The world burned. 

Like Christ overturning the moneychangers' tables, they were righteous in their anger. 

We were no longer able to rely on our senses to define reality.

Sometimes she thought the world was just a soul-crushing machine. 

"Beware vegans and teetotalers," the old man told me as we sat at the bar together eating pork rinds. 

Making her laugh was his greatest thrill.

He survived war only to die for a draft dodger's poll numbers.

I wanted to write about truth and beauty but found people preferred fraud and pestilence.

The ability to self-reflect had been snuffed out over the generations.

After the storm life crept back towards equilibrium.

Maladies and melodies and mysteries of yesterdays ran through her head.

Sometimes all it took was a simple smile.

Locked inside her house for months Marie realized there was nothing new to inspire her.

Savagery replaced civil society in the time it took to send a Tweet.

Empires fell like rotten trees in a windstorm.

She achieved stasis amid the chaos.

Every morning was a blank blackboard that was erased again by nightfall.

She was like clickbait.

Finally freed from the constraints of caring what others thought, Chris' career took flight.

In dreams, technology never works.

The world burned from desire and ego.

What was this sickness unto death?

Karl couldn't bring himself to engage any longer.

We were all as fragile as new blooms and tenacious as weeds.

Time was a slippery fish that refused to be hooked.

After starting his third conversation in a row with the phrase "back in my day" Ben realized with a shock that he was old.

Repeat, his mind was stuck on repeat.

The older Shelley got the more dead people she knew.

Her guitar was a rocketship. 

Unsociable media and uncharitable giving were his specialties.

They played guns while real soldiers died.