Greg seemed to love his wife more when she was gone.

I saw the enemy reflected in the still shallows staring back at me with unexpected mercy.

He recalled the first time he saw her—dancing alone with a freedom and beauty that took his breath away—and refused to think of her just before her death, drained and stagnant.

The push and pull of where our future was heading made Chris' guts churn wondering whether humanity would enjoy a time of peace and prosperity integrating technology and humanitarian principles or a new Dark Ages full of feudalism and primitive thought.

"Think about the big stars of a hundred years ago, like Bessie Love or William Hanes, and you'll know just how fleeting fame is and in the end how unimportant its pursuit turns out to be," said the old man sitting next to me on the bus who looked vaguely familiar, perhaps a faded film icon of his own long-gone era. 

Every once in awhile the veil would slip enough for Evelyne to see the world for what it truly was.

The fall of empire was in its springtime.

Pete was told to follow his passions and ended up in prison. 

Coffee and dogs and music in the morning was enough for her.

Social media was a disease and viral videos their vector.

But there was a beauty too in that wild, barren winter landscape.

There was a black hole in her head that inexorably drew everything in her life towards it and swallowed it whole.

The bell tolled not for him, but for the death of yet another hour wasted online.

"The difference between us," he told the president, "is that I understand I don't know everything, while you, on the other hand, think you do to the detriment of us all."

In the lair of the Liar there is no up or down, no right or wrong, only what we've been told to believe.

What began as a perfectly normal week ended in a jail cell with three broken ribs and a long list of enemies.

As a geologist Dave's long game was measured in eons not decades.

The tune could be carried no further after the instruments were all smashed.

The daily rituals began to wane until Becky barely bothered to get out of bed.

The idylls of the king could not last with the peasants beating down his door.

The sun inevitably sets on all empires.

Our joy was measured by likes and our time by scroll rates.

Billy couldn't decide if we were just a bunch of apes flinging poo at each other or the highest form of life with incredible gifts that could change the world for the better.

Bobbing in the blue blue water, their fingers brushing with the rise and fall of the waves, he wondered if it was love or just a vacation.

With every new obit she came across Erica would desperately try to figure out what her legacy might be.

"Thoughts & Prayers" had become the national slogan.

The stories kept blooming but truth had died on the vine.

The sky was afire, awash with a myriad of vibrant colors, but it couldn't match the Retina HD display and ion-strengthened screen of the new iPhone.

The tinkerers, crackpots, and hobbyists will save us all.

She believed it was in her genetic makeup to break every resolution she made but kept making them anyway.

They chopped away at us daily, an ounce of flesh here, a pound there.

We talked of death without fear or anxiety as we walked through the woods that early morning.