Your character wakes one morning to find that a bowl of fruit he bought the day before has gone rotten overnight.
Questions and ideas for follow-up:
- Is anything else in the character’s home affected? Flowers in a vase? A loaf of bread? His lover?
- Assuming it’s not a one-off effect, how often does it happen? Is it happening slowly all the time? Does it only happen at night? On a full moon?
- Will the rotting happen while your character is watching? What would he see if he left a webcam recording overnight?
- Is your character the only one affected, or is it a regional/national/worldwide effect? Is it spreading?
- Or maybe it’s the other way round. The rotting has infected most of the world, however your character has been able to keep it at bay. Until now.
- Will the rotting eventually affect him? Maybe it’s already begun to do so. Or maybe he’s immune for some reason. How would others react to that?
- Could the effect spread to non-organic objects?
- Possible reasons for the rotting include: a novel virus, nanoreplicators, dormant insects released from underground/the ice/a tomb, alien attack/experimentation/attempts at communication, a curse on the character, a glitch in the simulation.