I don't mind the headless riders so much. At least you know where you are with them. It's the ghosts that pretend to be real, that seem real in every way, but then disappear mysteriously and let you find out that there was a legend about them from however many years ago that I don't like. Do you know how much time I spent looking for vanishing girls in white before I figured that out? Sure, I moved here because I liked a challenge, and the hauntedest city in the West seemed like a good fit, not to mention the bonus hazard pay didn't hurt, but it still took me a while to get my feet under me and check the ghost database. Hell, it took me a while to figure out that there even was a database for ghosts. I think it was a "haze the new guy" deal. So figuring out that somebody real was really missing wasn't as easy as you might think, especially since she left such a light impression on life that she might as well have really been the ghost that we all assumed she was.


Inspiration: Danny Elfman - Sleepy Hollow film score
Story potential: High.
Notes: This feels like it could be really quite good.

Ghosts are everywhere. They walk along our neural pathways, hike over the gray ridged mountains of our cortex, and whisper memories in our ear when we are resting. Mostly they fade to mind, and stay there, a hundred, a million ghosts of people we've met and loved or read. Only rarely can they be called out, or stay out, but they are ghosts, make no mistake. I'm not talking about influences, or metaphors, I'm talking about their souls, or fragments of their souls, that find another person to take residence in. They frequently go for blood relatives or people with very similar minds, although others may scatter themselves into a million pieces and nest partially. Ever wonder where that weird craving for pastrami came from? That's probably a fragment.


Inspiration: Googled "fade," went to page 10, found something about a label called Fade to Mind.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: I don't know where it's going, but I really like this opening.

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.

It was Sally's song in the woods that drew them in. Everybody knew to stay out of the ghost woods, that experiences there were not real, or too real, or too impossible, or so possible they'd break your heart, or something along those lines. Those who came out weren't always mad, but they always sounded mad if they tried to talk about what had happened to them in there. Or what they had done, since to hear them tell it, it had been all they're doing, whatever the *it* was. Sometimes the things they confessed were so dreadful that the constable locked them up, just on general principle, even though it was clearly impossible for them to have done the deed they confessed to. Sometimes it was heartbreaking. Sometimes it was heartbreaking because they were so happy--

Inspiration:"Sally's Song" - Universal Hall Pass
Story Potential: Medium
Notes: Okay, kind of a neat setting, but not that original and not that much of an actual story idea.

The middle of night was shining down in pinprick stars through the black velvet sky when the spirit came visiting, attracted by the fine offering of bread and wine laid out inside the night-dark altar or remembrance. The silver bells fringing it jingled just a little, making the plastic skeleton hanging to the side start chuckling mechanically as its eyes flashed orange and jolting me awake. I saw the glazed donuts desiccate before my eyes and watched the level of the wine sink. A slight indentation sank in the soft bed I'd made inside the remembrance altar and I knew my attempt to lure a spirit back had worked.

Inspiration: Sally's Song by Universal Hall Pass.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: There's some sort of Day of the Dead thing going on here, but meh.

Sensation washes over me. I don't know what I am holding on to, but there is something that I am holding onto, which keeps me from being entirely washed away in the flood. The thing I have a hold of swears loudly. It is white noise to my ears. I can feel the acrid taste of blood in my mouth, of salty tears running down my cheeks, I can taste them through my skin. The gunpowder bang flashes silver and grey and cardamom in my mouth. There is a woman screaming purple in the corner, and part of me knows that purple is a false fear. She isn't afraid; she's screaming for effect. I try to hold onto this or to tell it to the swearing thing I'm holding onto, but the next rush sweeps over me--

Inspiration: "Remember" by Disturbed
Story Potential: High? Low? I guess that averages out to medium.
Notes: Can't decide whether the idea of a synesthetic psychic police consultant is ridiculously overblown or an idea that might actually be fun to play around with. I suspect it would get old quickly. Ok, never mind, I actually find this notion interesting enough that I think I want to write it. Someday. I have a list...it's here, actually.

The squeak and the creak of the dead man's ladder made her nearly piss herself. Not from fright--no, but when she'd been a little 'un one of the older kids, one with a cruel streak, had told her that piss was a sovereign remedy to keep off the bogeys. Just piss yourself if you're trapped, he'd said with a not-comforting grin, and they'll leave you right alone. Well, it might not have worked on the bogeys--her hand strayed to the old sucker fish scar that pulled her eye down--but it had been just the thing when she was cornered by a couple of yahoos interested in making her their fancy girl whether she would or no. And while they'd been doubled over from laughing and holding their noeses, she'd grabbed the bottle one of them had dropped and used it--

Inspiration: Squeaky noise.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Seems like standard Thieves' World type setting, no particular item of interest, though the character's got some voice.

It was the song that lured her into the apartment. It sounded old and worn, like a record played on a gramophone over and over until the needle wore its track into the recored. She knew what a gramophone was because she’d seen it in a movie, but she’d never seen one in real life. Nor did she, that day. Instead, she pressed her hand against the doorknob, watched the door swing inward on creaky hinges, and walked into an old-time movie set that seemed to be inhabited by exactly nobody. As soon as the door opened, the song stopped, but of course she couldn’t turn away then. There was more to explore, things to see, things she’d no idea existed behind the blank door of apartment 56-C.

Inspiration: None.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Nothing new here. Could be the beginning to any one of a hundred stories.

The zebra stripes undulated through the wilderness. They skirted behind palm fronds and over stone. Finally, she emerged into the open: a blonde-haired woman wearing thigh-high zebra hide boots. The potted plants behind her sighed, as if they regretted losing the illusion of the jungle that they had never known. She sashayed into the center of the hotel lobby as if it was her kingdom, a jungle kingdom, and she the queen of it. The doorman rolled his eyes. He knew her game; he'd seen it often enough. The young lady behind the counter looked up, and a wild, staring fear hardened in her eyes, like a rabbit that sees the hawk stooping to grab it, but is unable to run. The woman sauntered up to a man sitting in the hotel chair and idly ran her fingers over his back. He jumped. It was a completely understandable reaction, the doorman thought. He'd jumped the first time that she'd extended her tendrils to brush against the buttons of his uniform. She, and she alone, was the reason that they'd lost a quarter of their clientele since she started appearing. Some businessmen seemed to enjoy the little thrill. Their wives could hardly complain; after all, better a dead hooker than a live one, right?

Inspiration: CD cover showing a lion eating a zebra.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: At first I thought not high potential, but I dunno...a humorous twist to this one could be good. Why am I being drawn to ghost stories? This might also tie in well with that other exercise I had about an Ultimate BadassTM walking up to a hotel....

Not until midnight, the witching hour. She rocked back and forth in the old rocker she'd inherited from her grandmother, a way of burning nervous energy, knitting in her hands. She was knitting a baby hat, something for the ghost. Her grandmother had told her once, when she was just a little girl, that giving something to the restless ghosts helped, sometimes. Rocking back and forth helped, too. She'd learned that from her grandmother without a word being spoken between them. And so she waited until the witching hour, with rowan and ash sitting on her lap, and a ball of fuzzy yarn beside her, knitting the little hat for a ghostly baby that could never wear it. The sound of the old grandfather clock striking the hour in the hallway made her startle. She hesitated, purled the ends of the hat, and cut off the stray threads. Then she stood to walk to the salt circle that she'd laid out--

Inspiration: Um, the Muse told me that CSI was delayed till midnight?
Story Potential: Low. Nothing here inspires me.
Finished Length: Short story.
Notes: No, it wasn't an aborted baby. Sheesh, y'all have one-paradigm minds. I'm thinking dead-in-infancy sibling. Y'know, like mine.