▲ Forbidden Planet, 1956.

Noah’s Ark: Round?

The NYPD took Herbert into custody from the guards at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They’d wrestled him to the ground in front of a case of Sumerian antiquities, where he had been shouting gibberish and brandishing a recent copy of the Atlantic.

“Don’t you see? Round! It was round!”

“Sure, buddy, just get in the van.”

“You fools!”

“Watch your head, there,” officer Mac Manus said slightly after he had bounced Herbert’s bulbous forehead off the vehicle’s roof.

All the way to the station he wouldn’t shut up.

“Round! They mistranslated it. It was made of metal, not wood, and it didn’t float on water, it floated on the clouds! Noah’s Ark was a spaceship. A flying saucer!”

“Sure, buddy. And I’m ET.”

As they led him downstairs to the sub-sub-basement beneath Central Booking he continued his mad tirade.

“Two of each animal? No, chayah isn’t ‘animal’, it’s gene!”

They rounded a corner and led Herbert into a vast circular chamber whose walls exuded a sublime green glow.

“Genesis is talking about the space ark that brought our genetic material from the heavens. The Elohim were alien engineers seeding the planet!”

“Sure, buddy. The Earth is really just a meat farm for carnivorous space reptiles.”

Herbert’s face registered a glimmer of frightened realization just before the boys in blue peeled off their human masks and devoured him, flesh and bone.

§