Genre: Transgressive Fiction
Type of Short Story: Short Story Collection
Summary: In this mini-length collection of short stories and flash fiction, Millard leads you through another unsettling wander down strange verbal pathways and untrodden literary trails. Assisted suicide for aging snowmen, hearts replaced with bombs, and the humiliating death of Fruity O' Toots; and what of the lonely tornado who tried to befriend the anvil?
One complete flash fiction from the collection:
Small Man
When Reg Cuff heard that Sandlewick's abandoned Tiny Town model village was up for auction, he sold his home and failing business and moved right in. As Tiny Town's resident giant, you could often hear him from the car park, stomping around the diminutive streets and growling at plastic figures living out frozen snapshots of their lives. At first, it probably seemed like fun; the little man that nobody noticed suddenly the lumbering master of his own kingdom. He filled his days terrorising the silent inhabitants, crushing train carriages beneath his feet and yelling “God can't save you now!” through the roof of a weather-beaten fiberglass church. By night he curled up on the astro turf of the cricket green, finding comfort in the metrical tinny mooing from the miniature farm he'd splintered with his fists. Eventually, something inside him snapped. There's a loss of perspective particular to giants – everyone seems so far away when you're half as tall as the sky. He emerged naked from the boating lake like Goya's Colossus, standing astride the smashed up buildings and tearfully howling for forgiveness.
“I'm not going to hurt you,” he said, peering inside the tiny houses for a friendly face, but nobody ever came to the window.
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