They don't warn you when you start eating hearts that eventually the heart you'll eat is your own. I have enough self-control to keep it to just the tiniest nibble every ten years or so, and I satisfy (ha!) myself with licking it in-between. You may have guessed that this results in constant hunger and a hollow spot in my chest even as I go on, but that much I kind of guessed would be the case, I just didn't understand why. It really took a while for it to sink in that my dreams of eating my own heart were not so much dreams, and were the cause of my sudden lack of energy, fainting spells, hollow feelings, and generally deadened aspect. Someday, if I live long enough, I might be able to persuade my heart to grow back. I’ve heard rumors that Koschei the Deathless started out as a heart-eater, and wound up able to grow his heart back enough and hide it well enough to live forever. Or perhaps he was just attempting to hide his heart from himself, and when the girl recovered it, she found a half-gnawed specimen of horror. Though you'd think that's the sort of thing a fairytale would keep in.


Inspiration: Google "quizzical" -> http://www.pressxtojustin.com/79890/376958/illustration/mola-rammed
Story potential: Medium-high
Notes: Interesting, could be good, this is more of a bare-bones and less of an anything that would actually mean something.

"What? You mean to say you knew this was a suicide on the first day, and you kept using departmental resources for the entire week to dig into it and figure out every last bit and tittle?"

"Yes, once you figure that by bit and tittle you mean the possible beginning of an epidemic of suicides."

"Epidemic, what epidemic?"

"The one that hasn't happened yet. Or is just starting to happen, depending on how you look at it. I think it’s either something in this place or a deliberate alteration. My money’s on some environmental factor, maybe linked to some sort of actual virus that spreads. I saw signs in her friends and enemies and work acquaintances of the same thing. Hell, I'd suspect that I have the same thing, but I'm a damn detective, so I've clearly been depressed and suicidal for a very long time. Now that I've talked to you, you should gt yourself checked out regularly and isolation Me, I'm going to go check into a hotel and refuse room service and ask them to leave the food at the door and try to avoid talking to anyone for at least a week. I've already warned everyone I interviewed or interacted with that I can remember."

"You've warned--you've started some kind of crazy health panic because one unstable woman committed suicide?!"

"She wasn't."

"Wasn't what."

"Unstable. She wasn't unstable. She was sent up from the Republic of Uzbek, and you remember how they insisted on all their representatives passing what was basically astronaut-level screening for psychological and physical health and competency? That was because they could afford so few representatives. She passed all the tests with flying colors. I would have been proud to have her at my back."


Inspiration: A series premier with a suicide mystery.
Story potential: Medium-high.
Notes: There's some hints here of space stuff, but that wouldn't be necessary.

"Noooo!" the hedgehog squeaked as it tumbled posterior over teakettle. (I say posterior because my mother really, really didn't like me to swear. She said it made us look poor.)

I stopped. I'd only been rolling it away from the bonding circle, but then, I'd never heard a hedgehog say something that sounded like...well, that sounded so much like it was actually saying something before. I began to have a really worried feeling about how this particular bonding ceremony was going to end up. Sure, everyone says that what you get is representative of your personality in some way, but I’d been hoping for a predatory cat or something else with sleek fur and sharp claws, that could be decorative or defensive. A hedgehog--I imagined what the other girls in the school would come up with to decorate a hedgehog, and I winced. Bows on every quill, no doubt, should the hedgehog sit still for it. I resolved then and there that I would make sure *my* hedgehog never got forced to sit still for such things, and it was only after I decided that that I realized what I'd done. I'd gone and accepted a hedgehog.

"Thank you," it said, as it rolled over and sprawled its feet out until it could stand up and waddle back into the circle.

"Don't thank me!" I denied hastily. "I didn't accept you!"

"Oh, yes you did."


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/__pjm__/9257319074/ Too cute!
Story potential: Medium-high
Notes: It really is ridiculously cute. And I like the idea that it indicates something in her that will be able to stand up to things a whole lot bigger than she is.

