Investment Ark (Short Story)

This short story is probably the best representation of my current writing style (2009).

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It was official. The posters had been put up in every shop window, the flyers had been posted in every doorway, and an advert had been placed in every newspaper.

Noah needed help building his ark.

At first terrified whispers went around the village. It wasn’t that the money Noah offered was bad; indeed, it was enough to settle down on after the job was finished. Nor was it that the hours were hard or the company disconcerting. It was a perfect job, for a perfect, if pious, man.

The terror came from folk-lore, and superstition. Some said that Noah was touched by the almighty, and that his quest was divine. Others lamented that he had fallen to the temptations of Satan.

Most said that he was simply insane.

It was the oldest of the Blare boys who first applied for work. His family’s land was poor, and desolate. It hadn’t grown a sellable crop in over two years. With the youngest daughter’s wedding on the way, and little money to pay for it: the family were starving.

So, young Till Blare set up the hill for Noah’s house.

There were many accounts of his return that night, and only one of them was true. He had come home well after midnight with a massive smile on his face. His mother had started to shout as soon as he opened the door, as is the way of worried and aged people. She stopped as soon as she saw what he was carrying in his arms.

He had been given a pig for a single day’s work.

Not only that, there had been a promise of more to come, and he had been fed! From then on the arrangement was this: Till and his brother, Jed, would work for Noah. They were paid in good meals, and livestock, which they gave to their parents. By the end of the week, the Blares had a fully functioning farm.

This went on for over two weeks, and the ark was making very little progress. The two boys were full of nothing but praise for their employer. As their mother told Mrs. Mortimer, the neighbour,

“That Noah sure treats his staff right.”

Eventually, on the day of the young Blare girl’s wedding, the word was out: Noah was a good employer. There was no other way that the Blares could have paid for such an extravagant wedding. Everyone in the village made merrier than was expected of them that night.

They would never be poor again!

The next day, everyone’s sons set up the hill. And, sure enough, they all returned well fed, with some fatted animal or other resting in their arms. Gradually, the ark began to build up. Everyone in the village had enough money to last them the rest of their lives, and enough food to feed everyone in the land. They still kept going back for more.

And all anyone could hear for miles around was, “That Noah sure treats his staff right.”

All too quickly, the ark was finished. Everyone in the village had invested a little bit into its creation, and got a lot more than a fair share out of it. They all went home happy and stayed that way for a good long while.

Then the rain started.

It was incessant. The raindrops were the largest that anyone in the village had ever seen. Even old Mr. Smith couldn’t remember seeing a rain as bad, he was eighty three.

On the first day, the villagers simply dismissed the storm as a freak occurrence, and went to bed as normal. A few took their newly acquired livestock into newly built barns for safety. However, when the Smiths (who lived at the very bottom of the hill) woke up with water running throughout the entire lower floor of their house and all their livestock drowned, it was decided that something must be done.

The Smiths were rescued from the top of their house by Mr. Steel, a fisherman who lived nearby, and a town meeting was called. The villagers talked long into the night, and it was widely thought that the only satisfactory conclusion would be to take shelter in Noah’s ark. After all, they all helped to build it: it was partially theirs. Livestock and valuables were loaded into carts, and everyone in the village set up the hill amidst hearty cries of,

“That Noah will surely treat us right!”

When the villagers finally reached the top of the hill, after an hour of climbing up (and falling down) the slippery slope of the hill, they found the ark locked. Till Blare went and searched Noah’s house, it was empty.

It was old Mr. Smith who first knocked on the door. He used his cane to make sure that anyone inside would be able to hear him. The villagers waited for ten minutes in silence for a reply, none came. Then, they all started scrambling against the door at once. Some tried to knock on the door, a few tried to break it down, the youngest tried climb up on to the ark. It was no use; the ark was built far too well.

When night hit again, the villagers were swimming to stay alive. Old Mr. Smith died first, a combination of exhaustion, hypothermia, and starvation finished him off. The rest of his family used his body as a raft. Till Blare died last, he died facing heaven, and crying.

When, at last, all the villagers were dead, the ark began to move forward. The precious investment sailed clean away over the corpses of its investors.

That Noah sure does know how to treat his staff.