The #stranger was polite, even covered his mouth and turn to the side to spit. Doc found no sign of the suppurating sores that mark the afflicted, so we let him in. Then he spat pus that had no external source.

"It's in my soul, you see."

#horrorprompt #vss365 #prompt

Inspiration: suppurating + stranger
Story potential: Medium
Notes: I do like the idea of a pestilence where the worst is what you can't see.

"Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" she asked coyly. Then, as her fingers explored the bulge in his pocket, she frowned. "Wait, what is this? Is it a gun?"

He sighed and pulled out his pocket knife. His personalized, gun-shaped pocket knife.

"Whoa!" she said, backing off. "I'm not--into that kind of thing. I mean, no offense, but maybe we're not so compatible after all."

"I'm not either," he hurried to assure her. "The reason I have this is kind of a long story, but--"

Inspiration: That exact item in the Lilian Vernon catalog. LOL.
Story potential: Medium.
Notes: I kinda want to know the story, too. Like, is he some kind of spook or special forces? Is this a family thing?

The first day of school was always a little scary, even if he already had friends from last year, even if he knew the school. There was the worry about forgetting his new classroom, or finding out that his teacher was a monster. The first night of second school was much, much worse. He'd never gone before, so he didn't have friends. They moved between undisclosed locations, so not only did he not know the school, neither did his family. He hadn't been told a classroom. His teacher might be a literal, honest-to-god, claws and tentacles, monster. And then there was the sleep deprivation from going through two full school days.


Inspiration: Today is the first day of school for Cassius. 2nd grade! Happy first day of school, y'all.
Story potential: medium
Notes: I like the idea of kids having to actively maintain two lives as part of their training.

"I love you," the bitty love bot whispered from the pillow on the other side of the bed, where her boyfriend used to sleep before he said it wasn't working and they should see other people, by which he apparently meant they should stop seeing each other at all and as far as other people, she didn't know, but she'd seen him post selfies with cute girls. A different girl each time.

"I love you," the bitty love bot whispered as it sat on the corner of the kitchen counter, while she microwaved a frozen dinner for one, a dinner that had the smart portion size but only half the flavor of the luxurious home-cooked, butter-heavy meals she used to cook for the two of them.

"I love you," the bitty love bot whispered to the picture of her, the picture that used to be a picture of them before he left her and she tore his half of the picture up. She was at the gym, and she did not take the bot with her there.

"I love you," the bitty love bot whispered, its voice blending with the shower as she sat in the tub and sobbed with the shower beating over her bowed back.


Inspiration: https://marywinkler.deviantart.com/art/Bitty-Love-Bot-542060528
Story potential: Medium.
Notes: I think I want this to go in a romantic,happy direction. Maybe she throws it out, it finds another boy, and somehow the two get together??

It's raining! The skies have opened up and the ten-year rain begins. We are all waiting to see how our houseboats float. We're a little bit nervous. This is the first time that we'll get to check them, and once the flood starts to lift the houses, we won't have much of a second chance. We've checked and tested, as best we can on a desert planet where water is strictly rationed and we have been warned that trying to haul our houses to a communal pool to test them would likely cause damage itself. Our house boats were never designed to be hauled. Anyway, the thirsty earth would drink away the water in the pool in very little time and the sun would boil it away, and whatever extra humidity it added to the town would cause an environmental disruption as nature reacted as though the floods had started early. None of us want that. It would violate the very strict terms of our charter, not to mention the principles that we have

Inspiration: Kids playing at the Riverview Cafe, chanting, "It's raining, it's raining!"
Story potential: Medium
Notes: I like the idea of the desert-to-flood. Would change the voice to sound less ... middle-class American, though, but maybe that's only in my head.

Flames devour the clouds, while we stare in open horror. I do not know if there will be any more rainbows during my lifetime, because I do not know if there will be any more rain. I heard a rumor that some corporation signed a deal that was read to grant the cloud herders the right to do this, to vaporize our clouds and chase the vapors into their water collectors. I don't understand the rules that make it more advantageous for them to do this than to mine asteroid belts for frozen water, but something about the rules of ownership and claimed versus unclaimed space makes it easier for them to get their water from a planet instead of deep space that I guess is considered communal. "Mama, why are they eating the sky?" my three-year-old whimpered, burying her face in my leg. "I don't know, honey," I said. And although I didn't say it out loud--because you don't make promises like that to a small child, not when you don't know how long it will take or even if you will succeed--I promised to myself that I would find the answer to her question, and somewhere in there, the way to make it stop. I would see a rainbow again before I died.


