The mini-bats came at night, small swarms that could be stopped by mosquito netting but nothing else. Window screens did not keep them out, though soon enough we started lining the windows with mosquito netting as well, and draping layers of mosquito nets in makeshift hallways guests had to walk through to reach our homes. Still, we all became listless and tired from the blood loss. Our saviors from the mini-bats ended up being actual bats, bred from the DNA samples impregnated in mice and hand-raised to stay near human habitation. They took to eating their smaller lookalikes as readily as they would insects, and slowly we started to regain our strength. The child mortality rate went down.


Inspiration: Pokemon Go zubat
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Meh

I thought me and the rocs were getting along fine, right up until one of them decided to lay her egg on top of my roof. I'm pretty sure it was Gretel, as I call the simple-minded one who never takes proper care of her own eggs and as a result hasn't had any offspring since I've lived here. I didn't reckon I'd like the rotten egg smell of an egg so large, so close, but I knew perfectly well that messing with a roc's egg is one sure way to get the wrath of the entire clan brought down on you, and once that happens, you're not going to live long enough to get out of roc territory. And I didn't want to get out of roc territory. I liked it that they kept out the riffraff, and they didn't appear to mind exchanging a bloody sheepskin of gems for a live sheep every now and then, so it was also a nice little earner for me and my sister's family back east. I wasn't sure if they'd be as angry about me touching the egg given that it was Gretel's, and her eggs never did well, but I didn't want to risk it. I did temporarily consider drilling up through my roof, draining the egg, and letting it dry out so that it would be hollow, but some of these rocs are damn smart, using tools and everything, even if Gretel isn't. My only other option appeared to be making sure that the roc egg didn't spoil. So that's how I became a mama roc.


Inspiration: Picture of a Dali's house with an egg on the roof: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marjoleinvegers/10900576506/
Story potential: High.
Notes: I like the idea of combining weird west with rocs.

The sea woke them. That's the best idea we've been able to figure out, in the hasty months since we fled our coastal villages and retreated farther away. The trick was retreating upland and away from the sea while at the same time staying away from the kind of stone formation that was linked with the earliest outbreaks. All I can say is: thank God for overzealous paleontologists clearing some coasts of anything that looked like it might be a fossil, from the smallest shells to the eggs to what looked like broken eggshells found alongside them. I suppose I needn't add that natural history museums all over the world, even those in what we think are safe zones, closed in an awful hurry with military guards keeping safe zones outside of them until a specialist could get flown in to examine the collection and mark potentials for removal and study. I’m not an expert, thank goodness, I just work for one. My particular charge is subject to all the stereotypical absent-minded professor traits that you've ever seen in a movie: her hair looks like something nested in it, she tends to forget that her glasses are on top of her head until she needs them, and left to her own devices when she's wrapped up in something that interests her she would neither eat nor sleep. Me? I'm the bodyguard, the "termination specialist"--I guess I am something of a specialist after all--assigned to her just in case. She knows what she's doing. I'm the muscle to keep her alive long enough to get some useful data out of it.


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lastef/9260844125/
Story potential: High.
Notes: And both of them are female and not romantically interested in each other. This story would pass the Bechdel test, damn it! This story bit here isn't enough, of course, but it's really the relationship between these two that makes me interested in it.

We want to take you onboard," the human resources manager said, sitting across from him with a smile. "No more fire-at-will contractor. We want you to be one of us." "That's great," Juan said, trying not to wince as the spiders rained down and beat against the window. Spider weather, as the joke went. The joke that became old within two days of seeing spiders rain down like leaves in autumn. "I would be very happy to join the company officially." "Great, that's just great." She slid a folder across the table to him. "There are some procedural things to go through first. Read through all the contracts and sign them. Then we can schedule your vaccinations and induction."


Inspiration: Skimming through Facebook - http://gawker.com/5982891/meanwhile-in-brazil-its-raining-spiders
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Meh. Raining spiders deserves more awesomeness.

"The ways and habits of the undersea fish are of great interest to me," said the man in the bowler hat. "I assure you, I have written several monographs on the subject, and I feel that my presence would be of benefit to your expedition to the seas of Europa."

I paused, trying to think of the right way to put my rejection. His suit was of good quality, as was his hat, and the eye that I could see enlarged through his monocle seemed very serious. He was not the first rich hobbyist who had approached us, but he was perhaps the first who did not pretend to skills that he did not have. A monograph, after all, was not a highly demanding task.

"I should also mention," the bowler-hatted gentleman said coolly, "that I am a 40 percent shareholder in Flying Fish Ships, Ltd. I say this because I fully understand that all members of the expedition must be able to contribute in ways more practical than simply drawing a few sketches and writing a good line of description."

Since he'd taken the words right out of my mouth, I floundered.

"I believe," he said, "that money and equipment is a very practical contribution indeed."


Inspiration: "Another Fish Story" by Daniel Merriam, from my Art of Dreams calendar.
Story potential: Confusing.
Notes: I don't think this plot is inherently compelling, but it is rare that the voice of a story leaps so readily to my fingers. So to speak.

