Crystal Bay: Fantasy

When the bay turned crystal-clear and inviting, and the sun shone bright, and the colors of all the buildings along the shore-front seemed to dance with color and brilliance, that was the time when all the old fishermen would suck their teeth and refuse to go out to fish. It was also the time when the tourists exited their hotels in droves and wandered through the city streets exclaiming over this and that and the other quaint shop or hidden alley or rustic street. The fishermen watched them go, and sucked their teeth, and refused to leave the stoop of their houses. The fishermen's old wives (who were of course about as old as the fishermen, or older in some case, the marital career of a fishermen's wife being what it might be) accused the fishermen of being lazy old men who just wanted to watch the young tourist girls in their short shorts and immodest skirts and long bronzed legs. The old men sucked their teeth at this, too, but if one of their wives started mentioning trips to market or errands, on those days, those days the old men mustered up some semblance of their youth and flirted their wives back into flustered indoor cleaning. When the bay turned crystal-clear and inviting, the police chief of the small town (who was young, and besides, did not have the luxury of sucking his teeth in his doorway) grimly called in all his deputies and prepared to send out search parties for the ones who did not return. There were always ones who did not return. He posted many, many signs warning that swimming in the bay was not allowed, but people could not resist dangling their feet. The children, at least, had their mothers to keep them away--their mothers who listened to old wives' tales, or in this case, old fishermen's tales--


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/unicorn81/9412195349/
Story potential: Medium
Notes: Eh. Mostly setting. Nice to see it somewhere a little different.

The White Bone House: Fantasy

We called it the white bone house when we saw it, to differentiate it from the White House, which was where the big man lived. The white bone house—well, we didn't know what lived in there, nor did we really want to. Bad enough that once in ever-so-long, the white bone of it would turn red and glistening under a full harvest moon. Worse that when it turned, it started appearing in places where we wouldn't usually see it. Not what a girl wants, I'll tell you that. I quit my job at the Kwik-Serve after it appeared across the road, just watching me for my shift. I don't care if it appears everywhere, I've heard enough stories about the omens and bad things following it to know to get out of there once it shows up. My boss was lucky I finished my shift, but that's because I'm such a good, dutiful worker. Okay, and because I was just stubborn enough to want to put up a pro forma resistance. I never said I wasn't stupidly stubborn sometimes, just that I know when it's a bad idea and I do it anyway. The white bone house wasn't so bad. You saw it mostly down along the bayou, or sometimes floating along the river like it was a really big gambling boat, and maybe it was, because when it did that, it had a paddle wheel and everything. We never hoped that it would truly go away and haunt some other town. Partly because every town's got its haunts, and partly because it seemed like this one sometimes brought good luck, too.


Inspiration: Daniel Merriam's Lake House
Story potential: High.
Notes: Mmm, I like this. Nice rural fantasy feel.