With the Passing of Time

The parishioners parlayed with the pagans, a painstaking process to put it plainly. People pontificated and pathetically pleaded. Pigheaded sycophants pointedly prayed to put off punishment from the powerful priests who pronounced prolonged suffering and posthumous pillorying.
Pedantic pillocks offered no profundity; only perceived proof of possible parasites. The palaver plateaued, and the pioneering crowd plopped [...]

The ad promised to turn you into a well-dressed and refined woman. Hair elegantly coiffed. Clothes perfectly tailored and stylish. You could picture yourself attending the swankiest openings and up-scale events, the epitome of cool sophistication turning heads the moment you enter.
But instead you remained the drab wallflower you had always been. Invisible and uninteresting. [...]

The bruises around his neck stood out purple and violent, livid against his skin. He carefully wrapped a scarf around the marks, trying his best to cover them without causing himself undue pain.
Not many people tangled with a Vorcond and lived to tell about it. Grateful to be alive, he pulled his jacket collar up [...]

Beau geste is perhaps the most uninspiring phrase ever, so I decided to use an anagram.
It came upon her in a sudden rush of fevered chills. One moment she was typing in member data, the next she was slumped over her keyboard, cradling her head in her hands. How she got home that afternoon she [...]

One more week down, five days out the door and into the office. Ignoring the constant reminders of how disgusting and worthless he is, pretending there are no laughs, jeers, or judgments. Five days of torment and then he’s rewarded with a weekend of seclusion. It feels like something to celebrate, a veritable triumph.
But no [...]

If she had even a modicum of common sense, a shred of intelligence in her mottled head, she’d never have taken the shuttle to Penitrik. She’d been seduced by its purple seas; three suns that circled each other in drunken arcs, solar flares licking trails of molten fire across the sky.
But romance and beauty won [...]