On Sunday, 22nd December, 2019, everyone in the United Kingdom woke up with one million pounds in cash under their beds.
The miracle – or catastrophe – was never adequately explained. In the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic the event was largely forgotten or treated as an urban legend.
Until now.
In this explosive volume, investigative journalist/historian Kit Power finally blows the lid off that surreal, impossible morning. Focussing on a few residents of Milton Keynes, a uniquely diverse city northwest of London, Power lays bare:
– the wonder of waking up to a found fortune through the eyes of a neglected child
– the madness and panic of an unprepared public from the perspective of an overworked police officer
– the graphic terror inflicted by a band of reprobate gangsters for whom too much is never enough
– the strangeness of it all through the outlook of man’s best friend
Note: for legal purposes, this book is marketed as fiction. But no one who lived through it could deny the profound impact of…
MILLIONAIRES DAY
Dark bleatings, my fruitful tribe! Today I’m reviewing one of the weirdest stories that Kit Power (or anyone, for that matter) has ever released. Please note that for legal reasons, Power has released this under the “fiction” banner, and so for review purposes, I’m reviewing this through the same “fictional” lens.
Millionaires Day is one of those stories that starts with an incredibly odd and interesting premise, and that’s where I assumed the weirdness would end. I thought, somehow, that from that premise onwards, everything else would be very “real world”, if you know what I mean.
But no.
We start with several people waking up (separately) to find, beneath them, a small suitcase containing 1 million pounds. “Chicken-feed” to some (arseholes in politics, specifically), but game-changing, life-making money to most of us. No one knows how or why the money came to be there, and since most of the characters we’re following are unsavoury sorts, this of course immediately brings out greed.
Mickey immediately decides that his million isn’t enough, and ropes in his gang to steal everyone else’s cases, before the word gets out and people realise what’s happening. Another dude sees his million and after reeling from the shock of it, steals his lover’s million right out from under her (pretty much). A homeless man is plunged into panic and stress by his fortune – the second he has the money, he worries that someone will take it from him. He panics about where to run and hide, how to make sure it doesn’t slip from his grasp. And Emma, our little girl Emma, has conflicting feelings. She has not yet learned greed, but is excited enough about the prospect of toy shopping to pocket some cash. The rest of it, she gets rid of, because she’s afraid that if her mum gets it, their lives will get worse.
Kit takes no prisoners with this story. One might think, in a typical story, that the protagonist’s are probably safe – even in a horror story. lol.
The entire story happens over the course of about three hours, and it’s a fast-paced, explosive ride that pulls no punches, and won’t hesitate to make you cry. The characters are colourful, some hateful, diverse, interesting, and more than anything, incredibly real. Through each of them, we go through the multitude of negative feelings and consequences that might come with this kind of sudden, unexpected wealth.
What I really liked the most about it is that this might be the first absolute, true subversion of a “rags to riches” story that I’ve ever read. I’ve enjoyed “riches to rags” stories too, but I’ve never come across a story that twists up the idea of going from poor to wealthy overnight like this.
The surface level message of “money can’t buy happiness” is perfectly serviceable, and works well as a cautionary tale. However, this story is so much more, so much deeper, than that.
Can money buy happiness? If so, how much money are we talking? Is there a limit on that before we cross over into “money creates more problems” territory? And beyond the expanse of the questions this premise opens up, we’re forced to take a look at the UK as it presently is, because Millionaires Day unfortunately parallels a lot of what’s going on here, in some ways. The richest people in our country are still taking from the poorest. The Mickeys of the world will never be content with waking up to a surprise million – they’ll just continue to wonder who else’s million they can add to their already large wealth.
This isn’t so much of a “rags to riches” story as a “greed will end us all” story. The things that people are capable of for the sake of getting their hands on the cash… I mean… it’s heinous. And sadly, so true to life.
Kit has somehow simultaneously “created” a unique, thrilling, fun time in this story, and a dark, bleak look at how we’d likely run ourselves into extinction (in quite a short time frame).
It’s a tremendous, more-ish page-turner, and one that I’d most definitely recommend to horror fans looking for a short, shocking, absolute tear-jerker-but-a-blast of a read. If you’d like to check out the book or the author, I’ve popped some links below for you:
bleeeeat
Happy Goat Horror 
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