She saw the local primates eating the leaves and so decided to risk trying them herself. It probably wasn't the most scientific approach, but it was the best she had. And it worked. Granted, the first thing she'd done when she realized the situation was attempt to feed the primates a tiny piece of her last ration bar and watch to make sure it didn't die. The feeding was a success, the watching less so. She did get the sense that something was following her after that, and occasionally she got a glimpse of *a* primate watching her intently through the leaves, but she had no way of knowing if it was actually the one she'd fed. She decided to risk it anyway, and before she became too weak to recover from any possible negative side effects of the food. Good thing, too, since the first thing she noticed was that things were turning pink around her, and then--well, then the hallucinations started full bore. Great, she thought. She'd found the local primates' drug of choice and eaten enough to get a healthy wallop. She climbed--


Inspiration: Photo of a monkey eating a leaf: http://www.flickr.com/photos/41460120@N04/10960163236/
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Eh.

The warmth led to predictions of warmer weather, less rain, an increase in pollen count as the trees responded, and a high danger of hornet attacks. She gritted her teeth as she read the news and then went up to the attic to dig out the armored hornet-suit and helmet required for leaving the house. She made enough to afford the suit, and her job had made it clear from day one that certain hazards would not be acceptable reasons for not making it into work. Those unacceptable reasons included things like tornadoes, flooding, hornets, and mass rioting (as long as it hadn’t blocked all the roads, though it was acceptable if she was absent because she'd called the company helicopter line and been told that helitaxi wasn't available or that they were staying in place because of reported surface-to-air missiles being used by the hypothetical rioters). They'd handed her a whole long list of catastrophes that she had to keep track of and act according to protocol on in order to stay employed. On the plus side, the benefits were amazing, the protocols that she had to follow for emergencies were well-thought-out and included details on how to safeguard relatives, and for the really expensive protocols, there was an emergency fund/supplies available for her use and draw, though she would have to plan out how to explain it fully. Fortunately, thinking ahead counted well towards her annual review, and so it had been no trouble to get the hornet-suit for herself and her daughter when the first hornet incursion was reported within one range of their current temperature zone.


Inspiration: "Feel So Numb" - Rob Zombie -> "you see it" -> http://gawker.com/this-hornet-will-be-the-last-thing-you-see-before-you-d-1428724767
Story potential: High.
Notes: Because eek. And also, wow, what job is that cool/demanding?

You're a fool to break the rules, even if you don't understand why they're there. Especially if you don't understand why they're there. "Don't step into an elevator shaft" is a pretty straightforward rule, and we can figure out why that's a rule, and if we have climbing gear and rope, well, that's not such a disaster to break that rule. It's the rules that seem to make no sense that sometimes have the most severe consequences for those not expecting them. And sometimes, it's the rules that seem to make sense and then you realize that they existed for an entirely different reason than you thought, those are the rules you really have to watch out for. Oh, it's not like there's some great big nanny-alien who reaches down and swats your hand when you break one of these rules that are suddenly there. Nope. The rules are for our own protection, they told us on their one and only public announcement, and we were of course free to follow them or not as we liked. They did insist that we put bracelets on our children to keep them from crossing certain limits. That didn’t go over very well, and soon the bracelet rule vanished and instead people under a certain height and weight simply were unable to go past the borders without a high-pitched, annoying sound (worse by far than any of those mall alarms designed to drive off teenagers) ringing inside their head and getting steadily louder the closer they got (though without damaging them). Kids sometimes dared each other to see how far into the loud zone they could go, but they tended to crumple and pass out at a certain point, before the real danger struck, and then we would all hope that the other kids would come and get an adult.


Inspiration: "No One Knows" - Queens of the Stone Age
Story potential: High.
Notes: I like this mix of free will and alien control. And of course, the reason there are these rules is because the aliens did something else to Earth--maybe turned it into a giant alien preserve/melting pot? Regardless, they introduced a lot of other hazards. Could also play this with a fantasy spin, of course.

The jeweler--if you could call one who abused his profession so religiously a jeweler (he insisted that he was simply returning to the historical roots of his profession)--pushed away the velvet tray cradling the jewel and flipped his loupe up. "It's fake," he said flatly. "No," she said numbly, "no, that's not possible. He loved me and this, keeping and getting this, this was the reward for--I can't tell you, but I almost died. Those dear tome did. It was the last thing he did, passing this into my hands. It can't possibly be fake. He said he would find me, he's following on the next ship out. He'll be here in six months. I tell you, it's not possible that it's fake. I need this to live off of until then." The jeweler sighed and looked at her with sad old eyes that looked like they'd seen an awful lot of the world before deciding to stick with inanimate stones. "I can give you 10o credits for it, and I might be able to sell it as costume jewelry." She reached out and grabbed it without thinking, wrapping her hands around it. Maybe he was just trying to rip her off, to get her valuables for nothing. She bolted from the shop without responding, and the soft sound of the door shushing closed behind her sounded like a sigh.


