Chapter 10
Carter didn’t know where I was. I hadn’t told him about this plan. If I made it through my dance with the angel of death, I would tell him about it after. It was like some part of me knew, not just hoped, that this one would be different. That it came with a higher risk.
By the time I arrived, the temporary city was already in full swing.
The air smelled like beer, weed, sunscreen, and grilled meat.
Neon bikes zipped by, ridden by men wearing only goggles and a grin.
Music pulsed like the heartbeat of an alien planet, and people smiled like they had it all figured out.
I didn’t have a plan. That was the point.
I’d promised myself that if the gators didn’t get me, the sharks didn’t bite, the electricity didn’t strike—then maybe strangers high on God-knows-what could succeed where nature had failed.
I’d brought my camera, of course. My GoPro was already rolling.
This was still another potential episode, as well as being another attempt after all.
As the sun went down, I began my path to illumination or dissociation—I wasn’t picky with what they called it.
I didn’t ask what was being given out. I didn’t check what I was taking.
I let people hand me drinks, tabs, pills.
Someone smeared something minty under my nose.
Someone else gave me a glowing jelly shot and told me I had “divine shoulders.” I played Russian Roulette with unknown substances till my veins buzzed inside of me, and my brain finally shut the fuck up.
The mushrooms made my insides crawl with snakes telling me my time was coming, and the molly had the lights melting around me.
The music wasn’t just a sound anymore; it had substance, and it moved through me like a current.
The shame from my past softened, and I almost forgot how broken I was because the drugs told my brain we knew what love felt like.
My pain muffled so much that it almost, dangerously, felt like peace.
I couldn’t feel my face anymore. The sand beneath my feet was so hot, and I realized that I’d lost my shoes.
The small grains felt like shards of glass against my skin, then morphed into feathers, and then became nothing at all.
I felt like I was everywhere and nowhere.
All the light bent sideways feeling disorienting and euphoric at the same time.
My heart beat so loudly in my ears that I wondered if everyone around me could hear it too.
I stumbled about, weaving from stage to stage, unaware of how my legs were even moving. Where I was going. What I was doing.
A guy with a long, greasy pony took a break from getting head behind the stage to hand me a small white pill.
“This one will make you forget you’re human. I think. I can’t remember. Don’t worry about it. Just let it.”
I laughed harder at that than I had in years. The pill dissolved in an sour burn on my tongue.
And then I stopped laughing.
I remember the sky folding in half. Not literally, but in that way your brain panics when it can’t make sense of what your body’s doing.
I remember collapsing in the middle of a circle of people singing about the sun.
I think someone tried to keep me awake. I think someone screamed. I think someone walked away.
Then everything went black.
When I woke up, I couldn’t open my eyes at first. It was like my brain turned back on, but my eyelids hadn’t gotten the memo. I still wasn’t sure if I was dead, and the afterlife involved oxygen tubes in my nose or if I had made it out alive, yet again.
It turned out I was just in an ER in Reno. There was no bright light. No welcoming at the pearly white gates. No song of the angels. Just the constant beep of a heart monitor and the familiar ache of disappointment settling into my bones.
A nurse with pink scrubs told me I was lucky. “You flatlined for about a minute,” she said. Apparently Narcan had brought me back. She said it like I’d won a prize
My mouth tasted metallic. My arms were covered in medical tape, IV tubing, and track marks from where they tried to get into my collapsed veins.
The gown I wore made my skin itch. The noise of the machines was relentless.
The nurse watched me like I was a miracle. Or a burden. I couldn’t decipher which.
When it came time to be discharged, I couldn’t bring myself to say thank you. I should have. But the words got stuck on my tongue.
I retrieved my camera from the security bag that they returned to me, but I could barely move, let alone think for three days, so it wasn’t until September 1st that I rewatched the footage—partially out of curiosity, mostly out of masochism.
The angle was skewed, but you could see the moment my pupils blew wide.
You could hear someone asking, “Is he breathing?” You could see a stranger kneeling beside me with panic and regret in their voice.
Someone else shouted, “Get a medic!” Then static. Then nothing.
I didn’t know if uploading the video would break community guidelines. Probably. But Carter said he’d take care of it.
His email to me was short:
I didn’t respond.
The nightmares came back that night.
My old house. My foster mother gone on a women’s church trip.
The television humming in the background.
