The creepy old house on top of the creepy old hill, past the creepy fence, in the creepy small town where she felt like all the residents stared at every move she made--that creepy old house was hers. Worse, the only real use for the house was living in it, and she wasn't in a position where she could turn down a windfall like that. Working from home meant that there was no real justification for maintaining the expense of an apartment in the city when she could just as easily telecommute and get a hotel room once a month to do the in-person meetings, all for vastly less money than keeping an apartment that she could tolerate living in. The old house did have enough space to keep from triggering her claustrophobia, at least, she would give int that. It was almost as if it had expected the residents to suffer as she did. The creepiest thing she could find in the creepy old house was a photograph in a gold frame, wrapped around and around with hair. She hesitated to cut the hair off, but she pried it apart enough to glimpse the photo beyond.


Inspiration: Oh, a strand of hair that wound up on top of the photo of Phil that sits on my desk.
Story potential: Medium?
Notes: Because weird? I have no idea what to expect from this, which is good, I guess.

She comes to visit the museum most days that it's open. That's a little strange, but not so terribly unusual for a free public museum as large as ours. Like the library, it's a place where the public feels free to go when they have nowhere else to go. No work, no home? Go to the museum. They sit and stare at the paintings in one room for a while, and then move on to the next. Usually they don't cause any trouble, and they know that they're not allowed to sleep in there. She--is not like them. To begin with, she wears labels that I vaguely recognize from the fashion glossies I try not to indulge in while I'm waiting in the supermarket checkout. To continue with, the burns that ripple across half her face and down to her hand are quite distinctive. And to end with, she only ever goes to one exhibit: the exhibit of Russian artifacts. She goes and she stands in front of the glass case of one of them and strokes the glass with her melted hand. And she whispers to it. Once I got close enough to hear (being human and curious, I guess) and what I overheard gave me the creeps. She called the thing by name, and she talked about the executioner being worth it, and--just generally enough stuff to give me the heebie-jeebies. In Russian, too, and an old-fashioned kind of Russian that I wouldn't have known if I hadn't heard my grandmother talking in it as I grew up.


Inspiration: "Pyotr" -> http://www.maxilyrics.com/bad-books-pyotr-lyrics-faa7.html
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Eh.

When you see the man in black sitting at the bar, don't go sit down next to him. If you hear him tell somebody he's a record producer, don't listen. If you've got a gig in the bar, leave. Blow it off. You don't want the man in black to come to your attention. If you're about to leave, carrying your guitar, and the man in black looks over his shoulder at you and he's got this expression in his eyes that you know just means he's seen you and he really wants to hear you and this i your one big shot, run for your life. Why do they call him the man in black? He claims to be a big fan of Johnny Cash, and to wear black in his honor, but when he says it he gets this funny smile around the corners of his mouth, kinda like your Uncle Buck did when he was talking about the big fish that got away. It's a strange world, you should know that. You've seen some things at gigs. Don't let the man in black buy you a drink and talk you up. Especially don't let him pull out a contract and hand it to you. Don't expect to smell brimstone or see his eyes flash red or anything like that. This isn't that kind of deal. He might be a devil and he might be after your soul, but if there's that language in the contract it disappears when you show any signs of reading all the way through it. Nope, it's a standard abusive recording-industry contract, and don't you forget it. But then once you've signed on, he's got you buying at the company store, and he can send you anywhere he wants with any kind of people he wants. And if you notice that all the roadies and hangers on and even your PR agent and everybody around you is doing some hardcore drugs but functioning just fine, it might be hard to stay clean. And if he sends ten truly gorgeous strippers inside your private limousine with the tinted windows with you, because that’s the impression they want to make on the fans, and the strippers start to make advances, and you're not actually paying them anyway, and nobody will know, and there's no way your girlfriend back home would ever find out--well, that's another way he's getting you to sell your soul. If he tells you he's arranged a remunerative private performance for somebody you find out committed some serious human rights violations, it's easy to tell yourself that you're just there to perform.


Inspiration: Sheet of stamps with Johnny Cash on them.
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Eh. This is heading away from the paranormal angle, and is generally not very interesting to me.

Say my name! Doesn't anybody want to play? The best he could do was get those lyrics into a popular singer's head, but he couldn't even manage to work in his name. Generally, it was hard to get that in the lyrics, but some of his compatriots had had some success working it in when the record was played backwards. Alas that modern technology had entirely ruined that avenue. Now they were reduced to figuring out how to get it into the DVD as an Easter egg, but for one thing, they were personally repelled by the term Easter egg and figured that You-Know-Who had done that deliberately to forestall them, and for another thing, they were not very technically skilled. Although they did have at least one of the big guys in the industry in their pocket, they rather suspected that he had gone out of his way to invent a new operating system that did not allow such subtle manipulations simply as a way to thwart them. Of course, they retaliated by breaking his products as often as they could.


Inspiration: "Hear My Name" - Armand Van Helden
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Funny bit about the computers, though.

