It couldn’t be Day #31 of my Flash Clash reading challenge already could it? Indeed it is good people, and today I come with news of yet another major milestone marker reached in this particular challenge. And that major milestone marker is, I’ve now finished reading my 2nd last story collection, meaning I’m down to just polishing off a solitary, lonesome collection. The revelation of Flash Clash Champion draws ever closer 
.
So which collection did I finish off today? Well that would Alex Burrett’s collection, My Goat Ate Its Own Legs, and the final story in the collection, The One. Now, I always like my authors to close out their collections on a high – you know, like the Edinburgh Festival organisers closing out EdFest with a huge fireworks display – so my excitement and my senses are always heightened for the final story in a collection. The question is however, does Burrett close out his collection on a multi-coloured sky exploding high, or did The One only help him in fizzling out like a damp squib?
Well, although The One didn’t turn out to be the super heaven-stretching story that I hoped it would be, it certainly offered a voice from the heavens. It’s an inventive tale – one that centres around the narrator trying to convince the reader that he/she is God and that the narrator was created by the reader in order to remind him/her of that fact, when he/she would inevitably forget that fact, which, apparently, the reader inevitably did . It’s a story that’s all introspective and confusing (as you’ve no doubt realised yourself after reading that brief synopsis ), and so rather than punching the air with delight at finishing off the collection with the best story of them all, I was grabbing for the aspirin. Am I disappointed? Absolutely not. Burrett’s stories have given me enough pleasure over the past few weeks, to last a lifetime. And besides this story isn’t necessarily a bad one, it just needs a bit of ponder time (maybe that’s why Burrett put this one at the end. What a genius! ).
Anyway, let’s have a look at the official rundown:
| Author | Collection | Story Title | *Comment | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nik Perring |  |
–REVIEW PENDING– | —- | —- |
| Alex Burrett |  |
The One | mindboggling | Rating:   |
| Etgar Keret |  |
–REVIEW PENDING– | —- | —- |
| **David Gaffney |  |
–REVIEW PENDING– | —- | —- |
| ***Dan Rhodes |  |
Toys Tractor Travel |
Funny Fair Average |
Rating:  Rating: Rating: |
*Keeping in the spirit of flash I’m limiting myself to only giving single-word comments for each story.
**As they are incredibly short in length, David Gaffney’s stories are being ‘ticked off’ two at a time.
*** Dan Rhode’s stories are even shorter than Gaffney’s and to ensure that I finish his collection in time, I have to cover three per day.
Inspired by the publication of Nik Perring’s debut flash fiction collection, the Flash Clash Challenge is a fun contest in which
threefour other experts in the field are compared alongside Nik. You can find out more about it HERE.
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