Walnut

by Spencer Chou

His head was the size of a walnut. It’s true. You might have trouble imagining it, since the rest of his body was otherwise normal, but his neck tapered at the top and joined to that was his tiny head. From a distance, you’d think he had no head at all.

He was bullied in school, of course. Not because of his head. He was bullied because he had a “Little House on the Prairie” lunch box. He said it was supposed to be ironic, but nobody believed him. They shouldn’t have believed him either, because he was lying. He loved that show.

When he graduated from high school, he got a job as a builder. He had to wear a thimble as a hat. He didn’t mind; his grandmother collected thimbles, so he wore a different one every day. That didn’t help him when a brick fell on his head, though. It took the doctors 12 hours to dig his head out of his neck.

One day, he got a girlfriend. Even though she loved him, she always joked about his head. She’d say she was nuts about him. Sometimes, when she kissed him, she would suck his entire head into her mouth. She thought it was funny. He didn’t mind at first, but he hated when she started to do it in front of other people. Once, he put his head inside her somewhere else.

He died quite young. His head was the size of a walnut, for Christ’s sake. What did you expect?

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Spencer Chou lives in England with his wife and two cats. He writes flash fiction and short stories, and is currently working on his first novel (who isn’t?). He is the editor of The Nottingham Review and also a first reader for Freeze Frame Fiction.