Walking along the cobblestone streets Irene felt as if she were shuffling along single file behind all the ancestors who had similarly traversed these same lanes.

As fast as he could type he never seemed to be able to make his deadline.

Long after the malls and high rises, glass facades and steel structures had fallen, the old stone castle steadfastly remained.

The sun sliced across the bed that morning like a scene from Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," or so Jake thought as his hangover deepened with every tick of the clock.

The past was always present for the old historian.

The bar had become so low that when the leader managed to get through a speech without insults, fumbles, slips-ups or a torrent of lies, he was showered with praise.

The butterflies in Sylvia's belly were nothing compared to the buzzing in her brain when she impulsively grabbed his hand.

Carried on an opiate cloud he sailed away to the land of the endless summer.

Where they came from or had gone remained a mystery but their cultural legacy left some tantalizing clues.

She danced closer to the edge each year.

"The game is rigged and the best you can hope for is that the carny turns his back long enough for you to steal a stuffed animal," he said, shooting a tight stream of spit from between his front teeth.

Under the overturned rock a writhing mass of life was exposed to the light.

Freddy ran afoul of the law for allowing his fowl to run wild in the streets.

Untouched by death or decay they lived inside of me.

The despondent lovers desired only that their lives would diverge by incremental degrees.

"Sometimes I wonder if I've unknowingly died and become a ghost that no one seems to see or hear," he told Irene, who was only half-listening.

Jake believed it was better to be a headache than a bore.

Eventually, we were able to autotune out individuality and with a nip here and a tuck there we achieved soulless perfection.

Tick tock, tick tock, the sound was winding down in his heart and head and there was no key to ratchet it back up, he knew.

Like Ozymandias, the pop star believed he'd be on top forever, but was forgotten in his own lifetime.

Frank's dream life had become more exciting than the real thing so he slept as much as possible.

Our darkest secrets were laid bare and sold to the highest bidder.

He had become a stranger in the city he called home, a place that was once beautiful and gritty like a broken stained glass window, but was now a soulless shell inhabited by the rich and sneering.

In the daylight—and many years after its heyday—the old bar seemed smaller and much more decrepit than when Dan spent his nights enveloped in its warm embrace of booze, pulsating lights, pounding beats, and pure potential.

On the day he died the curtain was torn asunder to reveal a life built on lies, chicanery, and double dealing.

Our dystopian future had finally arrived with nary a flying car in sight.

Her moods seemed to shift with the weather so her coworkers stayed home during thunderstorms.

Hyacinth and Tiger lily now grew where men once warred.

Like the movie sets she spent her days on, Alicia's beautiful facade hid an empty space devoid of anything but dust and darkness.