Arthur's ennui was like an itchy wool sweater he couldn't shed.

She continued to feel like a slacker even as she stepped up to the podium to accept the prestigious award.

The dog, previously beaten and brutalized, had become, in his new home, a sponge that soaked up every drop of affection he could get.

The old reporter felt like he'd been writing the same stories on two-faced politicians, dirtbag criminals, and a failed justice system for decades with only a few changes, like names and dates, needed in each new piece.

That day spent on the beach with their toes rooting in the sand, watching dolphins frolic in the sun-dappled sea was one they wouldn't soon forget. 

"I learned by example," he told the judge with a smile,"after all getting ahead by any means necessary is the American way."

It wasn't until years after first hearing the song—decades spent growing, learning, hurting, living—that she finally began to understand what the lyrics meant.

Frank knew that if he'd been born rich he could have fleeced the entire nation and gotten away with it, but he was poor and so risked prison with every single small-time scam he pulled.

The match had been struck, the fuse ignited, and now it was just a matter of time.

The wind blew and the blood flowed and the flowers grew and the days passed until they no longer did.

The medium was the message and smoke signals just weren't cutting it these days.

Pulled in so many directions at once he ended up in a state of stasis—immobile, unmoving, atrophied.

Earl couldn't remember many of the names and faces of his past lovers yet clearly recalled the dream of the hissing black swan he'd had as a child sixty years before.

Tangled up in the miseries of office politics Jackie vowed to extricate herself right after she sabotaged her coworker's upcoming project.

In the hospital bed she dreamed of the pleasures of the palate her hometown was famous for and wondered if she would ever taste them again.

Now forgotten by the masses, Blake disparaged the fact he had been famous at such a young age as the rest of his life had been such a letdown.

"It's just so goddamned great the newspaper finally shut down since they were always sniffing around asking questions," the mayor said, counting the cash from the paper bag he'd just been handed.

Lucy realized her life was like a DMV waiting line and that her number was never going to be called. 

He hadn't seen Shorty in years, but the old carney, perched precariously on his tall barstool, still looked the same as the day they had met years before at that seaside beer joint.

Through the dark city streets we rambled, our beers in bags, our song of choice an old-time rag.

What we couldn't change we simply had to endure.

"Opinions are like assholes," my friend Ian often says, "and everyone is an asshole."

A weekend with kids was like a day at the dentist as far as Dennis was concerned.

Settled and saddled she slipped away from home and headed for the streets.

"'Hardscrabble' was how they described my life, but I've always preferred to think of myself as a gourmand of privation," he said, in his booming voice that hadn't lost its power with age.

Walter realized technology, rather than advancing the human race, had spurred on a new tribalism that left the world teetering on the brink of a new Dark Ages.

Like looking through a crack in a door and seeing a hidden truth for the first time, it suddenly sank in that he'd been duped for decades.

They celebrated the right to drink shitty beer and blow things up with two-barreled bluster.

The sinking stone in her heart stirred rippling waves of rage and defeat.

There is always something deeply doleful about old images of what the future was supposed to look like.

I watched the small determined snail inch its way across the sidewalk only to be snatched up by a hungry crow and devoured whole.