I have some reservations about this one, as I alluded in a journal entry not too long ago.  On the one hand, I've broken out of my usual habit of writing inflation as a very pleasant experience and instead wrote it as uncomfortable and an annoyance.  Buoyancy in a world where everything has been designed to work from a standing or sitting position is just a hindrance, after all.  Still, I can't help but feel my writing is following a pattern.  I look at Sick, Hollow, and The Factory, and can't help but think they are part of a mad lib, or a story with blanks in it that the reader then fills with characters, actions, descriptors, etc.  Is it just my imagination, or am I really a broken record, telling the same story over and over again with slightly different details each time?

There were a number of other stories in the contest that I thought were better than mine, so the third place overall kinda threw me, and also makes me question my fellow body inflation fetishists' tastes.  I mean, a newcomer to the field wrote a poem in which a female warrior inflated out of platemail, and one of the established old hands/one of my favorite writers wrote a piece in which two lovers share a tender yet slightly silly and emotionally confusing inflationary moment.  I honestly think somebody else's entry should be in that third place overall.