Air Support

I was sitting in the In'N'Out parking lot when the radio went off.  "Another grandma fell down the stairs."  I sighed.  I set down my burger and reached down and grabbed it.  "Acknowledged dispatch.  En route."  I lifted reins and shook them twice.  Beneath me, the medical equipment laden pterodactyl started screaming its distinctive siren and flapped its giant wings.  We took off, and quickly flew over to the address dispatch gave us.  We landed on the roof of the apartment complex with a thud.  I patted the pterodactyl's head.  He nodded and I dismounted.  I grabbed the stretcher and ran down the stairs to find the woman.  Once I had her broken body loaded onto the stretcher, I brought her back up to the roof.  The pterodactyl was munching on a chimney.  I snapped my fingers and he quickly came over so I could load the groaning woman onto his back.  We took off into the sky, making quick progress to the hospital.  We landed on the ptero-pad, and the hospital staff rapidly unloaded the woman and stretcher and took her into the hospital.

20 Thousand Leagues Under The Sea Copy Cat

Bob had heard all about this "Captain Nemo" guy, exploring the wonders of the ocean, never returning to land.  Bob knew he could do better.  From the moment he first read that paper about Nemo's wondrous Nautilus, he knew he had to have a submarine of his own.  He set off to the scrapyard, taking whatever sheets of iron and steel he could find.  Long hours he worked, bolting together the plates under the cover of darkness.  Finally, after months of effort, it was ready.  His majestic creation, the Lobster, was finally ready for its maiden voyage.  He hauled it down to the ocean, and dragged it into the water.  It bobbed unsteadily on the waves, its jumbled mass of bolted together plates creaking on the water.  Undeterred, Bob climbed into the vessel and set off into the New York Harbor.  As Bob peered out of the misshapen portholes clumsily integrated into the hull out into the murky waters of the harbor, he couldn't believe what he was seeing.  He never could have imagined the wondrous beauty of the creatures that lived in the harbor.  The tweaked out sharks and jumpy sea otters couldn't imagine it either.

Something Ugly Turned Beautiful

The serpentine steel pipes of the refinery, snaking in and out of the skyline, smokestacks billowing black smoke, huge pipes belching fire.

The gray concrete skyscrapers, jutting out against the horizon, harsh and unforgiving but strong and resilient.

Rationality Personified

Rationality is cold, detached.  He looks at a kitten snuggling with its mother and says, "The kitten just wants food and protection."  He is not fun at parties, and isn't afraid to trample other's feelings for the greater good.  Puzzles and riddles are the ultimate thrill for him.  He practically lives at the library, poring over books, subsiding only on the food from the library cafe.

Image Description and Poem

1  A man is silhouetted against a wide, tree covered, fjord.  He is sitting on a long, overhanging rock.

4.  The rock struggled to bear the weight of the man, to resist the pull of gravity, like Atlas struggling to hold up the sky.

5.
I see the rock
It calls out to me
"Climb me," it screams
It is a long path up,
The edge, slowly creeping forward
"Wow, that's a long way down"
Breathtaking beauty
I sit, and breathe
Time to go back down

Cold-blooded Investigation

"Hey!  Bob!"

I looked around.  Jim, my partner, was calling to me from across the station.

"We got a case!"  Jim was breathing fast, his face was flushed, and his pupils were dilating.  I concluded that he was excited.  He dropped a file on my desk.

"Why don't we get you out of this spartan cubby that they've put you in.  An old lady was kidnapped from her home, but there aren't really any motives for any of the suspects."

The "cubby" that Jim was referring to was my office.  The walls are painted a dull, matte, gray, and had a small metal table for my desk.  I specifically requested this office, but Jim still doesn't understand that.

Mystery Setting

Our town of Ampleforth is completely ordinary.  We only have 25 residents, but we all look out for each other.  We're mostly farmers, but we have a few artisans and craftsmen too.  Our town is nestled in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains, so we don't really get visitors very often, but for the few that we do get, we make them feel welcome and at home.  So it was really puzzling when the pets started to disappear.  We had a town meeting, but everyone was puzzled.  We thought it might be a coyote.  That is, until we started to find the bodies.  It was Jim, our postman, who found the first one.  It was hanging in a net from the only streetlight in town.  But that wasn't the strangest thing.  They poor pet's legs and feet had been sanded down to stumps.