Inspiration: "Drones in the Valley" - Cage the Elephant
Story potential: Medium.
Notes: Eh.

More than power? Never had anyone offered her that, and she leaned forward, intrigued. "And what would you say is greater than power, pray tell? Love? Wisdom? Other people have tried to sell these things to me before, and they were never able to carry through." "No," answered the merchant, bargaining for his life. "Magic. A magic that will make your food taste sweet again, will make every victory priceless and every ounce of power better." She leaned back and laughed. "That hasn't been the case since I was five and all my siblings were drowned like puppies, because the King had picked his heir." "He was a brutal man." "He was the finest King this country had had for fifty years." "And yet, I notice that you have no heirs of the body yourself." She shrugged, trying not to show the chill that went through her at the thought.


Inspiration: "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" - Daft Punk
Story potential: Medium.
Notes: The cliche here would be to do a bodyswap with some true unfortunate. But that's a cliche, which is why I don't think this story as-is has a ton of potential.

Passing through the pillars was never his favorite part of the job. He put it off for a couple of minutes by stopping at a coffee shop and getting a mocha latte to go. He justified it to himself by saying that the coffee inside was non-existent, the tea was some weird herbal crap, and coffee (and chocolate) *were* on the approved list, so it would be okay. And he deserved a treat, or as many treats as he could get today, because by the end of the workday he'd be...well, he'd deserve another treat. He remembered the tree nymphs that he'd had to deal with on his last "Out Day" as they called them at the agency and shuddered. Then he remembered the dyspeptic--


Inspiration: Photo of suited man holding coffee, walking through a series of stainless steel pillars. http://www.flickr.com/photos/bonnevillekid/11801952233/
Story potential: Medium.
Notes: I'd like this to be more of a "practical approach is good" story instead of a "stuffed-shirt mundane gets rumpled" story. And it would be tricky to get this right so it doesn't descend into the cliched and cutesy.

The world was a joke, but nobody told the peoples who purchased it and immigrated en masse. Or rather, plenty of people told them, and in turn, the people told them right back that they didn't care, that it was their only option for a world of their own. It happened to be true. Earth no longer had space for reservations, no matter how serious the promises made to the peoples had been, and no matter how the history books made it clear that they'd already been wronged. Not all the reservations had yet been told that they had to go to the cities and live in stacked apartment buildings with lovely views of cement and no connection to the earth of their ancestors, but the immigration was written on the wall for those who knew how to read it. Already, the youth were being lost to the cities, and most who left to get a valuable education left swearing that they would return and ended up coming back only for the ritual ceremonies. So when they had a chance to buy their own world, pre-terraformed, they took it. When they reached it and realized that the only way they could live there and preserve a correct percentage of the world as "wild" was to move into homes stacked even higher than the cities they'd fled--


Inspiration: A miniature world photo - http://www.flickr.com/photos/cedarsphoto/11399229983/
Story potential: Medium.
Notes: Interesting setting. Because somehow they make it work.

The front wall had been bombed out, but the roof only had a few leaks, and the remaining three walls were brick and likely to remain strong unless somebody decided that coming back and bombing through the ruins was a good idea. Not likely unless they hit a certain max number of occupants and triggered an alert for possible rebel activity. She had a pretty good idea of what that max limit was, and any time a squat town came within a standard deviation of it, she packed up her bag and left in the night. Sometimes she didn't hear about it being destroyed later. Not like there was a regular newspaper coming out with tall the wipe-outs, of course, but people moved around by necessity or choice, and there was the custom of passing along the news when you reached a new place. Some people would just stand out in the open and talk until they were hoarse, others were more circumspect and wrote with charcoal on the walls so that people could see, and still others would hide and wait to be sure it was safe, then spring out like a trapdoor spider and grab somebody, pull them back to the lair, and spill all their secrets to that person before letting him or her go. She really didn't like the trapdoor spiders. She thought that approach might be almost as risky as the out-in-the-openers, if only because there were other kinds of trapdoor spiders, and not everyone who looked harmless enough ot grab really was. It was a good way to end up with a shiv in your throat, if you grabbed the wrong person and didn't make your intentions real clear right off.


Inspiration: Photo of a partially destroyed house - http://www.flickr.com/photos/jawadqasrawi/11233977893/
Story potential: Medium
Notes: Not really a story idea, kind of a standard post-invasion scenario, but I do like the character voice.