What are some really good prompts for a story?

Please give me some good short story writing prompts?

• Fantasy and Sci-Fi preferably, but anything other than romance I would appreciate!

• Answer:

  90% of the fantasy or sci-fi story is working around an interesting premise :-P Hmm, let me think . . . Family takes home the world's first talking dog (genetically engineered, or whatever) Group of people with magical abilities have gathered to protest a law making magical abilities illegal (you could focus on how The Powers That Be would deal with this threat) Astronauts make Earth's first contact with "aliens" - microbes/fungi/something else small that may or may not be sentient (have to find out) And this is something I always used to daydream about as a kid . . . having some sort of magic handheld machine where I could push a button and freeze time for everyone around me - either everyone in the world, or just in a certain radius. And sometimes I could "unfreeze" people by touching them, or sometimes people were "frozen" but were conscious but just coulnd't move, but could see me walking around. I bet that would be a tempting situation for a kid who somehow acquired this device to get into trouble :-)