David woke suddenly but was unable to shout or even move as he helplessly stared into the vacant eyes of the thing that stood at the foot of his bed.

Will love tear us apart or is it all we need?

Our forlorn hope fizzled leaving only despair.

Like an arsonist who claims that his lit match wasn't to blame for burning down the building the politicians disavowed the connections between rhetoric and mass murder. 

Something behind Tricia moved at the periphery of her vision while she stared at her tired face in the mirror and as the ice filled her belly and moved up her spine she knew it was back.

I groggily reached for my shoe, which was halfway under the bed, then tried to jerk my hand back when I brushed something—it had the feel of slimy rubber like a greasy wetsuit—that sucked and pulled me to the ground and toward the darkness below.

"The decline of civilization began with the leisure suit," said my Uncle Sid with a dismissive sniff.

She was always garbed in the latest fashions, listening to the hottest hits and on top of the current celebrity gossip, yet Cindy still felt like she was missing something (which she hoped could be filled with just a bit more time on social media).

He felt most at home where the wild things scavenged the detritus of society.

The phone solicitor and his wife, an IRS agent, weren't the most popular of people at parties.

The killers in high places slept comfortably on the bones of our departed.

They clamored to enter not knowing the agony that awaited in their pipe dream paradise.

Empathy had become a dirty word in DC.

"What I thought I wanted turned out to be nothing more than dust that clogged my throat and choked the life out of me," the general told me, the pistol in his hand shaking.

With
   each
     step
       she
         blindly
           took
             she
               moved
                  closer
                    towards
                      the
                         bottom
                            of
                              her
                                 being

Thirty years of memories were tossed out with the garbage.

Bullet points and bumper stickers were his two goto means for communicating.

Bobby wished for nothing less than the subjugation of the human race by aliens since that meant he'd no longer have to listen to his parents' bitching about the terrible life choices he always seemed to make.

Ratcheting up the rhetoric, the politicians' shrill voices echoed through the halls that were as empty as the words they shouted at one another.

Happiness is hiding in plain sight.

For the better part of his life Frank had believed that if you worked hard and were a good person you'd get ahead but eventually he realized it was the ruthless sociopaths of the world who came out on top and began acting accordingly.

The old stories had been replaced by Disney reboots stripped of bone and meat and stuffed with soft down.

And a pop star shall lead them.

She watched and waited, looking for the chance to slip back across the border, that old, nearly lost, Lady Liberty.

Music had always been her lifeline but when she got into the business it became a noose.

Driven to the edge of the forest they could see the smokestacks and taste the grit of the world that was about to displace them.

It soon became apparent to Anna that she no longer knew where her dreams ended and her waking life began.

Our mentality stayed in the Stone Age but our weapons kept advancing.

Flux was always her first reflex.

Something just didn't sit right with Sal about having to get up before both the birds and sun every morning.

The judge was judged and found to be injudicious.