Chapter 2
My list had started with alligators.
Not skydiving. Not fire. Not some dramatic plunge off a cliff or a bridge. Just water thick with heat and the potential of death—silent, green, and so still it made your brain wish for sound.
I’d picked the Everglades because it felt like the perfect place to come across nature’s beast. They could be brutal, but they were also indifferent.
The Everglades was the kind of place that didn’t care what you wanted, and it offered a death that didn’t wait for your permission.
Nature was pure that way. If something grabbed you, it grabbed you. If something bit, it bit. Simple.
Lake Jesup, specifically, was perfect. Locals said it had one of the highest alligator populations in the country. More than thirteen thousand of them. People said you could see their eyes hovering above the water at dusk like ghost lights. Waiting. Watching.
It was hot the day I drove up there in an old rental car.
Not just summer hot. It was Florida-hot.
Swamp-hot. The kind of heat that seeps into your skin and bones like you’re being swallowed whole by it.
My shirt was soaked before I even reached the bank, but I left it on.
I didn’t want to look like I was preparing for something.
I didn’t want to strip down and make it seem like I cared if I died with a shirt on or not.
After all, this wasn’t a planned dive or a carefully edited educational TikTok.
No, this was a test. A quiet, dangerous dare.
The GoPro was already rigged in a tree, angled just right to catch whatever might come my way. Its red light blinked, patient. Like it knew what I was about to do and had no intention of stopping me. Not that it could. Not that anyone could.
I didn’t say anything to the camera. I didn’t offer a vlog-style intro. I gave no explanation to my madness. I just walked into the frame, stepped out of my shoes, and stood at the edge of the water like I was about to baptize myself into some dark cult religion.
I wasn’t one to lie to myself; I was scared.
I didn’t want to be. I’d told myself I wouldn’t be.
But my body had other plans. My chest was tight; my palms were slick with sweat that wasn’t just due to the heat.
My brain had signed the waiver to my demise, but my nerves hadn’t.
I hated that about myself—that my body clung to life even when I didn’t want it to.
The water was even darker than I had expected. Murky, like old coffee left on the counter too long. It didn’t splash when I stepped in, it just accepted me, like I made sense existing there amongst the decay.
I walked in like I knew what I was doing. The water came up to my knees first. Then my thighs. Then I forced myself to keep going until it reached my waist.
The surface was slick with algae and fragments of leaves. Gnats buzzed low around me. Cypress trees rose up through the water like gnarled fingers.
With a deep breath of resolve, I kept going until it came up to my neck and then I let myself float. As the water closed over my ears, the stillness was instant. Like I’d pressed pause on the world.
It’s funny—how loud my thoughts got when everything else went quiet. Under the surface, my breath roared in my ears. My skin prickled with awareness. Every part of me felt raw and alert, like I’d peeled off a layer of me that I didn’t know I had been wrapped in.
I began to drift. My eyes closed on their own as I waited. Surely it wouldn’t take long. I was a hunk of bait. It had to be any second now.
Any. Second.
But nothing came.
I opened my eyes. The sky above me was flat and bright, cloudless. A single bird glided overhead. It felt like it was mocking me.
I thought about the stories I’d read. The guy who bent down to wash his hands at the water’s edge and never stood back up. The teenager fishing off a dock who disappeared mid-sentence. The woman who watched her dog get pulled under and jumped in after him—neither came back.
I wanted that. That moment. The sudden flash. The pull. The drag. My heart thudded as a splash came from behind me.
My chest snapped tight.
I turned my head slowly, barely daring to move. The water rippled out in rings just feet away. Something had broken the surface. Something big.
Another splash startled me again. It was closer this time.
And then I saw it.
Two eyes. Low, black and unblinking. A snout floated just beneath the surface, gliding toward me like the slow curve of a question I already knew the answer to.
I froze. I didn’t make a sound, didn’t swim. I just stayed still, despite my body screaming at me to get away. Let it come, I thought.
It got closer. And then even closer.
Ten feet.
Five.
I whispered, “Come on. Do it.”
It brushed against my leg. A slick, heavy touch. Despite the stifling heat around me, my skin went cold. The instinct to move, to flail, screamed through my bones—but I held myself still. I stayed. I offered myself up like a sacrifice in board shorts.
But it didn’t bite me. It just slid past me like I wasn’t even worth the trouble. Several more seconds passed, and then just like that—it was gone.
I moved and began to tread water. My legs trembled beneath the surface, and my heart jackhammered in my chest. More than the adrenaline and disappointment, fear assaulted me until I was drenched in humiliation. I had been touched by death, only to be rejected.
I didn’t remember pulling myself out of the water.
All I could recall was the feeling of my knees hitting the muddy shore in surrender.
My hands digging into the dirt. The scream that built in the back of my throat, but never fully formed.
Instead of hollering out my anger, I grabbed a rock and hurled it into the thicket of trees.
“You coward,” I muttered. Not sure if I meant the gator. Or myself. Or the Universe.
The GoPro’s red light blinked from the tree reminding me that it had seen everything. More than I had wanted it to see.
I crawled over and sat beneath it. Wet. Breathing too hard. Feeling too much. Or maybe nothing at all.
That’s when the airboat arrived. Loud, whirring like a broken chainsaw. A uniformed wildlife officer cut the engine and stood, waving at me. “Hey! You okay over there?”
I didn’t answer.
“You’re not supposed to be in this area. It’s restricted. Too many gators.”
I stared at him, water dripping down my arms. I must’ve looked like hell.
I only stood when he called me over to get in his boat.
He didn’t ask for my name. Didn’t write me up.
Just muttered about tourists and idiots and how someone’s always got to be the cautionary tale.
He dropped me off at a nearby dock and drove away like I was an errand he hadn’t wanted to deal with.
I sat on the dock for a long time. Watching the water. Waiting to feel something. I didn’t.
That night, I pulled up the footage from the GoPro.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard longer than necessary before opening it up and pressing play.
There I was—walking into the water like I had a purpose. There was something strange about watching it back. Like it was someone else. Someone braver. Or dumber. Probably both.
The moment the gator passed me—my face barely flinched. I looked… calm. Resigned. There was something hollow in my eyes that I hadn’t seen in the mirror yet. It scared me a little.
I sat in the dark, clicking through frames, pausing where the predator had brushed against my leg. You couldn’t see it well, but I remembered the weight of its body. The video held proof that death had been right there next to me, touching me… and still hadn’t taken me.
And for reasons I still didn’t fully understand, I opened YouTube and created a channel.
I titled it: Die Trying. Not because I wanted to be known.
Not because I cared if anyone actually watched it.
But because I needed it out of me. Because if I didn’t, the experience would fester inside of me until I went crazier than I already was.
I uploaded the footage. Added a title: Swimming in Gator-Infested Waters, No F’s Given. I didn’t bother writing a description. Didn’t add hashtags. No fancy music. No intro. No explanation. It was just me and the swamp and a gator that ghosted me.
The video went live at 3:14 a.m. I quickly shut the laptop before I could feel any regret and lay down on the floor, arms outstretched, water still drying in my ears.
I hadn’t died. Not today. But maybe—just maybe—the world had finally started paying attention.