The old couple ended up eating all the candy, like every year, when no one came to the house for Halloween. 

Sexy nurses, pirates, and cops had replaced ghosts, vampires, and ghouls. 

 Numbers and scores—credit, BMI, cholesterol—now ruled Robert's world.  

The center could not hold; cracks beget fissures, fissures beget chasms so deep and wide there was no way to communicate over such a vast distance. 

Between scrolling and trolling, Burt would sometimes get off the couch and grab another diet Mountain Dew to maintain his stamina. 

 An elderly pet is a constant reminder of your own mortality. 

"You should be very careful how you treat people since you don't know what they may be going through," he told me just before slamming his fist into my face. 

Erik found his Esperanto less popular than Klingon (he'd taught himself both languages) which had come in handy on more than a few occasions in his travels.  

Like an actor deeply immersed in a role, Luke's persona when among his rich friends nearly subsumed his true self. 

Spllng is n outdtd cnstrt.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Pablo Neruda was rightly celebrated for his love poems but Cecilia preferred his laments on loss. 

They fought for the bones casually tossed to them by their overlords. 

 "You can't hope to get ahead in life if you're always morose," Mr. Smith chided his son Robert.

While they built our virtual world, the real one crumbled around us. 

The old man preferred screens you could stare through rather than at. 

What she once considered cute and quirky had by the seventh year of their relationship become annoying and tiresome. 

 The horror on screen could never achieve the terror of our reality. 

 Gabe had lost the stomach for high-brow literature, preferring to "slum it in the genres with the hoi-polloi," in the words of one academic friend. 

 On Halloween she allowed the world to see her true face. 

 You pass by me in the night with your secretive smile. 

 What began as a tiny scratching inside the wall had by the second week begun to sound like a mountain lion sharpening its claws against a tree. 

 It was unclear whether the messages truly came from a friend in need or from a relentless scammer out for a fast buck. 

The old neighborhood had been so transformed, and it all started with a Starbucks, as to be completely unrecognizable. 

 Her beauty began at the outside, but continued, or so it seemed, to go deeper and deeper straight to her core. 

 The dove sat on the sill looking in through the glass hoping to catch a human's eye to subtly remind them they'd forgotten to leave food out there. 

 The train carried Clarence towards a city filled with pure potential and a day with endless possibilities that would most likely end at a dingy corner bar, alone and lonely. 

The woods behind the house kept their secret for years until a dog began to dig and dig and dig.

A few seconds was all it took to change his life. 

 Elizabeth was rich in spirit, but that didn't help pay the bills. 

The sound of waves lapping against the dock at night was her bedtime story. 

 The turbulent atmosphere of Tom's upbringing inundated every aspect of his adult life.