We had become numb to the killings, changing our Facebook profiles in solidarity until the next inevitable slaughter, but never quite taking in the depth of the world's darkness.

She lived in fear of running into the lost lover who haunted her memories knowing reality would ruin the reverie.

The second time the whale swung its massive body into the air and came crashing down with an immense thud in a torrent of white foam it was much closer to our rickety skiff.

The scissors stuck out from between Billy's ribs and Isabelle now understood why she had been warned about running with them.

He only realized how much he relied on the internet after it was gone.

"I'm gonna get mine," she told me, the light glinting off the steel blade in her steady hand.

All the technology in the world couldn't save us from ourselves.

The city spread out before me like a lost lover I'd bumped into after years apart.

We quickly learned that our new robot overlords had no sense of humor.

She thought of her jealous nature as a snake that would slither up from her belly into her heart and wreak havoc on a regular basis.

The rich got richer thanks to the poor who voted them in.

It was a year filled with dead heroes and empty bottles.

It wasn't the other shoe dropping that worried Will, it was the entire shoe store landing on his head that kept him up at night. 

He hoped the dead birds littering the yard weren't an omen of some kind.

First they broke bread then they broke each other's hearts.

 Blasted are the peacemakers for denying us our revenge.

Dave watched what seemed like all of humanity flow by, his flight eternally delayed, and made up their life stories as he scanned the passing faces.

Five years on she continues to whisper sage advice in my ear and gently guide me through life.

It was where the suburbs bled into the wilderness that I found her standing in the semi-darkness, the wan light from the sliver of a moon highlighting the deadness in her eyes.

The huckster was crowned king.

It was a kiss akin to the one given in the garden of Gethsemane.

His home had become famous for its crackdowns and evil clowns.

Like stepping onto land after a long sea journey, the return to the everyday after their epic adventure was a leg-wobbling, head-spinning experience.

My face mere inches from the masterpiece, I could clearly trace the thinking and gestures of the artist as if I were standing next to him more than a hundred years ago as he moved his brush across the canvas.

Along the canals they wandered, lost in the sights, sounds, and smells of new places.

she came back changed from her time abroad, with a continental air and a look in her eye that made us all feel like plebeians.

The churches closed and the stores opened.

We tore down the symbols of tyranny but continued to elect the same tyrants.

Slighted by the tiniest reproach Ellen spent her nights reading Machiavelli and the Art of War.

Time warped and stretched while we sat on the beach with a bottle of rum between us.

All the comfort food in the world couldn't keep Kate from being blue that day.