The Last Straw

993 words

Broke yet again, Abe Silverman steps out of GD Bank and briskly moves along the hectic streets of downtown Richborough. A frown plastered on his face, he thrusts open his umbrella, spatters through a puddle, and gloomily contemplates his life’s direction. 

Throughout each chapter of his life, Abe has survived recurring misfortunes. The characters and setting change, but the plot remains invariably constant.

“I never do anything right.” he mumbles under his breath. As he continues west on Ingots Boulevard, he kicks a pebble and groans. “I formed a perfect plan. Absolutely ideal!” His groan turns pathetically high-pitched. “Where did I go wrong?”

Persistent and resourceful, Abe devotes hours of each day to his inventions. He retains the belief that someday one of his brilliant designs will captivate the world.

As he heads toward his home on Bullion Drive, he recalls a few of his past creations—his Teflon Toilet Bowl, Automatic Earthquake Repressor (AER), Electronic Gender-Ease Language Decoder, Radiant Dream Preserver, and Flash-and-Dash Air-Transport Footwear System. However, Abe remembers feeling particularly hopeful about his most recent innovation.

One evening, while reading fairy tales to his daughter, Angel (Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the Golden Goose, and Rumpelstiltskin), he realized his destiny.  “I’ve got it!” he exclaimed as he reached across the table for another Golden Oreo. Then he asked, “What does everyone desire most, Angel?”

She shrugged, but before she could respond, he exclaimed. “People yearn for money! They dream of fortune!” Angel smiled at her dad. “They wish for gold!”

And on that brutal winter evening, many months ago, Abe gave birth to his most unique and precious brainchild.

“I must spin straw into gold,” he stated, as if he were reading directly from the Rumpelstiltskin tale that lay on his lap. “But how? I can’t use a basic spinning wheel, not if I’m going to manufacture enough gold to sell to the masses.”

He lifted Angel off his knee and shuffled over to his computer. “I will study blueprints of power spinning wheels, and then draw up plans for a new design. I must devise a way to spin straw into gold,” he paused distractedly, “and in large amounts. It’s genius, Angel! Brilliant!”

Abe spent every waking moment of the weeks that followed researching various spinning wheels. “I need a device that spins straw into gold rather than wool, cotton, or other fibers into yarn,” he muttered repeatedly.

He chose to fashion his straw-spinning apparatus after a top-brand, flyer wheel.  In a few months, he built a model to show to potential sponsors. At first, he met with disbelievers. Farmers refused to give him straw; company executives rejected his proposals.

Finally, after seven months of perfecting, promoting and pleading his masterpiece, Abe struck gold! He met J. W. Marshall, a wealthy miller from Coloma, who expressed an interest in Abe’s invention. Abe invited Mr. Marshall to his home to observe the gold-spinning wheel at work. 

Mr. Marshall arrived at 1849 Bullion Drive on Wednesday, and by Friday, he and Abe were signing papers authenticating their partnership. They settled on an assortment of details relating to their joint venture, with Abe claiming property rights. After Mr. Marshall agreed, they both set the wheels in motion.

The two moved the prototype to a factory near Mr. Marshall’s mill. They constructed countless replicas, hired spinners, merchants, and vendors, and trained their new employees without delay. They named their corporation Rumpelstiltskin & Co.

After one month, their workforce tripled. After two, they opened four more factories—in Burbank, Spokane, Seattle, and Salem. Expanding to the East Coast appeared inevitable. Perhaps they would even launch a few international units.

Everyone rushed to buy gold!

Orders reached billions per day. Though their workforce tripled, the workload became insurmountable.  “We need more spinning wheels to keep up with these orders,” Abe announced to Mr. Marshall one frantic afternoon. “And we don’t have time to assemble them from scratch.”

After hours of brainstorming, they resolved to make deals with various textile plants in the vicinity. They convinced executives within the industry to dismantle and reassemble wheels to fit Abe’s specifications. Eventually, workers from these plants relinquished their normal duties to spin gold out of straw.

The demand for gold escalated until even the textile workers couldn’t fulfill all the orders. Subsequently, Mr. Marshall suggested selling the specially-made wheels rather than gold.

“What a fabulous idea!” Abe replied. “People can spin gold from the comfort of their homes.”

Consumers liked this notion. Before long, each household contained two or three spinning wheels and families spun their very own gold. 

Unfortunately, in time, straw supplies dwindled. They tried to utilize hay, but because hay is made of grasses instead of stalks, the gold-spinning process required some alterations.  So Abe sold spinning-wheel adaptors.

Cattle, horses, sheep, and goats, need hay to survive, and so the farming industry suffered. Hardworking families had to sell their land to buy gold.  Wealthy city folk and real estate developers purchased land from farmers and built houses of gold.

Abe saw gold everywhere! Homes, offices, vehicles, and furniture—all contained gold. They even crafted computers out of gold. Driven by supply and demand, the value of gold plummeted. Owning a block of gold was worse than owning a block of cheese. Food—and clothing—became scarce.

Shortly thereafter, Rumpelstiltskin & Co. filed bankruptcy and closed their golden doors forever.

This morning, Abe and his family returned to their home on Bullion Drive, which lingered on the market (no one wanted a house made of bricks). He took out a loan from GD Bank to pay for it. 

Finally, the rain stops and Abe turns onto his street.  As he enters his home, his daughter begs him to read her the fable about the vicious wolf who huffs and puffs in an effort to blow down the little pig’s house of gold. “He is unsuccessful, of course,” Abe tells her, “but they still live happily ever after.”

993 words