The dying do their own work. They finish what must be finished--which is their death. That is all that they need to do. A very few have other things that must be done, even at the end. Words to a loved one. Reassurance. The last piece of a project. Usually these things fall away as death grows near, but sometimes the need grows. We think that's what happens to create zombies. You thought I was going to say ghosts, didn't you? No. The mild hauntings that you hear about sometimes? Those are just--


Inspiration: "Letting Go of What Cannot be Held Back" - by Bill Holm
Story Potential: High, mostly because of the tropes it spins about.
Notes: A zombie death before completion? That's what causes Hungry Ghosts--MUCH harder to deal with. Also, 'hauntings' is so a word!

The ghost puppet show made her gurgle with laughter. Ghosts might not be the best playmates a girl could have, but for shadow bedtime stories, they were the best ever! She watched with wide eyes as a shadowy rider ran up a hill to a mansion with flickering windows--and she clapped her hands. Here! she said. "That's home!" The rider nodded his head, as if in acknowledgment, and knocked on the door. A faint, ghostly rattle of chains mimicked the sound of the door swinging open. Ghastly long arms reached out and pulled the rider into the castle. "And that's Great-Grandpa Edmund!" she exclaimed. Great-Grandpa Edmund was locked up in the basement now--

Inspiration: Ghost story puppet show benefits kids' charity: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/11/19/gothic-horror-puppet.html
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: Moderately entertaining, nothing spectacular.

So there I stood, feeling kind of foolish, blood on my mouth, my hands, and all over my shirt--of course I hadn't worn dark clothes or bothered with a bib, because I wasn't going to eat people anymore. And Rhonda was so proud of me, too, for losing some of that blood lust and the unsightly tooth length that went along with it. The diet was working! But then I saw the bubbly blonde in the low-cut dress and--poof! There went my self-control. It wouldn't help that she was blonde, either. Rhonda knew well that I had a weakness for blondes; it's how she became part of the diet plan, after all. This was worse than the time I'd sleep-walked and found myself in front of the fridge with a whole pound of butter in my hands.

Inspiration: LJ spotlight on the trashy_eats community.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Not sure where this would go from here, but the set-up is really entertaining!

She nursed her own child as long as she could, but it didn't take very long before the child was full and sleepy and her master noticed. Then he sent for his dogs. She did not want to watch as they suckled at her breasts, but eventually, she did, if only to wince and brace herself for a nip from their teeth if she moved wrong, or to push them away if they started getting rowdy--her master allowed her that much, at least. In time, she could not help herself from noticing the differences in the faerie hounds, their silky ears, and the way their eyes turned to her, sometimes, when the master scolded them, as if they asked her for help. She began to not fear their feeding time so much. She would whisper in their ears, stories of what might happen once her child was weaned.

Inspiration: News of the Weird: In Uganda, "for seven years had been forced to breastfeed her husband's hunting dogs as she was nursing the couple's own children. Farmer Nathan Awoloi of Pallisa explained that his dogs needed to eat, and since he was forced to send Jennipher's family two milk cows in order to win her hand, he felt his demands were reasonable. "
Story Potential: High
Notes: Well, it's creepy enough that it could work pretty well with a dark fairy tale.

A secret message came to him that day, written in the entrails of his pet bird. He wept when he found it dead in its cage, one wing outstretched towards the mirror hanging inside, as if it were trying to tell him something. He buried it with all respect in a shoe box, with his daughter saying a sincere prayer that Mr. Fleddie would be happy and that there was plenty of rennet seed in heaven. That night, one minute to midnight, he dug the shoe box back up and carried it into his workshop in the garage. A quick vivisection and a long study of Mr. Fleddie's entrails told him the secret message that the bird had died to carry back from the land of the dead. He saw himself dead, but more importantly, his whole family, his wife and his parents and his little girl and the babe unborn in his wife's stomach that he hadn't even known about until he read his future.

Inspiration: "Secret Message," by Rasputina
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Though this bit's interesting, the story isn't.

I don't like the dentist, even though he gives me a lollipop after he takes my teeth. I asked Mommy if he was the Tooth Fairy, but she said no. Her voice was funny when she said it. I think she doesn't like the dentist, but he doesn't make her write a lot of things down on papers like other dentists did. She didn't like doing that. The dentist looks at me funny when I lie down on the table for him. He doesn't have a chair like other dentists. There are animal heads all around up on the walls. They all have teeth. I think the little badger in the corner has mine. I saw a chip on the corner, right where I tripped and fell and hit my tooth on the edge of the table. Once when I went to the dentist, there was a huge dead skunk lying on the table that he had to move before he could take care of my teeth. I smelled funny a long time after.


Inspiration: Strange, Weird, and Wonderful's Winter 10 prompt.
Potential: Medium-high? High?
Notes: It's weird and dark and I like that. If this is a story, though, it's probably too long for their contest--besides which, they don't pay for the contest entries. Which is fine, but makes it not my first choice. I dunno. Ether has to come into this somewhere, and fairyland, and legends of talking beasts. And dreams.