And him—holding a soda in one hand and calling me “Danny boy.” Telling me I was a good boy.
He asked if I wanted it. He said I did. He said I always did.
I was thirteen. I had no idea what wanting it even meant.
But I remembered the way his fingers closed around my wrist. The cold condensation from the soda can that had dripped down my skin.
I remembered the color of the carpet. The sound of the ice maker in the kitchen.
The way my body became something else. When I woke up, my sheets were soaked in sweat, and my throat was raw from screaming. I didn’t go back to sleep.
Later that day, Carter sent me the final cut of the Burning Man footage.
He’d softened the visuals, blurred out my face in the worst moment, and added a quiet piano track in the background.
I watched it once. Then again. Then a third time.
It didn’t feel like me. But it was perfect.
It felt like a whole fucking experience, and it made for a great story. Telling what? That I wasn’t sure.
The thumbnail read: “Russian Roulette at Burning Man– Die Trying Ep. 5.”
By the time I uploaded the episode, my fingers were shaking.
Not from fear but from resentment. I hated that the world would watch it and call it inspirational.
That people would DM me about how “brave” I was.
That strangers would tattoo quotes from my videos on their bodies and call me a survivor.
They didn’t know me. They didn’t know the sweat-soaked nightmares.
The memories that were stitched into my skin.
The way my own name made my stomach twist. They didn’t know that I didn’t want to be saved.
They just saw a story. And they clicked “like.”
The comments flooded in instantly:
“Holy shit, I think he actually DIED for a minute!”
“This is the craziest one yet.”
“I’ve never cried watching a YouTube video before.”
“This guy needs help.”
“Is it wrong to say he’s so hot???”
That last one made me slam my laptop shut.
Fuck.
Carter called me after midnight.
“You okay?”
I’m breathing, I thought. So… no.
“Stop worrying about me. It’s giving overprotective Dad.”
“You scared the shit out of me.” He ignored my sarcasm.
“I’m fine.”
“You could have not been fine.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t know how to straddle a world where I didn’t want to be fine and experiencing what it felt like for someone to worry about me for the first time in my life.
“You know you’ve got four brands waiting on sponsored videos,” he added. He was answering all my emails now, especially the ones from companies.
I blinked. “They still want me?”
“Yeah. You’re a fucking phenomenon now.”
“Even though I literally almost died?” The word almost burned in my throat.
He sighed. “I guess they don’t mind.”
I shook my head. “Crazy world. Companies paying an almost corpse.”
He laughed bitterly. “Whatever makes them money I guess.”
That night, I sat in my dark apartment and made a list of all the memories I had when the world failed me. I needed to drown out the warm feelings Carter’s worry had planted inside of me. I reminded myself of the times I had felt the unkind hand of the universe giving me the middle finger.
Age four: Told to be quiet when I cried. I had been crying because I was hungry and had gotten spanked for saying so.
Age seven: Called “dramatic” when I said I didn’t feel well and couldn’t go to school. I ended up having 103 fever and was sent home.
Age ten: Got sent to a new foster home and was abused that way for the first time.
Age eleven: He threatened to starve me if I told anyone. It got worse
Age twelve: No one noticed what he was doing to me.
Age fourteen: Tried to tell someone. Was called a liar. He beat me bloody. I ended up in the ER. I kept quiet when they asked if I was safe at home.
Age fifteen: I finally hit him back. He broke three of my ribs. CPS did nothing.
Age seventeen: Ran away. Slept in a Walmart parking lot.
Age twenty-one: Woke up next to a stranger, not remembering how I got there.
Age twenty-six: Got mugged on the walk home from work. Found out that seventeen people had walked around my unconscious body before someone finally stopped and called 911.
Age thirty: I was completely alone, and the world was just fine with that. I had nothing to live for. All I did was run away from my nightmares. I had never experienced love, safety, or kindness. The world had kicked me down and kept me there. And I was done.
I’d tried the ocean. The swamp. Electricity.
Now the desert. And I was still here. I’d started wondering—half-joking, half-desperate—if I was cursed.
If I had nine lives like a cat. But if I did, I wasn’t grateful for them.
I was exhausted by them. Waking up again and again when all I wanted was permanent silence.
I’d realized something tonight, it wasn’t even that I wanted to die per say.
I just didn’t want to be here anymore. If I could just will myself out of existence without all the drama and fanfare. I would.