penthius

It was like a nightmare walking, or to be more precise, it was like walking down the street and bumping into a nightmare walking without realizing it, and then getting sucked into being a part of its little world for the rest of the day. In this case, the nightmare was a nice-looking old lady in one of those fluorescent pantsuits that seem to be only a good idea for the elderly, and in their case, perhaps only in order to keep from getting run over by younger, stronger, and quicker people. She looked like a nice enough lady, and I didn't expect anything to happen around her, right up until she looked around, frowned, and asked in a vaguely troubled voice, "Is this Florida?" You've got to watch out for the Alzies, that's one of the first things they tell us. So when it started raining flamingos--

Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/evaxebra/9118026956/ + "Nightmare 2002" - DJ Baby Anne
Story potential: Medium
Notes: What, you don't think this would happen? Look at how much trouble we have just getting car keys away from our elderly.

She was working in the garden when she saw him, her fingers sinking into moist, yielding soil as she dug out the hard, knobbly potatoes that would get her through the winter. He stood by the forest line, the mottled brown and green of his skin almost blending into the trees. Her first thought was for the shotgun, that she'd foolishly left on the porch. She hadn't seen a zombie in six months and had thought that they might have all wasted away by now. She knew that they would, if they didn't get a certain amount of human matter in their system regularly. Her second thought was for the shovel beside her.

Inspiration: Erotic/romantic zombie stories seem to be the latest thing. I was wondering if it was even possible.
Story potential: High.
Notes: Somewhat distressingly, I think that I could pull this off. So to speak. He'd earn his red wings. She'd become jealous, wondering if that was how he'd survived until now. He couldn't talk. There would be weird relationship dynamic fuckuppery. There'd be a bigger threat, to him or her or both of them. Oooh...menopause could be a threat to their relationship in an entirely new way. Weird. This could be a seriously twisted story.

"The cost is prohibitive," the treasurer explained to the irate oldsters gathered around his office, waving signs saying, "Don't take our lucky pennies!" and brandishing the coins in question. "Perhaps you could try lucky nickels, or lucky quarters."

The oldest of the lot scowled. "Humph. Everybody knows only wooden nickels are lucky, and you stopped making those ages ago." He leaned his face in close. "Luck's the only thing that's kept us going this long! What do you think will happen when there are no more pennies?"

The treasurer patted the air with his hands, attempting to calm people down. "Now, now, it won't be instantaneous. There will still be pennies lying around--"

Inspiration: Canada stopping the minting of pennies. http://boingboing.net/2012/03/30/canada-to-stop-issuing-pennies.html
Story Potential: High?
Notes: This has the potential to be a really good story, if-and-only-if I figure out how to execute well the importance of the penny and tie it in to some universal human truth or other.

I've been to the edge, where I stood and looked down. I've lost a lost of friends there, and I always remembered them in my prayers and thanked the goddess that I hadn't joined them. But now, with the way things are, and the village government.... It's all so peaceful and calm, and everybody patronizes me when I talk about how they should be more careful, how they should still train in arms. They are annoyed with me, too, like one would be with a senile elder who always frets about the yang-li migrations. I am not so old yet. I am only just entering the middle years, and I'm still strong enough of arm to beat any other in the village, not that that's saying much these days.

Inspiration: "Ain't Talkin' Bout Love" - Van Halen
Story Potential: medium
Notes: So naturally s/he goes over the edge, back to the battle--or to start a battle. Or to find a battle lost and to save it after the end.

She was the oldest person in the room, the one who would die, and the only one that was mortal. When she was a little girl, she'd enjoyed reading fairytales. After hundreds of years of infinitesimal aging, she sometimes felt like she had lived into one when she looked around her. Everywhere were eternally young, vibrant bodies, housing ancient souls (though not as ancient as she). There were some that looked older, yes--it had been the fashion that century, perhaps, or perhaps they really were old enough to have been past the age of ideal attractiveness when the antigerone had been completed. The second antigerone, the one that actually worked 100%.

Inspiration: Grooming the Roomba. Busy hands, idle mind--that's one of the ways that stories happen.
Story Potential: High, but not as it is. Aging cannot be the main plot, only the framework. Aging, mortality, and antigerone treatments have been thoroughly explored. Kids and population growth, mortality bequeathing the right to procreate, maybe? Nah, still not enough.
Notes: See, the antigerone was a successful leukemia, or cancer, treatment for kids. And she was the researchers daughter. And he was desperate. So she's been aging very very slowly for a very very long time.

They were having a surprise 3,864th birthday party for her. It was supposed to be a secret, but one of the servants had let it slip while she'd been torturing him, and she was so surprised and pleased that she'd actually let him live. Crippled, yes, but alive. Why, nobody had tried a surprise birthday party for her in--six hundred years? Had it been that long? And now her distant descendants, or rather the more recent descendants of this body, had decided to surprise her. She was amazed. It was still well-documented how the last "surprise" birthday party had turned out--she thought the mummified bodies of the attackers were still in storage somewhere. So they *knew* that any attempt to kill her must inevitably fail. The body would die, yes, but the essence of her would simply pass on to the next in--

Inspiration: Phil's grandmother's surprise 80th birthday party. However, she is not an evil bodysnatcher. I think.
Story Potential: High, surprisingly enough. ::groan::
Notes: No, really, I'm a bit intrigued by this.

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Entries tagged with aging

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Flamingos: Superhero

The Love That Cannot Speak Its Name: Horror

Pennies: Modern Fantasy

The Edge: Fantasy

Aging Immortal: Science Fiction

Surprise 3,864th Birthday Party: Fantasy

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January 2025

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