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.

The death-thoughts lingered in the corridor. What if I make chicken.... I need to find a sitter... Oh god I don't have his money.... I wonder why she looked at him that way.... I ignored the last three ghosts and focused on the chicken. It was a good, strong thought, linked with the taste and look of chicken, so I should be able to track it. I knew the other three thoughts, two from a prostitute murdered by her pimp, and the last one from a boy who'd died accidentally. The chicken thought, though, was new, and I hadn't been called to the morgue to rule out new death-scents. So they didn't know she was dead.


Inspiration: A slate article about cadaver dogs: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/04/etan_patz_search_renewed_can_cadaver_dogs_smell_30_year_old_corpses_.html
Story Potential: High?
Notes: Mm, cadaver telepaths.... I do love this idea for a character.

The missile streaked across the sky like a cloud highlighted by the sunset. Two seconds before it wasn't there, two seconds later it was gone, and only the rising sun of the explosion would have told anyone its contrail was anything but a cloud lit by the sunset. We sat in the dhow, stunned, as the island we'd hoped could be sanctuary was destroyed. Suddenly, there was no sanctuary--and worse, we were among the last of our kind still free. Us and the guide, who we had all figured out was a guide because something in him did not click well with the hive.


Inspiration: A Flickr photo of a sunset.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: This is an okay start, but again, nothing new.

The trick about wiping memories is not to wipe them. That's the misnomer. That's the reason that people think it's never happened--oh, sure, in the beginning, maybe a teen wipes out a school and leaves everybody convinced it was a gas leak that caused oxygen deprivation and some brain damage, but after that, no. They'll be found and they'll be maintained and taught. You can't take something without leaving something else in their place. And an absence will be noticed, will be pushed at again and again, like a tongue at a gap in the teeth. But something misty and hazy, that won't be noticed much, beyond the nagging annoyance that age--

Inspiration: Episode 2 of the Dollhouse.
Potential: Medium-high?
Notes: I like this angle and view of it, but I'm not sure if this is an actual piece or just a fragment.

She played with their marbles, ratcheting them up in little lines and then shooting them off to bounce around edges and off each other straight to insanity. It was a fun game. She was pretty upset when her mother noticed and confiscated all their marbles and gave them back, but that was what mom's did, she guessed: they spoiled the fun. Then there were endless long lectures about why playing with other people's marbles was bad and would she like it if somebody played with her marbles? She said that nobody could, and her dad muttered, "I wouldn't be so sure about that," with a really uneasy look on his face that made her pay a little bit more attention and be a little bit more worried, but her mom just scowled at him and made him be quiet. That was the last time she was ever lectured by her parents, but she really wished--

Inspiration: A marble mixed in with pebbles in the bottom of the vase of origami flowers I keep on my desk.
Story Potential: High, actually.
Notes: And why does she never get lectured again? Oh, that's because her parents commit murder-suicide later that week, and she's sent into the foster-care system with the really uneasy feeling that somebody messed with her parents' marbles.

The surrogate arrived in town as the church bells tolled the death of the minister. It was a bone-chilling thing, to see the man in dusty black riding into town on the back of a donkey. That was the first thought he had. The second thought was to wonder if the surrogate had waited outside town until the bells began to chime before riding in. That was chilling in another way, but it was a bit reassuring, too. There was the slight hope that the man wasn't a supernatural agent, at least in the strictest sense. Of course, he wanted the surrogate to succeed, to discover the guilty party that had been near to destroying the town when the minister died, and seemed to have taken only a short break since. But he didn't want a creature--

Inspiration: "Surrogate" - the secondary meaning, that of a deputy acting in place of a religious figure.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Mystical and creepy and westerny, woo!