May 2012
15 posts
A young writer overwhelmed by obligations wishes to exist in a library in a frozen bubble of time, to work as long as she likes. Her wish is unexpectedly granted, and she finds herself whisked away on a writer’s retreat in just such a library. At first she works feverishly, and makes tremendous progress on her life’s work. But then she becomes curious about the library; so empty, so...
A young contestant wants to win this year’s pumpkin contest at the county fair very, very badly — but is worried mere agricultural skill won’t be enough. What lengths will he go to in order to win? Sabotage? Theft? …Murder?
A young woman takes the wrong backpack when she leaves a cafe. She discovers the mistake when it starts making noises. Inside, she discovers a small, furry creature of a kind she’s never seen before. Is it an experiment? An alien? Something else? Why was it in a backpack at all — and what lengths will the people who lost it go to to get it back?
An oil baron’s daughter visits Nigeria and sees the extreme environmental and social destruction wrought by her family business. But when she returns home, the heiress finds that it’s no surprise to anyone.
She resolves to change the company from the inside — but finds herself instead plunged into a deadly and decades-old chess match between businesses and governments, with...
When drilling for oil at the bottom of a salt water lake, the engineers also unearth an ancient type of weed which feeds on proteins and kills in order to get them. Initially it goes unnoticed, but when the fish start disappearing from the lake, a scientist notices that something is wrong. Initially he is met with disbelief, until all the fish are gone and the weeds -imbued with a primal sense...
A mysterious plague has rendered the world unable to speak — maybe never again. How will this plague change the world?
In the not so distant future, the “must-have” thing for fashionable urbanite female professionals is the Manbot. Part housekeeper, part executive assistant and part tireless lover, this android is every working girl’s ultimate dream.
So when Sally gets one as a birthday gift from her friends she cannot help but fall for his smoothness and ability to anticipate her every...
Euterpe, the muse of song, loses yet another promising artist to drugs and alcohol. She suffers an overwhelming crisis of confidence. Does she do more harm than good to those she visits? The thought drives her to entirely withdraw from mankind for a time — but what happens when every song we sing is entirely uninspired?
A recently divorced businessman, a bit drunk and down on his luck, wanders through the streets of New Orleans. In one of the bars he encounters a 40-something voodoo priestess looking for a male to complete a ceremony she had planned for that night. Partially because he’s drunk, partially because he’s at a stage in his life where he doesn’t give a damn any more, he agrees....
The story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff from the perspective of the troll — a humble toll-taker just trying to do his job despite aggressions from a gang of ever-larger goats.
A global crisis is upon us: a plague that has devastated coffee, cacao, and tea crops. Will war break out over the last remaining stockpiles of chocolate and caffeine? Or will a newly and forcibly clean-breakfasted world find itself entering a new golden age of peace?
A “fallen woman” stands on the edge of a high building, ready to commit suicide. Downstairs a crowd has gathered to see whether she will jump or not. While a policeman tries to dissuade her, she makes her decision and jumps. Only, instead of falling to her death, she decelerates in mid-air and - to everyone’s surprise, including her own - she lands safely on the ground. The...
One day, while lying in a hammock staring at the clouds, a man sees a face appear. It speaks to him, telling him of future events, and giving him a task — he must build a spaceship and collect genetic material with which to escape the earth, because a terrible disaster is coming.
Nobody nearby saw or heard a thing. He knows it’s crazy. It must be crazy. But then the events the giant...
A 30-something Parisienne sees her husband and child killed in a terrorist attack. As she finds the authorities unable to capture the culprits, her grief evolves into a desire for revenge. Even though she doesn’t know where to start or what to do, she quits her job and sets out to make those who murdered her family pay for what they did. Will she succeed, or will she die trying?
A traveller arriving late at an airport accidentally steps into the wrong courtesy car. Tired from his journey he falls asleep and doesn’t notice that the driver doesn’t bring him to his hotel, but to a manor in the countryside. Only when he gets out of the car, he notices something is wrong. He starts explaining to the driver he is in the wrong place, but the man doesn’t...
April 2012
37 posts
The death of Carmen Spencer appeared to be an accident. A woman, on her way home, losing her hat in the wind. As she tried to catch it, she slipped on the wet pavement and fell into the river. Even though she was an expert swimmer, she didn’t make it out as somewhere during her fall, she hit her head and fell unconscious.
Or perhaps the truth was different. Perhaps Carmen was followed...
