Chapter 4
If the alligators in Florida’s backwaters didn’t want me, maybe the ocean’s predators would.
The next thing on my list was sharks. Sharks would want me, wouldn’t they?
I’d done my research and picked Jupiter for a reason.
The waters were teeming with them that time of year—lemon sharks, bull sharks, blacktips, even the occasional hammerhead if you got lucky, or unlucky, depending on how you looked at it.
But I wasn’t going in to see the sights.
I wouldn’t have a cage. No prepared bait.
Well, I was the bait. It was just me, some cheap fins, a matte black scuba suit, and the GoPro mounted like a confession on my chest. The black neoprene with borrowed air was strapped to my back.
I looked like someone who planned to come back.
If I drowned, or got shredded, hopefully the footage would float. If I didn’t, well… the outcome didn’t really matter to me as long as I wasn’t here anymore to ponder it.
The guy I had hired to man the boat hadn’t asked very many questions.
Probably thought I was another influencer with more ego than brain matter.
I didn’t tell him otherwise. Just slipped him a wad of cash and asked for a spot where sharks liked to pass through.
“Don’t chum the water,” I told him. “Just give me twenty minutes and turn the boat off.”
He said, “You got a death wish or something?”
I smiled. “Something like that.”
He shrugged and pointed out to a patch of sea that looked exactly like every other stretch of ocean I’d ever seen—blue, endless, quietly mysterious. Then he cut the motor.
I listened to his instructions and fell in backwards without overthinking it.
I didn’t even let myself say goodbye to the world around me.
I tried to ignore the twinge of guilt that I felt knowing that he’d be left with the bloody aftermath.
He’d have to tell the police what happened.
I hoped it didn’t give him any issues. I wasn’t an asshole; I just didn’t want to be here anymore.
The ocean snapped shut over my head like a trapdoor, sealing me in.
Cold enveloped me instantly—like sharp, wet hands gripping my chest. For a second, I hovered just beneath the surface, suspended in blue, feeling weightless and enjoying the quiet.
The salt burned my exposed skin. The pressure around my ears deepened as I sank further.
I didn’t fight it. The water welcomed me like an old friend.
Everything was soundless chaos. The bubbles around my ears roared, then vanished.
The water was a murky green-blue, and sunlight rippled down around me like ribbons.
I kicked, pushing myself lower, deeper than I should’ve gone, and looked down at the camera strapped to me.
The red light blinked, indicating that it was recording.
Later, when I watched the footage back, it started with a flash of bubbles and a muted breath. Then the camera steadied, revealing my silhouette moving through the open water—small, grainy, a human shape in a world where humans didn’t belong.
At the two-minute mark, the first shark appeared.
It glided into frame like a ghost. A lemon shark, maybe six feet, sleek and slow-moving. It didn’t even glance at me. Just kept swimming.
Then another. And another. Blacktips this time, thinner, faster, more erratic. I floated in their path. Still. Waiting.
At six minutes, one circled me. Just once.
Close enough that I could see the texture of its skin in the footage—gray and smooth, with that sandpaper shimmer.
I remembered locking eyes with it. Or maybe I just imagined I did.
Its eyes were nothing like ours. They held no judgment, yet no empathy either.
They were just the black marble orbs of a predator’s eyes.
Spoiler alert, the shark didn’t bite.
I should have prepared myself for fear to show up. Because it did. Around the ten-minute mark, something primal in me twitched. Not panic, but a deep awareness. An electric sense that something in me had shifted.
A bull shark passed beneath me. Bigger. Thicker. The kind they warn you about.
I held still; my heart kicked against my ribs like it wanted out.
Like it knew what I was asking for. The bull shark wasn’t like the others.
Its presence shifted the water, made it heavier, and lifted the hairs on the back of my neck, even though they were soaked and cold.
There was a new awareness in the silence around me.
The kind that wraps around you right before something explodes.
The calm before the storm, or so they say.
For a second, I thought the next moment would be it. The GoPro caught me adjusting my posture, opening my arms a little, as if asking: Are you coming for me? Is this where I get to let go?
I thought about what my body might look like when it happened—limbs drifting down through the blue green, my blood a ribbon curling behind me, mouth slightly open. Would anyone find the footage? Would people pause it at this exact moment and say, “There. Right there is when he died.”
But the shark swerved. Swam past me like I was kelp.
It was the first time during my two stunts that I felt truly disappointed in real time.
Fifteen minutes in, I started to shiver. Not from cold. From something else. From the absurdity of all of it. This wasn’t bravery. This wasn’t facing death. It was offering myself up and being ignored. Like the ocean itself was saying, not you. Not yet.
Another shark passed. Then another. I counted eight in total. Not one touched me.
The footage started to shake a little then. My breathing got faster. Louder.
So, I gave up and resurfaced, gasping as I let the regulator fall from my mouth. I didn’t know if it was because I needed more fresh air… or if I was protesting the unfairness of it.
Either way, I didn’t get out of the water right away. I wasn’t ready yet.
Instead, just like in the swamp, I floated on my back after releasing air from my BCD, buoyant in spite of myself.
Watching the sky. It was pale and hazy. The kind of sky that hides the sun just enough to make you think you’re safe from a sunburn, but you end up with one anyway.
I didn’t know how long I floated out in the water.
The captain hadn’t called me back. Maybe he was watching from the boat. Maybe he thought I was dead already.
I kind of hoped he did and had left. Not because I wanted him to worry—but because for a second, it might mean I’d have no choice but to let go.
Drowning hadn’t been on my list, but there was no way I’d be able to swim back to the shore, the remaining air in the tank wouldn’t last long.
Eventually, I’d lose strength and would have to let the depths take me.
The ocean would finally be forced to do what I’d been begging it to.
But no. The boat was still there. And I was floating around like a pathetic piece of driftwood.
Waiting for something that clearly wasn’t coming.
The longer I waited, the more absurd it felt.
I had offered myself. Not in fear. Not in some desperate flail.
But quietly. Willingly. And still, I was refused.
Rejected. Like even the wild wanted nothing to do with me.
What eventually got me out of the water wasn’t fear. It was boredom. That was the part that pissed me off the most. I didn’t crawl back onto the boat trembling, or weeping in frustration, or overwhelmed by survival. No, I climbed up dripping and annoyed.
I tore the GoPro off my chest. Then pulled the scuba suit off, growing even more frustrated as the wet material seemed suctioned to my skin. Finally, I sat there in my wet shorts, water pooling at my feet, and stared at the blinking red light.
I was still recording.
I was still here.
I was still alive.
That night, I watched the footage three times.
First, to really see the sharks. Second, to revel in the silence. Third, to get a good glimpse of the moment I thought I might die—but didn’t.
And I remembered saying it out loud, to no one, sitting on my motel bed with the shitty air conditioner rattling, “Does the next life not even want me?”
It wasn’t a dramatic observation. It was just… factual.
Although I hadn’t gotten what I really wanted, the footage was good.
Clear and vivid. A perspective different from the one you saw in documentaries where the cameraman’s job was to get some interesting shots to show you how strong and scary these predators were.
My video was much more realistic and in your face.
The sharks were beautiful in a way people didn’t usually admit out loud.
I was the inconsequential component on screen. They were the main characters.
I uploaded it at 1:45 a.m., half-expecting the algorithm to ignore me just like death had.
But I had gone viral by sunrise.