The weeping and gnashing of teeth would be with us forever. 

 The experts espoused the same ideas as the ex-pats that the extremists should be exiled.  

 The country had become a slow-motion car wreck. 

Once so outgoing, Shawn's shell thickened into a hard and inflexible carapace as he grew older. 

 The dogs ruled.

 "Why don't they have the 1 percent on that show 'Hoarders' since they're the biggest ones around?" she asked earnestly.

"Thanks," he said and the universe tipped its cap.

The clock keeps tick tick ticking and you can't stop it. 

She'd always choose chatting with her dog over conversing with her husband. 

 Beth never could quite find the balance between feeling everything mattered and nothing mattered. 

The dog, curled up next to my leg, had only a few soft growls to add to the conversation. 

The writer's wellspring had dried up and now TK, etc. (add something interesting and witty here).  

As Sam stumbled and lost his balance he had a brief moment in which to marvel at the physics involved in both walking and falling just before the pavement met his face. 

 Artie realized he'd misunderstood the old adage and had been expecting the worst and preparing for the best for years. 

The well-planned plans (a plaintive cry for partisanship) played out without a payday since the plague got in the way.

Wounded and abandoned, she felt as barren as the windswept wasteland she called home.

The night showed up early and refused to leave. 

 Will often wondered whether it would it be his collosal blunders or rare achievements that people would recall after his death. 

At the conference, among the other vertebrates — some fur-bearing others feathered — the fish felt, well, just like a fish out of water. 

"It's surprising how happy a pastry can make me," Mike thought as he sunk his teeth into the eclair and his mouth was flooded with a mélange of tastes and textures.

At least the rats in their cages received sustenance for their efforts rather than mere social media likes. 

The wicked winds humbled the arrogant oaks, stripping them of the last of their autumnal coverings. 

 America, get off the couch and go vote. 

For Bertha, the beginning of the beguine, a dance similar to the rhumba, was a bit benign. 

The season of warm sweaters and oatmeal had arrived. 

 The truth had become just one more commodity to be bought and sold. 

The lie told over and over li(t) a fuse and slowly (lith-ely) became (truth). 

The fix is in again and again and again. 

 The bells tolled and told a tale of time slipping away into oblivion with each reverberation. 

With her monster makeup now smeared and a headache and nausea in full effect, Emily realized the morning after Halloween was way scarier.