Man V. Nature: Stories Read Online Free

asked for food and water, then tried to strangle me, choked back tears, apologized, asked to be let in, and when I refused, tried to strangle me again. When I managed to close the door on him, he sat on my veranda and cried.
    I’ve gotten used to these interruptions, of course. Though the strangling is new.
    I don’t blame them. If I’d been one of the unprepared, I’d be desperate too. They come to my door, see that I am clean, are dazzled by the generator-fed lights. They sense I have rooms full of provisions, that my maid’s quarters are filled with bottled water, cords of wood in the exercise annex, and gas in the garage. They ogle my well-fed gut. I am dry. They are embarrassed, filthy, smell of fish. They get back on their driftwood, or whatever they use to keep their heads above water, and paddle next door to my neighbor’s. If I were them, I would overtake someone standing dry in the doorway of a fine home. I wouldn’t give up so easily. But these men are not me. For starters, they’re awfully weak due to not eating. But still. I don’t like the change. I miss the old days when, though they happened to be begging, they were still gentlemen who understood that hard work was their ticket to success. I’ll need to carry a knife to the door next time.
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    It was happening just like they said it would. Things never happen like they say they will. That I was living to see it felt kind of special, truth be told. Like a headline. H ISTORY IN THE M AKING !
    My neighbor’s house still stands, and across a new tiny sea roiling from trapped fish and unprepared people, one additional cluster of houses remains, perhaps four in all. Day and night, people hang out the windows waving flags of white bedsheets and shouting. What kind of message is that? Surrender? To whom? I’ll bet they have no food and water. My neighbor’s house shakes from the extra people crammed inside. Each of the ten bedrooms probably holds a small village of newly homeless vagrants he’s rescued. I told him to prepare. “I know this sounds crazy,” I said. We haven’t always gotten along, but I thought it the neighborly thing to do. You’d think he’d be grateful. But instead he just crowds our last parcel of heavenly land with bums. If I open the windows I will smell the house, its burdened toilets and piss-soaked corners. The shallow but rising sea moat between our homes is rank with sewage. The tide takes it away, but more always comes.
    In the old days, I would have left a letter in his mailbox about this or that neighborly issue. One time, the mail carrier warned me that it was illegal for non–mail carriers to put things into mailboxes. “It’s just a note,” I reasoned when she tried to give it back to me. “See how overgrown his hedges are?” She stared unbudgeably hard, held the letter steady between us. “Why can’t you just leave it there for him?” I snarled. I slammed the door in her face, and the next morning I found it stuffed in with my own mail, in my own mailbox. On it she had scrawled petulantly, Only I can put this in the mailbox and I won’t do it!
    Through my great-room window, I can see that his grand staircase, with its audacious pineapple-carved finials, is littered with men, women, and children. The way they lie about, it looks as though there’s one whole family to a stair. A boy dangles from a dusty crystal chandelier. I watch an old woman topple over a railing while maneuvering through the immense spiral shantytown. What a shame. But you can’t let everyone in. There would be no end to it.
    I run a finger over the great-room mantel. Dead skin, infiltrated ash. Too bad the housekeeper has most likely perished.
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    Someone knocks on my door—insistent and angry rather than timid and begging. I grab that kitchen knife.
    On my veranda stands a man holding himself up by the door knocker, his wiry muscles