An alien race lands on earth and proceeds to ignore humanity entirely — they’re making first contact with ants. Can we prove our intelligence to creatures who believe our works are driven entirely by blind instinct? Or will a ferocious size mismatch and inability to communicate by scent render us forever excluded from galactic society?
A group of teens go camping in the woods, far out of cell service. One by one, they disappear — and the rest begin to worry that they’re being murdered. They argue about whether they should they head back to town for safety, or it that would be abandoning their missing friends to danger.
Finally, though, one teen find himself all alone — and tracks the missing friends to a...
As forty days and nights of rain fall on a California town, its people grapple with a dark gloom and depression that threatens even solid marriages and old friendships. As the rain continues and the town is threatened by media interest, flooding, and deadly mudslides, can they pull together again and remember just what’s important in life?
Deep in the inlands of Romania, there is a Transylvanian family which still carries the dormant vampire gene from old count Vlad, also known as Dracula.
On his 18th birthday, the eldest son from the family accidentally eats the only type of meat that activates the gene, and immediately develops a much more sanguine appetite.
Unfamiliar with his new vampire ways, he turns to his easiest...
An American returns to Prague, a city he last visited during the tumultuous Spring of 1968. As he walks the streets he remembers the friends he had and lost during the Soviet crackdown.
He also remembers the love he knew and had to leave so she’d be safe. For her protection, he couldn’t even write to her during the years of occupation.
As he thinks of her, he starts wondering. ...
A county fair’s annual, extremely prestigious hot dog cook-off is thrown into chaos when the toppings genius favored to win turns up dead. Who wanted him out of the way? And who makes the top dog now that he’s gone?
A curator in an auction sales house finds herself inexplicably drawn to an ancient artefact/amulet. At the risk of losing her job, she decides to take it home, telling herself she isn’t stealing, but just borrowing it for closer inspection.
Once at home she at once starts deciphering the ancient language written on the sides of the amulet, something at which the greatest scientists...
Through an obscure website, three serial killers launch a competition in which the one of them who commits the most spectacular and inspiring murders over the course of the year, without getting caught, can call himself the ultimate killing machine. The winner will be the one who receives most votes on the videos, photos, stories and/or other materials he uploads. So the murders begins, and...
A child has recurring nightmares about the end of the world. Her parents soothe her, telling her there’s nothing to be worried about — but then her dreams start coming true. Is it coincidence, or is the end of the world truly upon them? And somewhere in her dreams, is there a key to stopping it and saving the world?
An industrial accident in a glue factory leaves estranged old friends trapped in close proximity. Can they work out their differences? Will they be overcome by fumes? And will any fledgling truce they reach stand the test when they’re free to leave one anothers’ company?
Jessica Fogg, the great-grand-daughter of the man who travelled the world in 80 days, now challenges the Royal Geographical Society that she will travel the world on 80 dollars/euros. Accompanied by her dog Woddy (named that way because he loves Vodka) she sets off to meet the adventures that lie ahead.
A Ghost Bus — like the ghost ships one might be more familiar with, this rusted school bus prowls the neighborhood, leaving dark clouds of diesel exhaust in its wake. The unlucky soul who boards it will find no living thing aboard; only drifting cobwebs and the inscrutable graffiti of bygone decades…
Twenty frustrated chickens in a coop go on strike until the farmer can provide them with a rooster.
When on Thursday, April 1st an April fool’s prank by seven university students gets out of control, one of them gets killed.
Rather than report this accident to the police, the others run and decide to keep quiet about it, blaming their friend’s misfortune on too much alcohol and a reckless attitude.
They get on with their lives and become lawyers, dentists, business people. ...
At a holiday resort, after a day of too much sun, alcohol and innuendo, two couples decide to swap partners for a night. They all enjoy the experience in their own way, yet it is clear that when morning comes something has changed in their relationships. This only becomes more apparent when, back home, the couples need to come to grips with the (unspoken) insecurities, desires and doubts which...
At the top of a mossy cliffside carved out by the sea, a candle is lit. It burns, waiting. It flickers in the wind but does not dim nor go out. The candle burns down, but slowly, slowly, over the course of years, centuries. It was lit as a beacon — to help a magician find the way home again. But what magician? Where did she go, and why? What will happen when the candle burns out?
A modern retelling of Thumbelina. At first she struggles to create independence as an adult in a world where transportation and long-distance communication are practically impossible on her own. Eventually she learns to turn her size to her advantage and becomes a global expert on micro-scale electronics. But in a world where every potential mate is hundreds of times her own size, will she always...
