Writing Prompt / Story Starter 38

He taped a key to the back of each hand, filled his pockets with ash and placed a penny under his tongue.

When the coin began to taste like blood in his mouth, began to taste like a bitten tongue, he stepped out into the snow and set off in search of his dead daughters.

Writing Prompt / Story Starter 31

So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, "The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size. There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.

Numbers chapter 13, verses 32–33

Writing Prompt / Story Starter 30

"Is this it?" asked Paul.

Jenny nodded. "This is it."

Paul took the small wooden cigar box from the table.

"Heavier than it looks," he said. "Can I open it?"

Jenny shrugged. "Up to you, really. But why waste it?"

"True."

Paul put the box back down on the table.

He grinned. "I can't believe you actually got it, Jenny. I mean, you were in Los Angeles for, what, two days?"

"Some things are easier to find if you don't try too hard."

"What should we use it for first?"

"I don't know. Maybe we should test it on something small to start with. A spider or something."

Writing Prompt / Story Starter 29

"I dreamt it," said Alex. "Last night."

"Dreamt it?" said Wiley.

"Yeah. I know. Crazy. But there you go."

"It looks like--"

"I know what it looks like."

"I don't mean 'what'. I mean who. It looks like her."

"Her?"

Wiley looked away from the tree, looked away from Alex, concentrated on the cars trundling by with their oblivious drivers and passengers.

"Yeah, her. Suzanne."

Writing Prompt / Story Starter 28

The house was full of birds.

I mean full of birds. Not lots of birds flying and hopping around and turning everything into one big monochrome Jackson Pollock.

No, not that all.

The house was full of birds.

As soon as we broke one window, they came spilling out.

Thousands of them. Dead, of course. Most of them. The front yard was awash with them in seconds.

Detective Banks started laughing. Not because it was funny, but because, well, what else are you going to do?

Writing Prompt / Story Starter 26

As tree stumps went, it was relatively small and Carl had anticipated it would take an hour to shift, two at most. But here he was, a full four hours later, hands raw, back screaming and with more dirt in his mouth and up his nose than he cared to think about.

He was on the verge of giving up entirely and calling in the professionals when it started to shift, courtesy of the garden fork he'd managed to wedge beneath the thing. He could hear roots tearing, tendrils snapping. And just as he was thinking how like a dentist he was, a dentist to ogres, he was surrounded by green-grey smog and a smell like every abscess in the world bursting at once.

Writing Prompt / Story Starter 25

He was in a cathedral of sorts, the distant, vaulted ceiling barely visible through a swirling veil of rusty cloud. There were things up there, between clouds and ceiling: winged; serpentine; vast.

It was too much. Brodie had to look away. He focused his attention on the distant walls, but there was no comfort to be found there. The great blocks out of which the building was made were somehow both solid and fleshy; muscular. They seemed to expand and contract, as if the place were breathing the slow, deep breaths of a slumbering animal.