Chapter 16
They said a storm was coming. I wasn’t worried.
That was precisely why I was here. Wind advisories were already blinking red across every digital road sign from Pueblo to Canon City, warning drivers to stay home, shelter in place, not to be stupid.
But if I was anything, I was consistent with how stupid I was.
I had accidentally made a full-time income out of being foolish on purpose.
I planned my attempts with calculated recklessness.
I had grown a following by being artfully suicidal.
The Royal Gorge Bridge stood like some defiant relic of time, suspended over nine hundred feet of jagged nothingness.
It wasn’t just the highest bridge in America; it was a damn tightrope stretched over the mouth of the Earth.
And tonight, it groaned in the wind like it was yelling at me to leave, that it didn’t want me here. Good. The feeling was mutual.
I parked my rental car at the edge of the closed gate, shouldered the GoPro, and climbed the perimeter fencing like a man with nothing left to lose.
Because I was. The bridge swayed under my boots before I’d even made it ten feet in.
It wasn’t raining yet—but the air smelled with the promise of it.
Damp and full, taking a breath made me feel like I was inhaling water.
That’s how ripe the air around me was. A rising panic swelled in the dark clouds.
The kind of sky that made animals hide and old people say shit like, “it’s in God’s hands now. ”
I kept walking. Because that was the deal, right?
Keep going until something stopped me. Each step clanged against the metal slats.
The wind howled with continued warning, ripping through the gorge below and then up—straight through my clothes, my skin and my bones.
I welcomed it. Maybe if I stood still long enough, it would just pick me up and fling me off.
But that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?
I paused at the center of the bridge. The storm had arrived in full force now, wild and uncontained.
Lightning split the sky in the distance, thunder followed close behind, getting louder.
The rain was blowing at me sideways. My hoodie clung to me like wet skin, the fabric growing heavier each time I took a breath.
The footage was going to look insane; the thought burrowed its way into my mind. Blurred lenses. Gusts loud enough to drown out my voice. A silhouette of a man alone, standing in the center of a suspended wire, as the heavens quite literally opened above him.
I didn’t know when I started screaming. Maybe it had been building.
Perhaps it began as a sob I refused to let out that turned into rage because that was safer.
But suddenly, just like last time, I was leaning over the railing and howling into the storm, like it was some ancient god I was trying to piss off enough to strike me down.
“I’M RIGHT FUCKING HERE!” I shouted. “COME ON! WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!”
My voice cracked, ripped raw. My hands clutched the metal until they burned.
I shouted until I couldn’t anymore. The storm kept raging, yet it didn’t take me.
Lightning crackled across the sky, lighting it up like it was a sunny day.
For a second, I felt suspended in time, everything around me buzzed with anticipation.
And then it was gone. The flash of light vanished, leaving the sky dark and menacing once more.
My heart began to beat again. Da dum. Da dum.
The song of the living, whether I wanted to be or not.
I didn’t die.
There wasn’t a loose railing to lean against. No slippery missteps. No divine gusts of wind. No Hollywood-worthy collapse of cables. At the end, all that remained was me. Standing there. Alive. Fucking alive.
It was infuriating, but I felt it then, something I hadn’t felt in so long it might as well have been a brand-new emotion for me.
I wasn’t numb. Not dead inside. Not aching or empty.
I felt aware—of my pain, of my wonder, of my existence.
I was soaked to the bone, my throat hurt from screaming, and I was alone on a bridge in the middle of a storm.
And weirdly—I felt grateful.
Later that night I watched the footage back and saw it. Not just the rage, not the wildness in my eyes, or the way my chest had heaved. But rather, I saw the moment I gripped the edge of the railing like I was clinging to something real. If something chaotic could also look peaceful. I had done it.
The comments noticed it too.
“This one felt different.”
“He’s never looked more intense.”
“That scream hit me in the chest.”
“He turns storms into therapy. Mind blowing shit dude.”
“Anyone else think he’s finally unraveling? Or maybe finally living?”
Someone even slowed the footage down and clipped the moment I threw my head back into the rain like I was being baptized in it.
“This man is pure chaos and I’m here for it. Give him an Oscar or a hug. He makes the rest of us look like we’ve done nothing with our lives. This is how you really truly live. On the fucking edge. It’s beautiful.”
Two days later, I got a call. I still had no idea how they had found me and got my number, but they had.
They were calling from a Colorado newspaper, The Mountain Herald. Some feature journalist named Tamara Mikel wanted to interview me for their year-end spotlight.
“You’ve been selected as one of the most fascinating people of 2024,” she said, sounding chipper. “We’d love to get your insight on what drives someone like you to do what you do. What makes a man walk into near-death experiences and come out laughing?”
I snorted. “Wrong guy. I’m not fascinating. I’m just bored.”
She paused, like she was trying to decide whether I was being modest or just difficult. “Well, with respect, the world seems to disagree.”
“That’s the world’s problem, not mine.”
Another pause. “You make people feel something, Mr. Calloway. In a time where everything feels fake and filtered, you’re raw. Real. Reckless, yes—but also unignorable. Maybe that’s what we’re all missing.”
I stared at my laptop, her voice still in my ear. My inbox pinged with more sponsor emails. A new brand offering ten grand to hold up their energy drink in my next clip.
In an instant, I had excused myself from the phone call and hung up.
I didn’t want to be rude, but I also didn’t know what else to say to her.
I was no hero. I wasn’t an influencer. I wasn’t fascinating.
I didn’t want people to like me for something I wasn’t.
But I did want them to like me. That realization jolted all my senses.
And it hurt. Because when had I let myself start wanting things again?
When had I gone from a man chasing oblivion to a man getting offered product deals and space in newspapers instead?
When I told Carter about the call, he nearly pissed himself laughing.
“The most fascinating man of 2024?” he wheezed. “You? You’re the guy who used to think warming up SpaghettiOs counted as cooking.”
“Still do,” I muttered, sipping from a can as we spoke.
“Jesus, Danny. They’re gonna make you the next Bachelor before you know it.”
“Kill me now.”
“I feel like if you’re not careful, that’s what’s gonna happen, bro. Eight stunts and counting.”
“Yet, here I am. You just give a fuck ‘cause I’ve become your payday.”
“You’re a fucking asshole, Danny, you know that?”
I did.
We chuckled together.
“We still need to make merch,” he said.
“Yeah, design shirts that say, ‘emotionally unavailable’ and ‘hanging by a thread’.”
He snorted.
“They’ll buy them, Danny. I know they will.”
I grinned into the phone even though he couldn’t see me.
It was moments like these that pissed me off the most—when laughter felt easy, and my chest didn’t feel so heavy, and I almost forgot that all of this was supposed to end.
My brain would whisper that maybe—just maybe—I wasn’t meant to die.
And if that was true, then what the fuck was I supposed to do now?
Because living was the scariest stunt of all.