They commercialized your memories and sold them back to you at a markup.

Nothing lasts, thought Shelly, so I might as well spend it all now.

Theo came from money and loved to talk about how everyone else needed to pull themselves up by the bootstraps.

With every knock on his door, Eric wondered if this was when he'd finally be exposed.

Every time he cooked one of his mother's dishes, it was like she was still there, so many years after her passing.

Cheap theatrics still worked, apparently.

She loved reading strangers' obituaries.

Ed couldn't decide whether it was the end times or just the demise of Western civilization.

The world had gone off-topic.

It was the almighty dollar that the pastors preferred.

The cat plotted while the dog dreamed.

There were only so many stories out there.

Truth, it seemed, was harder and harder to come by.

He was told a storm was coming, but he was still unsure whether they meant an actual storm or something figurative.

We waited with bated breath for his eventual downfall.

She was as mysterious and foreboding as the Mariana Trench.

He had killed many men in his time but still balled like a baby while watching Bambi.

Mike concluded he was a 'mid-range" kind of guy.

The memories came back in a rush that she wished she could stuff back into the darkest corner of her mind and never think about again.

History repeated itself, repeated itself, repeated itself.

They claimed to be representatives of Christ but their words and actions said the opposite.

The wind throttled the windows and shook the rafters like a wolf at the door.

Ralph lived long enough to regret the life choices he'd made when he thought he was going to die young.

There was no going back.

The stories were forgotten and the books had all been burned.

The old haberdasher was hoping to live long enough to see fashion swing back to what he had in stock.

We lived vicariously through the sports teams that were geographically relevant to us and when they lost we lost.

He couldn't even manage to stick to his resolutions for twenty-four hours, much less three-hundred-sixty-five days.

"The higher the body count, the higher my ratings," he murmured to himself, his smirk lit by the television screen in the darkened room.

Shelly decided to forgo any illusions of accomplishing her new goals and began the year lazily eating a box of candy in front of the television.

He painfully opened his eyes to find he'd somehow managed to survive the night.