Wordplay prompts for stories

 MC here

Lecturing about genre writing to students is great fun. They almost always ask, "Where do you get your ideas?" My answer is always the same: "From everywhere". 

My mysteries are about crimes and the people involved, villains and victims. Mostly about the people and how their choices, behavior and circumstances got them to where they are, into the pickle they're in. It's fun to twist expectations. The most unlikely guy is the hero, the plain girl is the one offering true love, the mean guy has a soft spot for puppies.

My science fiction stories are either adventure stories written for fun or alternative looks at contemporary events, "told in future tense" <- stolen from the Dimension X radio series. For example, while sitting at an airline gate in Chicago O'Hare airport, I watched the passengers anxiously queue up at the gate, pushing to get on as early as possible to claim a favored seat or anxious they will miss their row call due to the crowd noise. All the passengers will take off and arrive at the same time, won't they? But I imagined they weren't boarding a cramped Regional Jet, but a suborbital space shuttle on a hard launch schedule to Australia or the Moon. Hmm, which ones look like Aliens?

I'd like to say my stories always start with a Grand Concept like the Nature of Truth. Nope. They start with a title, a play on words, a situation, a daydream about two characters having a heated talk. I have a file of wordplay titles. When I read them, a story sparks in my head. I won't show them to you, because they are so terrific you might steal them!

OK, here's an example. 

The fragment "-cide" is a compound word fragment evolved from Latin meaning "killer" or "the act of killing", as in Homicide. Suicide. Readers know those words and I'll use their understanding to create irony and contrast and surprise to generate an image in their mind, from just one word. The reader has the image, and expects the image to be present in the story. What images do you get with Fratricide, Patricide or Matricide?  

How about Seacide? Mountaincide? Countrycide? Westcide? Eastcide? Poolcide? Farcide? Nearcide? Genocide? 

What images did you get? Were some images negative? Or intriguing. I'd like to write a series of linked stories all turning on "-cide".