Once Upon a Time was such a cliché way to begin a story. Karone was laying on her couch with her feet up against the wall, holding up one of the short stories that a girl in her class had written. She was disappointed that most of them had started with ‘Once Upon a Time.’ Ugh. And here she was thinking she had inspired some creativity in her students, but it turned out that all she had inspired were some half-baked stories.

Well. There was more than one way to make them better…maybe she would pick the girl with the lowest grade in the class and drain her energy one night, or drain as many of her students as she could…and assign a short story with a horror theme…if only she had thought of this with enough time before Halloween.

With a huff, the woman bit lightly on the lollipop that was firmly in her mouth, getting right to the chewy chocolaty center and huffing again. Bland. Boring.
No, something would have to be done about the stories her class were writing. Something would have to be done and quickly. She couldn’t handle much more of this drivel.

Letting the story slip through her fingers, Karone moved her feet down the wall, finally landing them back on the floor and getting up. She stretched her arms as high as she could and sighed happily as some joints in her back popped.

There now, that was the good stuff.

Making her way over to her laptop, Karone sat down and began looking up ways to make her students write…better. Not…better, but…something. More engaging, there that was a good word. Ways to make her students more motivated and make them think outside the realms of ‘Once Upon a Time’. Her eyes lit upon a website that had a first line generator…well, that at least could lead to some interesting stories.

As she clicked the button, the woman laughed, shaking her head in amusement. What kind of first lines were these…they were horrible. ‘Aunt Maude said: 'this relationship is over,' when Dad shot the dog.’ And ‘The weekend when we called for an ambulance to be sent, I became a millionaire's servant.’ Were some of the favorites she found while absentmindedly clicking the button. Well…this could work. Didn’t they have those improvisation games…like scenes from a hat? Why couldn’t they have story openings from a hat? Well…this could be interesting indeed.

The next hour was spent getting random first lines and transposing them to her word processing program, and then printing and cutting them into strips. Hopefully her students would appreciate this…and even more hopefully…they would give her stories that didn’t bore her to tears and didn’t make her want to pluck each and every starseed from their stupid trust funded chests.

Of course…that was still an option. After all she needed more decorations for her uniform…and of course the Negaverse needed as many starseeds as it could get…so maybe…just maybe she would pick those who couldn’t even get anything creative from these first lines and sacrifice them to the Negaverse…

After all, the would needed creative people, and it didn’t need more of those who couldn’t write themselves out of a house of cards.