I sat at his feet and watched his age-spotted hands fly up and down the guitar's neck like a hummingbird flitting through a summer flower garden.

The twilight slowly faded to black and the ocean darkened until only the sound of crashing waves remained.

He hit the bottle hard, but not hard enough to forget her final words or the sound of the door slamming shut like a coffin lid being hammered down.

I realized my only skill was destroying the lives of others so I took up pottery on my off-time.

The lackluster rhododendron mirrored Rhonda's mindset that morning.

He didn't believe in downtime and often conducted business from the toilet.

The little girl's singing was drowned out by the bomb blast.

They tried their hardest to sink the business, but like criminals too inept to handle a gun, they only hurt themselves.

There were tell-tale signs: secret, late night whispered meetings and side-long glances as I passed in the hall.

The dance party spilled out of the tiny Brooklyn apartment into the streets reminding passers-by of a scene from "Fame."

Arthur died with tears in his eyes as the Angel of Death whispered to him that all the lives he ruined and sacrifices he made to climb to the top meant nothing.

The Byzantine court had nothing on the backstabbers and malicious gossips at Claire's workplace.

He would spend long hours idly riding the subway people watching and felt he was becoming an expert on the human animal.

When the sword slid down my throat for the first time to the wild applause of my friends I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

The wind-whipped snow looked like ghosts rising from the blacktop.

The birds sat waiting for breakfast, the wind ruffling their feathers.

With three generations of thieves living under one roof nothing was safe.

When the governor was caught in a sex and murder-for-hire scandel many in the media sent him flowers thanking him for boosting their ratings.

The research proved that the researchers were incapable of finding a worthwhile subject to research.

The day old cake left at the office was his breakfast and lunch and dinner.

Like a match to a bomb's fuse, the loss of her car key set off something that would have devastating consequences.

They offered up their sacrifices but to no avail.

He returned to his war-shattered village to find nothing but a shell denuded of life.

They sat shivering, unwilling to leave the snow fort they had spent all day building.

Bob was a pot-licking, bowl-scraping, bone-sucking bear of a man. 

I dreamed my big dreams while I swept up after the rich.

Her New Year's resolution was to try to short circuit everyone else's. 

These dizzy heights of success were too much for Hilda who yearned to return to the mundane life she once knew.

They tried to sun themselves in the milky, short-lived winter light.

The end of vacation was especially hard as they headed north through what had been a light, warm rain into a blizzard.

Ike spent dawn with Dawn and twilight with Twilla but was alone by noon the next day.