I am never, ever making jokes about Perpetual Man Flu again. I'm still in recovery in a house that has been sealed off with a red cross on the door...
Thanks to those of you who wished me well, it was a lot more than flu in the end and there have been a few complications that still need to be resolved, but for now I'm going to attempt to get back on with the comments. I'm not sure if I'll ever catch up but here I go...
Johnnyjet - A box of chocolates that speaks to you, encouraging you to eat them. Not sure how good that would be on a chocoholic like me. They'd be gone before they had a chance to beg. Unless they were coffee creams. They could beg and shout and I'd just leave them there. Laughing. A great idea that kept me sorely amused.
monsterchic - Grim and visceral, this is a total contrast to the previous story and probably works well because of it. For me the story is brilliantly built around the harsh, brutal language. In many ways it does not matter what teh creature is, be it man or monster, all that matters id that it is something driven by a virus, and that those virus keep coming. As does vengeance.
DEO - What initially seems to be a mystical piece turns itself upside down, when it becomes apparent that it is in fact SF. An apocalyptic future where all that we know has been blown away, the world turned upside down, old ways returning, mixed with others more advanced. There is some lovely description - the eyes and the weapon (it spoke to me of Ash for a moment) and the kind of melancholy of despite everything something that does not have it, still craving life.
Chris - There is something very chilling and frighteningly possible in this story. Just imagine a world where someone can patent your DNA, without you being able to do a thing about it because you did not do it first! It just reeks of reality. The fact that our storyteller seems so pragmatic about it at the end makes you wonder what he had done in his time to take it relatively well.
J Riff - The lengths some people will go to for a little peace and quiet eh? Creating life just to drive people away? But life that does it by telling jokes? Bad ones? Pah, that made it quite funny actually. Better than the joke anyway