There had been forty darks since the man died. A red light blinked in the corner of Rex's eyes, an alarm that matched the red light blinking on the new-man-place. The Man had not emerged. After thirty darks, the Man was supposed to leave the new-man-place. He would smell funny, but he would smile and call Rex's name and scratch him behind the ears in just the right place. Then he would go in the shower and put on skins that made him smell more like the Man should.


Inspiration: DeviantArt painting of dog alone, staring out of overgrown ruin. https://www.deviantart.com/art/Alone-701194787
Story potential: Low.
Notes: So the dog goes on a quest to find someone to fix the cloning tank, and he finds a child, and it ends up becoming part of the pack. Meh.

It was all around the world. Everywhere she went, people were just singing, "Lalalalala." She flinched when she heard it come over the intercom after she boarded a plane to Australia (figuring that Australia might be the best, most isolated bet), but everywhere else, people seemed to be mostly functional, going about their everyday routines and chores in a perfectly fine, rote way, even if they no longer talked to each other or initiated any new behavior. Sometimes she wondered what would happen at the end of the year, if the children would still go back to the same classrooms that they'd been in when the singing started. All they did was sit there and sing, the teacher standing oat the head of the class to supervise them. She’d checked the school near her first thing, to see if there were any--any kids like she was, anybody who would not be fitting in. She assumed they'd still be fed and cared for, because that was a thing that the singers did, but they'd probably be horribly confused and terrified. In some ways, she supposed, they might even be safer. She didn't know if there was still much crime, since the newspapers just printed black squares of photos and La lal alal laalalaa for text, but she knew she'd heard no police sirens since it started, though the officers still drove by in their cruisers, driving slowly and staring straight ahead.


Inspiration: Around the World (La La La La La) - ATC
Story potential: High.
Notes: A different, non-harmful, non-(immediately)-infrastructure-destroying apocalypse. Only the deaf and the tone-deaf aren't caught up in it.

Dinner was steamed wheat noodles with mole, mung bean, ogbono nut and chipmunk. He stared at it grimly. The mole would add some flavor, the nuts and mung beans were critical. After all mung beans were one of the best sprouts that they could manage even in the caves, without worrying that their harvest would be ruined by a ravager. The chipmunk...was hardest to swallow. Metaphorically and literally. He'd always thought they were cute little things, fun to watch out of his window, and a childhood spent watching Disney films meant that he was thoroughly inculcated with how irresistibly adorable and always on the side of good they were. You never saw a Wicked Witch and her flying chipmunks, or an evil stepmother with a chipmunk perched happily on her shoulder grinning at you. And literally, there was so little meat on the thing and its bones were so tiny and sharp, it was almost not worth the trouble. That could be said about their whole life, though, and had been said by some. He wouldn't say that, because the thing that made it all worthwhile crouched in front of him, holding the little chipmunk leg with her fingers and sucking the marrow from the bones with loud smacking noises. She saw him looking and beamed at him. "Want some, Dada?"


Inspiration: Chaotic Shiny's meal generator. Yup. They added the chipmunk, not me.
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Eh.

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.

Light travels at a different rate in the mountains. First it covers the peaks and slowly it creeps down the side of the mountain until it reaches the valley. It leaves in reverse, letting shadows sink in to cover us first. So sometimes if you get a really paranoid person who habitually wakes up and tunes in to the radio before the sun reaches that valley floor, if you hear a broadcast screaming at everyone to get out of the light, to hide and not let it touch you no matter what, and if you have fifteen minutes before the light touches the valley, well, you may survive. If you're paranoid, if you believe the broadcaster, or maybe just if you make it a habit to believe every paranoid threat because someday it's going to be right. Not many of us types live in the valley, of course. We favor higher spots up on the mountain, where it's harder for people to get to us. The advantage of high ground, right? But my daughter was 8 months pregnant with her second child, her husband had to work long hard hours, and she needed a hand with the kid. I knew the house well enough, and I believed the radio broadcast. I might not be at home, where I had the full supply stocked, but I did set up an emergency go bag as soon as I got in. Just reflex, really. I knew that my daughter would be the problem. Too many false alarms as a child. She'd never listen in time. But pregnancy's lack of sleep and hormones made her suggestible first thing in the morning. First thing I did was grab the radio and my go bag. I ran to my grandchild's room and lifted her out of bed. As she complained sleepily, I carried her down the steps and into the basement. There was one room without windows and I put her in there and then squatted down and said, very sternly, "You MUST stay here, do you understand? If you leave you will be in a whole lot of trouble." She nodded her head, scared. Good. Now to trick my daughter.