Inspiration: The little fake jewel on my desk.
Story potential: Low.
Notes: It's not a jewel, it is valuable, she won't find that out until she's gone through a lot of hell.

Nobody likes trees anymore. We still remember that they're necessary to clean the air and provide wood and food and shelter and all that, but nobody likes living near the trees and nobody likes going in the trees. Same thing goes for cities with skyscrapers or other tall buildings that block out the lights and leave only shadows. I think we've reverted back to the Medieval Age, when women and children were warned to stay away from the edge of the forest and where the men treaded cautiously, where half the stories around the campfire were of the bad things that could happen to people who wandered into the forest when they shouldn't. And of course, nobody would go into the woods at dawn or dusk or nighttime. Nobody goes anywhere at nighttime. We huddle inside our safe, warm, bright houses, with all the curtains pulled. Less because we don't want them to see us--what good would that do--than because we don't want to glance out on our yard and see a dark shadow scudding across it, only to look up and see a bright moonlit sky with not a cloud in sight. In addition to snow days, we now have cloud days. The weather forecast predicts how dense the shade will be, and whether it will be safe to go out and see. They're a lot more careful with their predictions these days, too, ever since that poor man in Boston walked into the studio and shot the weatherman he blamed for getting his family snatched.


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/josepha46/9369874988/
Story potential: Medium
Notes: I like the idea of this kind of adaptation, but it's more of a setting than a story idea--the whole story would need to be something else.

The sea woke them. That's the best idea we've been able to figure out, in the hasty months since we fled our coastal villages and retreated farther away. The trick was retreating upland and away from the sea while at the same time staying away from the kind of stone formation that was linked with the earliest outbreaks. All I can say is: thank God for overzealous paleontologists clearing some coasts of anything that looked like it might be a fossil, from the smallest shells to the eggs to what looked like broken eggshells found alongside them. I suppose I needn't add that natural history museums all over the world, even those in what we think are safe zones, closed in an awful hurry with military guards keeping safe zones outside of them until a specialist could get flown in to examine the collection and mark potentials for removal and study. I’m not an expert, thank goodness, I just work for one. My particular charge is subject to all the stereotypical absent-minded professor traits that you've ever seen in a movie: her hair looks like something nested in it, she tends to forget that her glasses are on top of her head until she needs them, and left to her own devices when she's wrapped up in something that interests her she would neither eat nor sleep. Me? I'm the bodyguard, the "termination specialist"--I guess I am something of a specialist after all--assigned to her just in case. She knows what she's doing. I'm the muscle to keep her alive long enough to get some useful data out of it.


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lastef/9260844125/
Story potential: High.
Notes: And both of them are female and not romantically interested in each other. This story would pass the Bechdel test, damn it! This story bit here isn't enough, of course, but it's really the relationship between these two that makes me interested in it.

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.

She was going to die because of the weather. She sat in the lounge, looking out the window at the aquamarine blue snowflakes sliding down the bubble. The weather meant no flights. No escape. No chance. They would track her soon enough to the town, and why would a refugee run to a transit town so small it only had two bars and no church? A one-horse town, it would have been called in the state she grew up in. The only reason was the small port. It wasn't a regular human transit port, just a general workhorse of a shipping depot, hauling things in from offworld and shipping intraworld and transshipping those few luxuries expensive enough to make it worthwhile. That's why she'd chosen it. It hadn't seemed like it would be their first choice of a place to hunt for a girl looking for a flight off-planet. It wasn't even listed in most directories, simply because usually human cargo wasn't taken on. It could be, though.


Inspiration: A snowy day, my husband refusing to go anywhere.
Story potential: High.
Notes: So she doesn't go anywhere. She stays right there--somehow. Gains an invisible job? Hides out among the machines? Something. And then plot ensues.

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!

The sheep are friendly, open-faced, and inquisitive. They still have the rudimentary hands that they were given to allow them to crew during the voyage. The mutagen rate had dropped a lot more than expected, but they had formed their own odd society by the time the humans woke up from their long sleep in rad-hardened coffins frozen down to below zero. The sheep performed the duties assigned them and were rewarded by the ship pellets. The most interesting thing was that a fault in the computer killed one of the crucial reward circuits only 10 travel years from the final colony--and the sheep kept performing the task. Without them, the entire colony would have flown straight into the sun. So it is sickening that the reason they are kept now is because they are good for meat. Even though we are on starvation rations as we get the colony up and running, a good quarter of the colonists have voluntarily become--not vegetarian, but non-sheep-eaters.


Inspiration: Cake's "Sheep Go to Heaven" -> Googled "sheep" ->
Suffolk (sheep) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffolk_(sheep)
Jump to: navigation, search. A 7-month-old Suffolk ram. Suffolk sheep are a black-faced, open-faced breed of domestic sheep raised primarily for meat. Contents ...
Story potential: High.
Notes: Hmm. The challenge here would be dancing around the various cliches.