When the sun set, the city rose up. When we were kids, our moms would take us out to the pier to watch the city rise up. They would tell us all sorts of tales about what the city was, whether it was magical or terrible or both, but all the tales would end with the same moral: don't go there. Even the good stories, the ones about enchantments and magic and fairy princesses, emphasized the sadness and the way that nobody who ever went there ever left. Some of the stories said it was because the visitors ate or drank something, but when I was a little older and started reading the books in the library, I stumbled across an old book of fairy tales and there it was. Does that mean the city was made by real fairies, or just that the idea of somebody being trapped by their own appetite was derived from those old stories? Could be either, I guess. At any rate, I never was one of the kids who dreamed of the city, who imagined going there and returning rich and famous and with all the girls smiling at them because they had done what nobody else does. Every year a kid or two leaves to "go to the city." They never come back. Truth, I suspect a handful of the disappearances of kids or adults isn’t because of the city at all, but it's easier to point a finger at that mysterious thing that rises up at sunset every winter night and say, "They did it," then it is to suspect someone else of murder or worse, or to think that your husband or wife or child simply left to go somewhere more mundane. Then one winter, it was my sister's middle child who disappeared.


Inspiration: Photo of a city along the shoreline that is almost invisible in the twilight. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pitgreenwood/12083163145/
Story potential: High.
Notes: Not sure what the city is, but it isn't what's expected. And by the same token, this protagonist isn't what the city would expect.

It didn’t matter how many of the others--the ones like they had been, once, and still were if you wanted to get technical about it--it didn't matter how many of them died. The wolves would tear them to pieces whether they were here or not, but somehow, she knew, her sanctioned presence made it matter, somehow, more than it would have if it were written off as the random violence that it might have otherwise been. It would have been a drug thing gone bad, either in overdose that drove people crazy or as some kind of violence that could be explained away. But she was here, she was of this world, and she saw the teeth that sank into the flesh of the dancers and worried it from their bones. The bodies hit the floor all around them. She watched, because that was what she was supposed to do, and because that was the one thing that kept her and Caleb alive. Caleb especially. It was her job to take care of her younger brother, and so she did. He huddled within her embrace, his face pressed against her chest and his eyes closed, wincing tat every squelch and scream and tearing rip that sounded like nothing else in the world. She watched, because she was the one who watched. At first, she'd been angry and jealous that Caleb got to hide and pretend that it wasn't happening. She was angry for his weakness.


Inspiration: "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor" - Drowning Pool and http://www.flickr.com/photos/theskylineview/8490684028/
Story potential: High
Notes: Maybe not a main character, but, I dunno, a side character if I ever write an urban fantasy/fae story where it seems to fit. And look at that awesome art!

The jester capered, and the king laughed. The jester flipped, and the queen smiled. The jester left, and the animation drained from their faces as if they were nothing more than wooden statues. "We don't dare kill him," the Arms-Commandant murmured to his assistant. "They become themselves again briefly when he is here, entertaining them. Serious business is nearly impossible, but they will sign papers and issue judgments in the intervals between laughter. Sometimes. When we removed him from their presence and buried him deep in a dungeon room designed to hold fearfully powerful wizards, they did not recover. They wasted away so much we feared they would die. And so we are stuck with royalty who only become themselves while he is present. He himself claims he does not know why this is so, and it is true that the King and Queen's malady first occurred while--"


Inspiration: ChaoticShiny - "The heroes must discover the story behind the ship without the jester killing them."
Story potential: Medium.
Notes: Whatsit--the floating princess. Or the one who would not stop crying. Also, a ship is definitely involved. And the King and Queen are still enough themselves that they will not lie together while another person is in the room, so it's no heir coming soon, either.

It's about the radiation, you see. It doesn't matter how much better for a kid it is to be with their mother--or their father--when it means going up into the solar radiation range. And when you get that drafted-to-work notice? Well, they don't have an exception for people who are the only parents of their children, not after the first six months. Like the kid would even remember you later if you left them after six months! So what you end up with is a bunch of people in space, and half of them are heartsick because they had to leave their kids behind. The ones who got deferred until the kid turned 6 months are the worst, because they had to leave their baby behind right when all the hormones and crazy brain chemistry and everything is fully kicked in to make them the best protectors ever. So is it any wonder that when wish-granting aliens showed up, our first sign of it was a passel of kids running through high-risk areas?


