In the beginning, Bartholomew Cubbins didn’t have five hundred hats. He had only one hat. And then the murders began.
No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. And then the murders began.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
And then the murders began.
There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy’s stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming. And then the murders began.
O, for a muse of fire! And then the murders began.
A face devoid of love or grace,
A hateful, hard, successful face,
A face with which a stone
Would feel as thoroughly at ease
As were they old acquaintances —
First time together thrown.
And then the murders began.
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said “And then the murders began.”
“They’re out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.” And then the murders began.
One warm night four children stood in front of a bakery. No one knew them. No one knew where they had come from. And then the murders began.
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. And then the murders began.
The ship set down on the shores of this uncharted desert isle,
With Gilligan, the Skipper too, the millionaire and his wife,
The movie star, the Professor and Mary Ann,
And then the murders began.
It was around the hub of the evening on the planet of Porlumma when Captain Pausert, commercial traveler from the Republic of Nikkeldepain, met the first of the witches of Karres. And then the murders began.
After the end of the World War of 1914 there was a deep conviction and almost universal hope that peace would reign in the world. And then the murders began.
Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the afterbulge of the transship. And then the murders began.
I’m Nanoha Takamachi, and I used to be an ordinary third grader. But something happened that changed everything. I was given a little red gem, and with it, I also got these magical powers. And then the murders began.
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. And then the murders began.
“How utterly delightful!” exclaimed Richelieu. “I’ve never seen a cat with such delicate features. The coloration is marvelous, as well.” And then the murders began.
The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him “WILD THING!” and Max said “I’LL EAT YOU UP!” so he was sent to bed without eating anything. And then the murders began.
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe.
And hen the murterings beginforth.
The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play.
So we sat in the house. All that cold, cold, wet day.
And then the murders began.
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yone sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye,
So priketh hem nature in hir corages,
Than ye murderes beganne.