I AM ALIVE

Hello my friends,

I apologize for being gone so long, but this has been an exciting month for me. Allow me to tell you.

After a 17 hour flight, my helicopter slowed to a hover over the Razor Tooth Strait, a channel of water well known in its surrounding communities for being infested with great white, mako, tiger, sleeper, barracuda, and the legendary man-eating catfish of the Pacific Rim.

My pilot carefully lowered me and my supplies into the water. No sooner had my raft touched the surface than a dorsal fin cut to my left. I had just begun adjusting my camera to get the desirable light sensitivity when the raft took a hit from behind so jarring that I nearly lost my balance. I decided at that point it would be best to paddle ashore and take only those supplies I needed on the raft, leaving the rest on dry land, and to change into my Teflon wetsuit, and to assemble my waterproof 10 gauge shotgun/Tazer prod.

After completing my tasks I realized that the sun was on its way down. This prompted me to build a fire, pitch my tent, and then I had a light meal and began to read the latest issue of Shark Diver. It was then that it happened. From out of the darkness of the water lept a massive 22 foot bull shark, traveling directly toward me at a rate of approximately 40-45 miles per hour and 12 feet in the air, its white underbelly illuminated by my campfire. After traveling a distance of what I would say to have been 20 meters, It ceased to be airborne upon striking a palm tree, shaking dozens of coconuts from the branches and nearly splitting the trunk in half. When all was silent, I approached the great fish and asked if he was alright. He turned quickly to face me.

"For what reason do you come to these sacred waters?" he asked.

"To live, if only for a short time, with you and yours, sir. To feel your power and taste your freedom. Is this not a worthy purpose? For if it is not, my respect for you and all that inhabit these waters does require my departure," I replied.

"No, that's fine," said the bull shark, and he turned for the water.

"Well," the shark said, stopping." "There is one more thing."

"And what is that?" I asked.

At that, the shark turned to me and began to flop his way toward me, bearing down on me fast. He smiled, revealing row after row of tiny knives into which were woven seaweed and pieces of rotting fish and turtles. I imagined by head being a part of this mobile cemetery.

I raised my shark gun and fired, blowing the shit out of that son of a bitch mid hop.

It is sad to know I killed an animal I so deeply respect, but that motherfucker was coming to eat me, and I don't have much patience for that.