Inspiration: That icky story about the tanning mom.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Wish-granting aliens who aren't there to make contact but who keep granting wishes....

It's not all it's cracked up to be, being a prince from fairyland. First thing, there's only one prince. Sure, I know the media around here call all of us "princes" and "princesses," and we try to match that for any public appearance or declared fairyfolk. Coronets, clothes of silk, waist-length hair, the full nine yards, as your saying goes. Every fragment of belief we get is precious. Think of it as if you owned some acres deep in the woods, and you found out that every child you could persuade to believe in Rumpelstiltskin resulted in a gold nugget appearing somewhere on your land. For a while we were all over the world, trying to persuade you all. Then we settled into fairytales and haunt stories. We were taken by surprise by your Industrial Revolution.


Inspiration: Weezer's "Beverly Hills" - otherwise not a particularly enjoyable song, and really not a good fit for the station it showed up on, Pandora....
Story Potential: High.
Notes: I guess I like the idea that it's basically a bunch of starvingly poor and desperate people whose survival depends on convincing everyone around them that they're rich, glamorous, and magical.

He was ahead of the pack when the hissing, sputtering tunnel of light appeared ahead of him, spinning around the underpass like it had always been there. Kids setting off firecrackers? Maybe. Cops? Nah. Dangerous? Maybe. Fun? Hells yeah! The thoughts flitted through his mind in a fraction of a second and he pressed the accelerator down to the floor--well, he *would* have pressed the accelerator down to the floor if it wasn't already there. You never knew what might happen when you were racing through the streets at 3 AM, and this fireworks show sure and hell looked a lot more fun than when a cat ran out into the road in front of him. He'd lost that race, limped in last, but he'd almost managed to avoid hitting the cat at all, and the vet had fixed the cat's leg up real good. Damnfool thing decided it loved him, and loved racing cars, and right now it sat in the back of his racer in its special crash cage, purring contentedly as they broke several local and state laws. He figured it liked him because he'd never had much sense about loving things that weren't good for him either.


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaikophoto/6791501665/
Story Potential: Medium-high
Notes: Just another mundane-gets-sucked-into-fairyland sort of story, but I do like the character. Could be kinda xXx (starring Vin Diesel) meets Tam Lin.

The moon was made of green cheese. That should have been my first warning that things had gone very, very strange overnight. Of course, I didn't know it was cheese--I just knew that the moon had taken on a very bilious tinge, visible even during the day. I went about my business after a brief, "Huh, I'll have to check the news once I'm at work." I was running late, so I didn't turn on the TV or grab a paper. I just pulled on black slacks, black boots, a white blouse, a glitzy fashion belt that I'd gotten as a freebie at the last event I photographed, and my new red cape-style winter coat. That red cape nearly got me killed. Good thing the boots were flat heeled enough to let me run.


Inspiration: I dunno--I've been re-reading the Foreigner series, so maybe that got me thinking of the moon.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Not original, but could be a lot of fun, playing with shifts of fairytales becoming real. Lots of fun to be had. Again, not super original, but I bet I could sell them.

It looked delicious but it smelled bad. She sniffed the air as discretely as possible, trying to make it look like she was just turning her head and looking up to see the surroundings. She saw a feast laid out on the table before her. She saw a bright sunny day outside of windows, with birds and squirrels on branches. She saw beautiful tapestries hanging over stone walls, and fresh rushes on the floor. She saw a fire in the hearth, and an apple-cheeked girl sitting beside it working on her embroidery. She smelled rotten fruit and burnt meat that had gone bad. She smelled winter rain. She smelled dust and decay. She smelled old ashes, and something inhuman.

Inspiration: "Down to Earth" by Barenaked Ladies
Story Potential: High
Notes: I find the dichotomy interesting. Something to play with.

The bird with the golden beak sat inside a cage, and she thought it was the saddest thing she'd ever seen. "Its beak was too hard, you see," the vizier explained in a whisper in her ear. "It pecked and it hurt his highness. So he got a goldsmith and a butcher, and they sawed off the bird's beak and fashioned a soft gold one to replace it. The bird is not so hungry as it used to be, and it does not sing as loudly or fly as boldly, but when it pecks, it feels hardly like anything at all. But it rarely pecks." She slewed her eyes at the vizier. "I would have understood without the elaborate story." "Ah." The vizier smiled sadly. "But you see, the story is also true."

Inspiration: The previous freewriting about a room with a bird in it.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: Neat image, but nothing new here.

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.