Fifty Story Starters

"Ouch! You son of a bitch, now I'm going to..."

The child giggled as she pulled the wings off her third butterfly in the last hour. Now she was ready to...

Billy watched as Mrs. Cooper's Labrador left his latest steaming pile on their front lawn and he thought to himself, "Now Daddy's going to..."

It was a tough choice - the long slinky brunette, somewhat distant and unapproachable, who looked like her red sequin dress had been poured over her lucious frame or the overly friendly almost - but not quite - cute blonde a little bit stuffed into her jeans who'd already made it plain she wanted him. Now all he had to do was...

There it was. The house where...

Gil's Magic Rubdown Palace with its grandiose name had achieved a level of local fame for...

It was bad enough that her phone number was one digit off from the Mental Health Clinic but this latest mistake in phone calling truly disturbed her because...

Okay, this was getting ridiculous. She knew she'd left it...

Miss Lenham had been her fourth-grade teacher, her favorite of all her teachers, so she was shocked to read in the papers that...

The moment was finally here. His stomach was doing flip-flops as he reached for the door and...

He was the friendly neighborhood grandpa but if those neighbors could have glimpsed into his garage, they would have discovered...

No, that really hadn't been just air turbulence, she thought, as the plane seemed to slowly lean closer to the earth. Funny, all that was on her mind was...

The apartment manager had warned the tenants not to do laundry after dark and now...

Well, that little experience just proved he really did hate...

Sticking her hand out the window wasn't the smartest move because...

The pain was definitely getting worse. Now it was...

Well, it didn't exactly call for the Heimlich Maneuver, but...

He really was getting absent-minded - or going crazy - because just this morning...

Just before she died, she whispered...

The wiring hadn't been replaced in sixty years but that didn't stop...

Craig had always been a daredevil, that's why he was first to...

She might have been mouthing the words, "I love you," but her heart was saying...

The speedboat skimmed the water's surface much like a stone, skidding over the bumps, once, twice, three times and then...

The crack in the ceiling had been spreading since Monday.

Extravagance had never been one of her virtues.

We'd always known the shortcut home was dangerous.

Computers don't lie. Do they?

"No. That girl... there. Her."

It was the best decision I ever made.

Family vacations are supposed to be fun but, this was our family.

Excessive violence was cited as a contributing factor but what the reports didn't reveal was...

It didn't matter now who had won the argument.

Yesterday morning was now a thousand light-years in the past.

A raised eyebrow can indicate many things.

Chocolate and peanut brittle were her two favorite things in the whole world.

He dreaded having to speak to the parents.

Why did I always have to decide things?

"Ugh, what is that smell?"

She was the largest yacht in the marina... and the most beautiful.

The look on the child's face was utterly bonechilling.

Guided imagery? What the hell was that?

It was an amazing world that existed down below... in the sewers.

The last tree he climbed had been thirty years ago.

He'd broken his rule about never eating at any place with "Mom" on the marquee.

How many blouses had been stained with baby spit-up?

The body count at the scene was nothing compared to what was waiting for them back at the station. Just wait until the old man found out who...

In retrospect, keeping a journal had probably been her first mistake.

The fortune cookie read...

Dying was not in the job description.