SugarSubstitute Inc. is a global corporation with the clear mission of replacing every natural sweetener on the planet with an artificial one. They have been quite successful in doing so in most markets, yet somehow they cannot seem to move people away from honey. So they put their best marketers on the case. They find out that it’s all due to the early exposure of children to Winnie de...
A photographer obsessed by ghosts spends a summer at his boyhood home in New England trying to capture evidence of supernatural activity. Instead, he slowly uncovers a history of madness and fear passed through three generations of his family, and on to him. Were the vivid ghosts of his youth merely these ghosts of the past all along?
Not many humans know that when you read a book, the book also reads you. As your dreams, feelings and thoughts color the narrative in your mind, the characters in the book experience every part of your personality.
In this story, it causes one of the book characters to fall in love with the woman which has read the book in which he plays a part, over and over again. So much that he wants to...
In London a series of women has been murdered in remarkably explicit ways. The case is assigned to a female DI, who actively starts investigating. Initially these murders are considered unconnected, because each is unique. But a chance discovery suddenly connects all the victims to one man. In the months before their death, each of the women had a very short, passionate relationship with him....
A family picnic goes horribly wrong in every way imaginable: not just ants or forgetting to pack the sandwiches, but both — plus bears, a lightning storm, and an impromptu dragnet through the state park as state troopers search for a murderer. Will they make it out alive? And will they improbably have a good time all the same?
Somewhere in the American Midwest there is a corn maze which gets built every year. Every year a child gets lost and never returns. But no one ever thinks of it, because as the child vanishes, so vanishes every memory it. This year it happens again, and Molly, a 6 year old girl spending the summer holidays in the village disappears. But for some reason, her mother doesn’t forget her...
You know the classic scene: A girl is leaving the country, perhaps forever. A boy realizes he loves her and has to stop her before it’s too late. He arrives at the airport in the nick of time and swears his devotion to her. But in his rush to the airport, he finds her phone — and discovers that she was never who he thought she was. Has he been set up? Was anything between them ever...
A low-traffic blogger in search of a quote on a new product launch contacts the CEO of a major corporation. She unexpectedly gets much more than she’s hoped — an exclusive interview.
Why her? The CEO doesn’t trust the mainstream press to report on the story as given, so he says. But the story is crazy on the face of it, and implicates governments on four continents in a massive...
On a public library shelf sits a little book. It doesn’t seem to amount to much, but its story is powerful enough to make those that read it want to change their lives. And so we follow the book as it passes from reader to reader. We see a woman deciding to leave her abusive husband. A man quitting his monotonous life to pursue a passion for art. A teenager on the brink of suicide...
A future anthropologist unearths a treasure trove of video games, and concludes from it that during this time, the U.S. was an extremely violent society, utterly obsessed with war, in which women and children were rarely permitted in public.
The Other Me
A scientist discovers a way to enter a parallel universe. He enjoys crossing over, as he finds out that his other-world alter ego is a well-to-do bad boy with a lifestyle full of money, thrills and beautiful women. But after a few enjoyable trips, he realizes that each time he crosses over, his “twin” takes over his life as well. This creates a modern day Jekyll & Hyde dilemma...
A generation ship lands on a distant planet after a thousand-year journey, but its society has developed a crippling agoraphobia. The residents find themselves unable to live in the limitless horrors of the wide-open farms and ranches their progenitors had designed for them. Can they repurpose their limited resources for life planetside, perhaps by digging warrens in the rocky soil? Or will they...
A town thrown to its knees by a crime wave decides to start gaslighting the gang responsible for their trouble, sowing fear and distrust among the gangsters. Newspapers printed with the wrong date, crimes unremarked, stores and homes relocated overnight… How far will it go?
A genetic researcher finds the petals of an extinct flower pressed between the pages of an old book, and recreates the rare bloom from extracted DNA as a peace offering to a lifelong professional rival and romantic interest.
The horses on an antique carousel left in an abandoned amusement park come to life — they are Diomedes’s horses, trapped for centuries after playing their part in Hercules’s labors, and now the magic that has trapped them has decayed. Can they be trapped again, before their preferred diet of human flesh takes its grisly toll?
A serial killer suffers flood damage to his secret torture basement and tries to get it covered by insurance. Hilarity ensues!
A child throws a tantrum and wishes she didn’t have any parents at all - and her wish is granted. She must journey across mountains, oceans and deserts in a land of parentless children to discover why. Can she break the spell?
