Already slightly anxious, a terrible thought suddenly strikes me.

I turned red and felt ashamed for even thinking my terrible thought about probably getting only twenty bucks.

And when they do so, there's always a terrible thought at the back of your mind, one that comes unbidden: will they ever come back?

And all day through my experiment one terrible thought kept haunting me: how long will it take to get through that massive backlog of e-mails?

And when you've done it for a while, a terrible thought begins to cross your mind.