Began

Michael was lying in bed, bored, when it began.
Lucy was downing her 6th shot when it began.
Greg was climbing a tree when it began.
Lucinda had just been mugged, and then it began.
The guardian had just gone to press, and a storm was brewing, and the unions had gone on strike, the day that it began.
It took most people a little while to realise what had happened after it began.
They were wrapped up in world-blanking kisses, screaming black howls of despair, hot with lust in high-wire fucks, kicking themselves in realisation and quietly contemplative as it began.
At first only a cracked and whiskered old tramp, drinking white cider with grit in it, noticed, and that was an hour after it began.
He muttered to the shoes walking past him that the shadows were missing but it was too late, because an hour earlier it began.
Above all of the ordinariness, at the top of a bell-tower, silhouetted shapes danced noiselessly and blended into a hellish myriad - and smiled as it began.