We carried the Circus Maximus with us in our pockets.

As the ship left the dock the lies he told his family still stung like the wind that whipped his face.

Smitty took stock of his friends—a dying house plant, a one-eyed cat who couldn't stand being touched, and a poster featuring the mascot of a sub-par rum brand—and realized things had to change.

The disenfranchised, disaffected, and desperate thought they had a voice in the masterful politician, but all they were left with was a bitter taste in their mouths and shackles on their feet.

Once she stopped caring what others thought, her star shot straight to the top.

That night at the party, I realized that For Betty, I was the cat that refused to get back in the bag.

The Devil just laughed and laughed and laughed.

"I told her that after she died she would turn into a star so that every night I could see her up there and blow her a kiss," the old man told me as we craned our necks skyward.

The candidate's dark vision of a future without him was nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

Trouble was brewing down at the brewery with the union boys.

He let the world roll over him like warm water in a morning shower.

As the fifth rider of the Apocalypse, Petulance felt the other four considered him inferior and were scheming to be rid of him under the guise that his name was just a little too close to another of the band, Pestilence.

Fascism turned out to be our default mindset.

Helen chalked everything up to fate thus relieving herself of the burden of blame.

Throwing the computer out the window didn't make her feel any better.

Through the layers of bureaucracy I continued to plummet until I found myself at the bottom of a hole so deep no light could ever reach it.

He prayed for mankind's fall.

Tim found himself a tourist in his own town.

I knew better than to get caught on the wrong side of that line.

He thought of his blatant lying and fear mongering as just part of the act.

We gunned them down like dogs and they returned the favor three fold.

The company foundered after it was discovered by a number of teenage boys that their logo, if squinted at just right, resembled a certain body part not discussed in mixed company.

The whiskey went down easy and so did her lies.

They shared memories and one too many beers.

Time whirled by until most of her life was just a series of half-recalled memories.

By the rockets red glare Glenn caught his girl kissing someone else.

Once a 24-hour party person, I'd become more like a 2-to-4 hour party person.

Betty, no slouch in the brains department (she held several PhDs), always worried that people thought she was dumb and as a voluptuous blond with a squeaky voice those fears were founded on bedrock.

It was inevitable that they would eventually run into each other, but neither expected the other to be armed.