RAINBOW TOWERS AT SNARK CITY ISLAND

Raphael “Rafe” Snark, a semi-respectable man-about-town in Sandyshores, on a bend of the twisty Ogannaput River, had for years kept his eye on Oganna Island, a not-inconsequential mound close by the shoreline.  Snark, not incidentally a raging narcissist, believed that this picturesque site, created from the burial ground of billions of decaying shellfish, could one day be put to purposeful use, but just what form that might take – a gambling casino, perhaps, or a raceway for soapbox-cars – he hadn’t the knack to envision.  Then, on a holiday in Las Vegas, Snark crossed paths with Derek Krans, a well-known Elvis impersonator and failed real estate developer.  After a disastrous stop by the roulette table, the two men polished off a bottle of double-malt and decided to form a partnership.  Karns, whom Snark bonded with immediately because his name was the same as his owm but spelled backwards, soon visited his new friend and agreed that empty and idle Oganna Island was ripe for the pickings, and the pair bought it for twenty-five dollars, just topping the price the Dutch reportedly paid for Manhattan.  Before it could be monetized, the island needed a p.r. makeover; its name was changed to Snark City to satisfy Rafe’s large ego, and a causeway was built with a loan from a local bank to connect the island to the mainland. Then all they needed was the city. With much ballyhoo (and a marching band of high-school students), the fast-talking team of blue-sky impresarios raised millions from scores of local boosters and hired an obscure architect whose designs of colorful teetering towers had never actually been executed. The result was an overnight – some skeptics said jerry-built – metropolis called “Rainbow Towers on Snark City Island,” living proof that the dreams of unscrupulous men can often lead to fab riches.  But soon the island began to sink beneath the weight of the tons of Technicolor concrete poured upon it, and the residents hastily departed, never to recoup the price of their glitzy dwelling units. By then the best-bud developers were living in a small island-nation (that has no extradition treaty with the U.S.) somewhere in the blue waters of the Caribbean. This work is an aerial view of Snark City Island just after the completion of its Rainbow Towers.