The woods were twilight, sere, and deep, and she almost fell into the mural before she caught herself and pulled back. Just a mural, just paint on bricks. She wavered, but did *not* put her hand out to steady herself on the wall. If I don't see it, if I don't fall into it, then I can believe that it's not real anymore. That it was just my meds not being right. She closed her eyes and turned away. She had her meds. She had her crappy little studio apartment and her crappy little job at Kinko's and her--okay, pretty awesome, actually--boyfriend and the group of friends who'd stuck with her through what her parents called "The Episode."

Inspiration: Firefox's "Mysterious Blue Forest" persona.
Story Potential: Medium-high?
Notes: Might work pretty well as a POV balanced against http://penthius.livejournal.com/264861.html. Also, sere is almost certainly not the right word there.

The sun shone hot in the red sky. Heat waves sizzled and danced above the sidewalks and the metal fire escape ladders were so hot that if you spat out the window, the spit would sizzle on the metal. If you tried to grab the fire escape with your hand, you'd get a raised welt there in only a few seconds. She hadn't tried to fry eggs on the metal, but she'd seen others do it. Didn't work too well; you only ended up with mushy scrambled eggs that, well, you couldn't even eat. No chance of properly frying an egg. She sat in front of the fan and stared out the window at the endless heatscape, wondering when she would ever escape it. The offices were a temporary respite, but they were a different world, one too cold and too pale and--

Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/70854278@N00/3508139861/
Potential: Low
Notes: Potential's low because this isn't really a story. I like it, though. But there's still no story.

She was in the park when she noticed the close attention the birds were paying to the man by the fountain. It was odd--she'd walked past the fountain a million times before, and always it seemed that there were people hovering about and looking. This was the first time she'd seen a man sitting by the edge of the fountain and leaning far, far out over it, to the base of the statue itself. It was strange, she reflected, that children never played in the fountain. People never threw quarters in for good luck, bums never tried to scrounge around for change in the fountain. Nobody ever sat on the edge of the fountain, either. It was always, instead, that they stared at it, or commented on it as they walked past. She was not one of the starers. She sped up whenever she walked past, because she did not like the way the strange, blocky shape seemed to loom,. It was a cold thing, a thing not of the park. Come to think of it, it was the first time she'd seen birds anywhere near it. Or squirrels. Or rabbits. Or any of the rest of the park's semi-urban wildlife.

Inspiration: "An Exultation of Larks," by James Lipton
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Who has two thumbs and a good idea? This girl!

"Hey, man, you want some--" he started to say, planning on hassling the middle aged man who'd just crossed the street. He knew the guy--thought he lived around there--but the guy wasn't a user. His jaw dropped open when the man dropped the briefcase he was carrying, revealing a hidden sawed-off shotgun. The dealer lurched for cover, but he hadn't been ready, and the sheer shock of seeing a boring middle-aged civilian with a serious weapon had made him slow. The shotgun blast cut him in half. One arm fell reaching toward the door of the building that he kept his stash in. The sound of gunfire made his gang brothers swear and tumble out of the building, looking for the rival gang sure to have started shit. They gaped at the middle-aged businessman. Then a soccer mom pulled up in her van, swinging the car wide so that the back end was pointing at them. The doors flew open, and a battalion of grim-faced mommies swung around the machine gun bolted in back--

Inspiration: It was very satisfying to write that.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: I could write 5,000 very satisfying words of that. But I need something a bit catchier to make it a good story. OTOH, I bet a lot of people would enjoy reading something like that, too.