Shadows walk through the hours of the day when there should be no shadows. Death comes for those who should not die. Those who should die...transform into something else. All the world is falling apart. This is what the TV said, before it went blank, before it switched over to an automated broadcast emergency channel controlled by who knows what. That's what the radio said, before it went dead. That's what the newspapers said, while there were still any printed on a regular basis. Some of the newspapers have started back up again, but they print on strange and erratic schedules and half the time they seem to be spouting lies designed to trap people into places where they can be gathered in large groups. By something. IF people are being gathered by something. If that something, for which we have no name, even exists. Love can save us. We have been told that love can save us, and I do believe that. I believe it with all my heart, because without the prospect of something that can save us, we are a dead species, at least in the form that I remember existing before the shadows walked when shadows shouldn't. I'm just worried that I won't find anyone to love, to save me. My family is gone. I have no close friends. I try to make close friends, but I think they sense my desperation and read it as a hunger and fear that I am part of the something that we have no name for.


Inspiration: "Love is Gonna Save Us" - Benny Benassi
Story potential: Medium-high
Notes: Now to find a good, plausible *creepy* reason why love will save them.

"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.

You don't know me, but I know you. Your husband Dan doesn't know my friend Joe, but Joe knows him. Your neighbor Rod doesn't know my other friend Mary, but she knows him. That's the price you pay for living in a great and free society with a social net that protects you all, even if you don't know it. No unemployment, no infertility, no substance abuse problems, no legal problems. Anytime something like that happens, one of my friends sees it and one of your friends gets a fantastic job offer that they can't refuse. Huge party time! Then they leave, and you get a few letters now and again, referencing all the in-jokes you need, and eventually you just get a couple of Christmas cards and one day you realize you haven't heard from good old Jane in a long time, and wasn't it wonderful how she got that job right when she needed it most? And you try sending a letter, but it gets returned saying Unable to Forward, and maybe you try googling her or checking her social feed, but all it says is that she met a wonderful guy and changed her name and is going to spend more time with her family. Then there are a few cat pictures and some recipes and then nothing, right about the same time you stopped getting Christmas cards from her. Why do we go to all this trouble, you ask?


Inspiration: "Anonymous Face" - Quix*o*tic
Story Potential: Medium-high?
Notes: Mmm, tasty dystopia. I like this setting, but all the plot hints appear to be missing.

Whipspring is an amazing wood, and demand for it far outstrips supply. We have tried sending it elsewhere to grow, you see, but it never spreads. What we've planted stays, and that is it. The gentle lemurites live in the whipspring stands, and we've signed a pact that they will always have adequate habitat for their numbers. The range and breeding rate means that there is very, very little whipspring that can be spared. It does usually grow back the next season, but then a new tribe of lemurites moves in, too, making it not fair game for our woodcutters. Only a handful of people grumble about this on-world. We charge ridiculous sums of money for what we do harvest--and get it--and gullible tourists are happy to shell out large cash for "genuine" whipspring wood mementos. The real stuff is only sold through the official trade stand, certified and numbered, but offworlders assume that nobody could live with a resource restriction like that. They think that there must be bribes and exceptions.


Inspiration: "bamboo" -> "bamboo lemurs"
Story Potential: Medium-high
Notes: Y'know, ecology done right. Kinda want to show people actually preserving the full extent of a habitat by choice, and it working out reallyreally well for them, even if they don't understand the role of the lemur(ite) in the spread of the valuable tree just yet, or whether the lemurites are sentient or maybe the trees are...something is.

A teardrop on the fire, a quick pass with a vial to catch the steam as it went up, and just like that--passion's heart was captured. She didn't feel any different, not right away, but then--she'd been concentrating on the spell, not thinking of the pain of losing him, of losing her family, of losing them all. She could have gone the vengeance route, turned to the dark side, followed the left-hand path, but she'd held just enough of herself to make the other choice. She held in her hand the vial of pain and anger and rage and sorrow and heartbreaking agony. She felt light, as if she could drift off into the sky like thistledown. She sighed. She hadn't known quite how much relief she would feel--

Inspiration: "Teardrop" - Massive Attack
Story Potential: High? Medium-high?
Notes: So what happens all those many years later when she uncorks the vial?

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 heat of the desert sun penetrated through the white robes and veils. The rhythmic drumming of horses hooves underneath her as they raced across the salt flats. The bitter taste of the air in her mouth. The views of lakes in the distance, lakes that she knew were a lie. It was horrible and it would kill her if she lingered. She threw back her head and laughed gleefully. It was horrible, yes, but beautiful, and free in a way that she could never be where there were other lives around. Here--if she let free and a spike of energy shot out into the desert, there was no life to be harmed. At worst, she might kill her horse and herself. That was it. That was why--

Inspiration: "Shrine" by Beats Antique
Story Potential: Medium-high
Notes: I like the "feel" of it, but the story itself is not original enough to write.