The sound and scent of sizzling bacon called them all to the kitchen like that old cartoon where they float through the air on the wafting smells. 

The day was perfect—the sky a bright blue, the sun kissing the glassy sea—but below the surface, a darkness as inevitable as the passage of time slowly lumbered towards them.  

 The spotlight is a siren song (inevitably everyone drawn to it will be dashed against the rocks).

 We're being entertained to death. 

The slow-moving clouds and still water looked as lazy as Susan felt that afternoon. 

She smelled of the beach and her husband of the bar. 

 He never could figure out the reasoning behind what his brain considered worth remembering — the name of a B actor whose heyday was in the '70s — and tossing — where the hell he set his keys.  

We hummed along to the traveling tune made by the car's wheels on the open road 

Fantasists and fanatics found fault with science preferring convoluted incantations to try and cure themselves. 

The sun briefly burst through the storm clouds like the momentary happiness Marie would feel amid the tumult of her life. 

The house was deathly still except for a spider in the corner of the hall busily spinning its web. 

The breaking of the waves was the soundtrack for their nighttime conversation. 

 At the summer's peak, the ripened fruit waited to be picked.

Sarah stared up towards the lighted window wondering what it would reveal. 

 Olav sat on the beach feeling old and battered like a slab of moldering cod hidden behind a golden crust. 

She wasn't sure if it was a memory or just a half-remembered dream. 

 We wrap our history in a flag or bury it in a mass grave. 

 Chuck loved Chopin and cheap beer (especially in combination). 

He was an innocent among wolves and jackals but as they chased their tails he wandered through their territories untouched. 

"Turn that frown upside down," Hank told his fellow inmate who had been concentrating on sharpening his shiv. 

We were all stuck in a house of mirrors and our faces no longer registered fun but fear. 

The parliament of owls did not approve of the crash of rhinos. 

No matter how far she went the darkness still found her. 

 He decided to play the odds and the longer the better. 

 The city was simultaneously being constructed and destructed and entropy was in the ascendant. 

There is something primordial about being in a crowd all singing at the top of our lungs in unison.

 The streets were retaken by those we had discarded. 

The the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the end. 

 He slapped the phone from my hand, shouting "put that goddamn thing down and read some poetry!" 

Flapjack Pete could really put away the pancakes. 

She prayed there was an afterlife as the light went out of his eyes.