Bogleech.com's 2013 Horror Write-off:

" When the World Drowns "

Submitted by Pyro Gibberish

How many weeks has it been? Two? Three? Perhaps it's been a month, a month trapped in my home, subsisting on the few waterlogged squirrels that drift in and the curious mushrooms that have begun to take up residence in the closets.

I wonder how many of my neighbors are faced with the same plight. I wonder how many even survived; or have they all been swept away in the initial floods, or drowned in the comfort of their own houses? I tried to contact somebody once; I made a little raft carrying a note, which was very swiftly tugged off by the current and taken somewhere far away.

Food has been scarce lately; dead animals have almost entirely ceased to float to the window, and I fear the mushrooms are beginning to make me ill. Water is plentiful, of course - the entire first story of my house is filled with it - but I'm not yet desperate or dumb enough to try and drink it, at least not the water in my house.

It rises with each passing week; slowly, gradually, it climbs up the stairs. Eventually, it may reach me and continue still. I will have to move to the attic then, but even that is only delaying the inevitable. My only choices are to drown in here or to drown out there, and at least in here I've got some time.

It is a struggle to occupy that time, though. I spend hours every day - as far as the day can still be distinguished from the night - reinforcing the walls and windows, trying to dam cover the leaking ceiling, searching again and again for anything useful. After that, though, what do I do? What can I do but sit and watch the storm?

I've been reading more; children's books and comedies, mostly, once belonging to my daughter and my ex-wife. They were at her house when it began raining. I used to wonder every day if they were still there or if they, too, had succumbed to the storm. I realize now that there's no point.

Why do I struggle to survive then? What is it that motivates me to continue existing? I'm not sure myself, actually. Maybe I'm hoping this whole thing will pass with time. Maybe there's a part of me that thinks there's a way out of this mess.

Maybe it's just to spite those things that swim around downstairs and think I can't see them.

I hope the rain stops soon.