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/53400673@N08/8201465748/in/faves-aswiebe/
Story potential: High.
Notes: Light is bad, and maybe vampires are involved somehow, or not, and...not sure if this is actually a good story idea or if it just pulls at all my post-apocalyptic triggers!

There are a few ways to move up the corporate ladder. One way is to ruthlessly destroy everything in your path. That's not such a sustainable way--those guys usually burn out in middle management, are confused as to why, and spend the rest of their career ruining the lives of their underlings. They don't usually get expelled, though. Another way is to be everybody's friend, to express genuine interest in absolutely everything. Those guys are talented. I'm pretty suspicious of them, though. I don't trust all that bonhomie. They still push people to the outer perimeter without a qualm, even if they just listened very sympathetically to their tale of woe and patted them on the back and said it would be okay. Can't trust them. The third way probably didn't work very well until the enclaves developed, though you do hear stories, especially from back in the early days of industrialization.


Inspiration: Googled "introvert" -> "leadership advice for young introverted leaders"
Story Potential: Medium-High.
Notes: Mm, corporate enclaves. Tasty.

The alphabet shapes squiggled incomprehensibly before her eyes. She squinted, trying to learn. A. First came A. A looked like a roof with a cross-beam. But where *was* it? The shapes moved again in front of her eyes. "What's the problem here?" the teacher asked, approaching. She looked over Anna's shoulder and gasped. The letters moved. There was an--L. E. X. I--Anna couldn't remember the rest. "Lexigraph," the teacher muttered. "Oh shit." Anna looked up in shock. Mrs. Leann never swore, not ever. Anna lived out in shantytown, so she heard worse--


Inspiration: My address book.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: The word- and story-focused story ideas always strike me as just a bit too precious.

The last man took his last drink of whiskey, looked around the saloon that he'd taken over as his home--in the early days, because he figured that if anybody else was alive and came through town, they'd for sure stop there, unless they were Seventh Day Adventists, in which case he didn't want to meet them anyway. In the later days, it was because he liked not having to walk very far to get his liquor. The booze helped. Sometime, when he drank so much he thought he'd die the next day, he even saw people. But that was dangerous, and he knew it, and he was the last man alive because he didn't do things that were risky like that, because he played the odds and knew how to actually build things and kill things and generally survive.

Inspiration: "Last Man Standing" by Hybrid, Phil staggering around this morning.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: And that's his motive for going traveling. No booze.

The algal bloom was a deep purple, and the town cheered. Their remediation had been successful; they could incorporate a town on the edge of the lake and fish in it and bathe in its water and drink from it (after proper filtration, of course). They had been a wandering town for so long, with three failed remediation attempts behind them, that this was cause for celebration. And the town was between a long stretch with no other places nearby, so their town would make a natural waystation.

Inspiration: A Science Friday podcast about a winning science project that used algae as biological indicators.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: I love the idea of towns forming and then being a migrant town until they find a place they can remediate successfully enough to live there. Post-apocalypse-lite. Kinda a Western feel to it. Caravans of a town. Towns coming to other towns as they're on their search. Of course, this is only a setting, not a story.

It was only when she saw the farm report that she finally relaxed. It would be tight, but they would make it. The upset and commotion over her refusal tho share out the seed grain, the fighting with raiders, the tight belts and pinched bellies, all would be worth it--because they were going to make it. The greenhouses would be up and functioning by Spring, hopefully, but even if they weren't, all that had been sown and set to winter would be ready and edible. They would have potatoes and sweet potatoes and rutabagas to carry them through the winter when none of the greens could grow, no matter how sheltered. All that remained was to fight off those idiots who thought that just because they had guns, they could take the harvest of the colony--never mind that all would die once the farmers starved.


Inspiration: Getting a report from my new CSA! Exciting!
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: I think I switched the seasons up. And this is way too similar to every other post-apocalyptic survival story. Still, somehow charming. Harrumph. I need more post-apocalyptic survival-fantasy fiction, damn it! Grump. (That is, of course, how I started writing in the first place--well, a good half of it.)