Rabbit was in love. His machine-gun turrets rotated involuntarily when he saw her, and his sights telescoped in to focus on the lovely fur that covered her breasts. She had the latest stealth modifications, he saw, so she was the latest line of scouts from CoreHead. His leg thumped involuntarily against the rack of the seat he was cuffed into, waiting for the next battle release. She was free--and that said something, too. Of course, she wasn't the heavily armed monstrosity that he was, the one that could take out a city on his own. She was a Bunny, not a Thumper. He'd never understood until this moment why the stealthers all were made female, but he figured that if his protocols hadn't stopped him, he would have rolled over without even trying a good rabbit-kick, if she said it would make her happy. Maybe a non-mod Boss Human wouldn't have had that reaction, but Rabbit didn't know. He guessed some of them were susceptible. And there were some Bunnies that had other roles. You saw a lot of them in the cathouses, or in bars, or sometimes in specialty movies. Maybe that was why the WarBunnies were adapted from that line.


Inspiration: A "bunny in love" icon.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: Ah, furry GMO super-soldier luuuuv!

The cry in the night, the sad sound that makes you think a woman or a child is weeping in the snow--that might be your fortune or it might be your death. There's a reason they say that the people who bond with a snowkiller are crazy, and that's it, right there. Sure, you bond with one, your future's assured. But you can only bond with one that's looking for a bond, or maybe--possibly--a young cub that has lost its parents. I don't advise that you try hunting a snowkiller parent in hopes of bonding with its cub. We make sure the stories of what happen to those people when they succeed are spread around the port and anywhere else that dumbass tourists with dreams of the bond go. We want to protect our snowkillers, after all. They are invaluable to us. And it's not like they kill anybody who knows better. Thing is, there may be some difference in the sound between their lure-prey and their lure-bond call, but we can't hear it. Me, I'm not convinced there is. I think sometimes they just like the taste of their prey enough to bond instead of eat. Or maybe it's how their prey responds to them and the nearness of death. That's another good explanation of why they're all crazy. And they tend to choose the fittest physically and mentally (that certain specific craziness aside). Darwin would have loved them. Biologists do call them evolution's claws. So when I heard the snowkiller cry outside in the middle of the blizzard, I stayed snug inside the ranger cabin, even if it did sound like a little girl screaming. There were no groups out, no missing travelers, no missing kids. Maybe you have to be a bit crazy to be a ranger, too, because if there had been, I would have gone out in that snowstorm even knowing that it was likely a snowkiller. But there weren't, and I didn't. You could have knocked me over with a 2-by-4 when the door to the ranger cabin swung open and I saw a little bit of a girl standing there, with the snow swirling around her. "Honey," I said, jumping to my feet and sweeping the blanket off the couch, "come in here!" Then the huge shadow moved behind her.


Inspiration: The baby fussing a bit in his crib.
Story Potential: High, because the story appeared to want to write itself.
Notes: This doesn't have any standout unique bits, but it evidently has enough pull to keep me writing significantly past my usual 2-minute cutoff.

When a dog shows up on your doorstep with a heart on its nose, you don't have a choice. You have to follow it. Those are the rules of the Hounds of Hearts. No, I'm not talking about a real human heart--don't be gross! And I'm not talking about a tattoo--though some say that there was a serial killer for a little while who'd trained his dog to fetch and given it a nose tattoo. They say that the hounds came for him, and now he's madly in love with the prison warden and eager to be in jail to please her. They say he's happier, in a way. Nobody knows where the Hounds come from, but all agree that they're one of the better manifestations of the Needs.

Inspiration: Flickr photo of a dog with a paper heart on its nose.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: I like the worldbuilding that just kind of spins out of this scenario, but while it's intriguing and all, this doesn't have that spark that makes me want to writerightnow!

It was important to leave the hut, to walk over snow that crunched under her reindeer-hide boots, to move among the herd, to breath air so cold it cut her lungs like a knife. It was important to squint at the winter sun and the dazzle of whiteness over the land. These things were all important, all necessary if she wished to remain connected and allowed in the land, if she wished to not have her hide hut blown over and the winter wind rush down to freeze her to death, if she wished not to have the ice crack beneath her feet and dump her into the death waters, if she wished to not have the reindeer leave and let her be alone and stranded and dying slowly in her hut. She just wished it was easier to make the wizard understand this.


Inspiration: Pondering what to do on my break from baby and house.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: There's some possibility here, but I haven't formed it/grasped it properly.

It's just not as melodramatic when your savior is hatched. Oh, I did the best with ti that I could, but really? Hatched? That doesn't even scan with anything. Making the Christmas hymns was going to be a bear. Ha! A bear. I joke. There were no bears on the world. Once there had been something like a fox, but the Clucks had waged war until all the foxes were dead. A genocide, we would have called it, but it happened before they were even really conscious. Cavemen--well, cavechicken. As soon as they figured out slingshots it was over, though rumors persist that a few survived to the present day.

Inspiration: Some Christmas song.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: This is funny and weird, but-nah.