"Goodbye and good riddance, " Glen thought, "and here's to hoping next year isn't even worse." 

 The rules arbitrarily changed at a breakneck pace to ensure only the ruler and his favorites would win. 

Denise decided not to record the moment, preferring to preserve it only in memory. 

 Sleep, repeat, coffee, repeat, log on, repeat, eat, repeat, television, repeat, sleep, repeat. 

After the year of isolation, his brain seemed incapable of socializing or even stringing coherent sentences together. 

 She sat watching the birds at the feeder instead of her phone or television and felt a calm unattainable through technology. 

With the presents unwrapped and the meal eaten, they finally had time to contemplate their blessings and pray for those who didn't have quite so many. 

We were savages and there was nothing noble about us. 

Pete chatted up the other poker players with a non-stop barrage of questions hoping to either find their "tell" or simply annoy them enough to make a mistake. 

   "America was built on the rackets, graft, and fraud," he growled, chewing on his cigar stub, "but it's gotten out of hand when a handful of billionaires own Congress."

Helen happily anticipated the day she would become her mother. 

 The light burst through the fog like the first clear thought the morning after a drunken binge. 

All the dog wanted was his humans to recognize his humanity or the canine equivalent,  he guessed. 

Monitored and monetized, quantified and coded, we'd become just another part of the supply chain—a snake eating its own tail. 

 The starlings' murmurations that once blackened the sky had become no more than a shadow across the setting sun. 

The house seemed smaller and smaller as they grew fatter and fatter and bought more and more until the space was completely filled and finally burst like a tick who'd taken in too much blood. 

 There was a palpable sense of the storm's imminent arrival that sent the entire town scurrying to the grocery store. 

 They were lost in the tall weeds until they discovered they could cultivate them for their own needs. 

The voice inside her head suddenly disappeared, leaving her feeling more alone than she ever had before.

Once you put it out into the world it no longer belongs to you. 

 Sharon hoped that on her death bed she'd finally be able to scratch off the last item of her "to do" list. 

 There was once a mighty nation, but like the others that fell before it, it was rushing blindly towards its doom. 

 The unbridled bar nights, soulful meals, and inspiring gallery shows were gone forever, bulldozed under by a city constantly remaking itself. 

Some of the greatest writers were the werst spellors. 

He believed that even with all the hatred he harbored in his heart he would somehow get into the kingdom of heaven. 

Sara felt her life was like a Saints game—everytime she got ahead, she fumbled. 

 The year that seemed like one very long day was nearing its end. 

They watched their tabloid tv president and forgot that his antics had real-world effects.  

The world constantly took one step forward, promptly fell over, rolled down the side of a mountain, slid through raw sewage, landed in a broken-glass-strewn field filled with stinging insects and cactuses, slowly got up, and then took two steps backward. 

Every morning the old man put on a suit, tie, and fedora and slowly walked through his neighborhood just so the kids would know what true style looked like. 

Even the lowest of creatures understood the power of coercion.