealed huge incisors that appeared bloodstained.

The creature slithered closer to the sleeping child.

Passing by the cemetery that night I was overwhelmed by the stench of decay and saw a dark shape moving slowly towards the gate.

As he pulled the trigger he had a quezzy feeling that perhaps the dark shadow backlit by moonlight was not an intruder.

Bart stared out at the falling leaves and told himself time was an illusion.

She coughed and they ran.

The land seemed to shiver as the frigid wind blew south.

James was intelligent, erudite, and good looking, which for him made it all the worse that he was dying at the hands of an illiterate cretin with the face and manners of a jackal.

He was confused as to what exactly constituted avatars, memes and emoticons.

The circle was completed when the Tea Party candidate and his rival in the Green Party began a torrid affair.

The flies were never far from the isolation ward.

Her secret life was ripped open by the press exposing the viscera of lies and debauchery.

His attempt at wit came off as slightly creepy and his smile as a leer.

The whiskey stung Walt's lip where his enemy's fist had earlier done its work.

What began as a philosophical treatise degenerated into a mindless melange of sex and violence by the time it made it to the screen.

After essentially writing the same novel 100 times, the honors began to pour in.

The long road to salvation was littered with empty liquor bottles and ladies' panties strewn from the light fixtures.

The lipstick couldn't cover the lies.

No matter what time she woke up, Lucy always seemed to be late to work.

"It's whiskey weather," he told me in his cracked, wheezy voice, handing me a tumbler as I slipped on a sweater.

Their violent ways consumed their souls and doomed their cause.

They only found time to talk when mutual friends would die.

He hated haters.

The high from the danger and drama had worn off.