The cognitive approach to the analysis of the literary text, undertaken in the work, assumes characterization of the mental model of the reader's perception. The perception is motivated by various syntactic features of the text. The material of short stories as a small text genre is employed. These stories are “visible and observable”. It helps to reveal how the information is presented in the text and how it is distributed therein (E.S. Kubryakova). A comparative analysis of the syntactic features, of the text structure, and of the story title (based on different in volume works by V. Makanin, A. Ivanov and A. Arkatova, published in the “New World” in 2010-2014) reveals such common feature as the syntax of the being written oral story, in which many rules of the written text are ignored. The stories are contrasted by the degree of the text deconstruction: from the minimal and graphically designed deconstruction (V. Makanin's) to the maximum deconstruction of the text (A. Arkatova's). Such deconstructions predetermine different mental models of the reader‘s perception. In correlation with the character of syntactic deconstructions, the functions of the story titles, as reader-oriented vectors of perception, are defined: 1) a structure-forming element of the text in the story by V. Makanin; 2) a method of narrative motivation in the story by A. Ivanov; 3) a key for the perception of the parody game by the form in the story by A. Arkatova). Using a variety of ways, the authors set a mental model for the perception of the text. The model is oriented toward readers with different volumes of background knowledge.