Scrubbing away a decade of bad karma is a lot harder than you might think, especially since that bad karma? Yeah, it messes with you. Makes everything harder than it should be. Ruins your best efforts, puts banana peels in your path, and sends drunk drivers veering straight at you. And sometimes I screw up, and I do something that darkens my karma more than it cleans it. Kinda depends, you think about it. I killed a guy who was a real bad guy who did bad things to lots of people. All those people's happiness and relief and safety brightened things up more than killing him darkened it. On the other hand, I rescued a cat that was about to get run over by a taxi. Mangy cur hissed and ran away. Turned out it had rabies and it bit somebody afterward, so saving a cat was worse than killing a man. Just depends. Best I can do is muddle through and watch out for ladders and drunk drivers and check all my belongings twice before I leave the movie theater.


Inspiration: Ida Marie - "Bad Karma"
Story potential: Medium
Notes: Interesting character idea, but not enough here.

The spires of St. Petersburg rose before him, the breath of the firebird hissed past his ear, the heavy iron of the gun weighed down his hand, and the blood of the tsarina throbbed against his heart. He lifted his hand to touch the handkerchief the spot of her blood had fallen on in salute, and then he strode through the snow across the square to the squat building beside the spires. It was a bureaucratic, stolid-looking building, all about business and red tape and the necessary lubrications of rubles and vodka. But he came with a pack of invisible wolves raging across the snow behind him, leaving no tracks--

Inspiration: Everybody else is going to an awesome Russian vodka bar, and I'm staying home sick. I really wanted to visit this place, too.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Obviously, lots and lots more research needs to be done. I don't even know the pieces to fit together. Something in the Russian folktales and the grim beauty of the land makes me want to write this, though. After a lot of research. In maybe 2-3 years, when I'll be able to write even better.

Weary from their journey, they sat beneath the shade of the great banyan tree, squatted on their haunches, and chewed at the fruits they'd brought in their bags. Around them stretched the scrub desert, empty of any visible life. Then a small bird flew up into the sky from a bush nearby and they jumped to their feet, their hands reaching for their spears. There were predators in the scrub, predators that were not them and could kill them all easily, spears or no spears. There were also smaller beasts that would only attack if they thought the group to be easily taken. They had reckoned their chances before they set out, and they knew that it would be a true trial to persevere through, but with all others dead or dying around them, they had been forced--

Inspiration: "Weary from your journey"
Story Potential: High.
Notes: A true survival tale. I'm thinking--plague, perhaps, something that wipes everybody out. Some truly Biblical shit. And they can't go to their nearest neighbors because they have been told that they will be killed on sight. But they can go to a very far neighbor, across a desert, because the government figures that by the time they cross the desert, any infected will have died. So--true struggles to survive and adapt in a strange and hostile environment, some Moses & the promised land, some plague resurgence, some truly complicated things...and then safety. Maybe. For a time. Huh. Sounds like a novel, dunnit?

"Kill her."
"Let's not be overhasty--"
Miranda's skin started to sweat again. She was still terrified, but not the bone-dry terror of a few minutes ago. If the elders decided to kill her, she would have no chance to escape. She could run as far as she chose, and still her fate would find her, at the hands of a stranger, or a child, or an animal, or some creature gone and away before any could try and punish it. It would probably look like an accident. She had resigned herself to death., and her body had begun to prepare. Now hope breathed back into her, and with it the natural responses of a body in terror. She nearly pissed herself.
"What do you suggest?"
"Reparations."
Miranda nearly fainted with relief. Reparations would be terrible and painful and--

Inspiration: "overhasty"
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Pretty standard beginning to a quest-type story.