The murder had their small town rattled. 

She often wondered why a certain lyric or a sentence half-remembered from a sitcom or a commercial would get stuck on an endless loop in her head, repeating, repeating, repeating. 

And then the snow came and covered everything, even the lies they told each other, in a thick blanket of white so pure it seemed to wipe their slates clean (at least for a little while). 

 The old wolf lay down for the last time beneath the tree where he'd first met his mate. 

Fred's phobias turned out to be small potatoes compared to the disasters that actually unfolded in his life. 

 I'm thankful you're reading this if indeed that's what you're doing. 

 She told me there was nothing new to say so it comes down to how YoU SAy iT.

 We will all eventually have a long list of dead friends, some recently seen and others nearly forgotten. 

Norm figured you could either be on the right or be correct but you couldn't be both. 

Patrice, the daughter of a famous poet, knew him only through his written words since he never seemed to have time for her. 

What was once an infinite fount of creativity had become a slow trickle.

The walls are crumbling but the iron rods of hate still stand. 

 In memory pain isn't as painful, heartache is less horrible, and fear isn't as frightening. 

 The path of least resistance ended in a dead-end. 

"Salutations," she said as if everyone used that antiquated greeting. 

Repetitive (e)motion may cause injury.

 Felix realized he'd lost his ability to make small talk at parties so he just stopped attending them. 

 The old dog still managed to teach his people new tricks. 

Her face tattoos had faded just like her sideshow career. 

 We're all just bags of bones held together by our contradictions. 

"If you're going to consume, and apparently in this society that's our reason for being," her grandfather told her, "then be sure to only consume art, literature, good food, and great conversation." 

As the world turns, the days of our lives were spent at the edge of night. 

Tracy, it turned out, was superficial to the core, which in a way made her one of the most genuine people around. 

 We had lost the throughline to our own story. 

They ran (out of time) on the endless circling track. 

 His life trajectory had been like a pinball that shot from bumper to bumper bouncing around here and there depending on people's advice and that had more than once been saved from the abyss with a solid whack to the backside that sent him rocketing back to the playfield. 

 The mysterious letter arrived in the post that afternoon and its contents would lead to three deaths and the obliteration of two families. 

 The answer is only as good as the question asked. 

 That night I sat in a dimly lit bar served by a friend, drinking with old companions, my dog curled up at my feet, but it wasn't until I awoke that I recalled they were all gone, dead so long. 

 Halloween hadn't yet happened but the shelves were already full of Christmas decorations, an unsubtle hint that it was time to shift into the next holiday season.