Every few years, you’ll hear a miraculous story about survival at sea, about some wayward fisherman found adrift in on a piece of wreckage thousands of miles from the nearest shore. You’ll hear about his rescue by a passing cargo ship that just happened to spot him on its radar, about how he survived on a diet of raw fish, fresh piss, and the occasional seagull he managed to strangle with his bare hands. You’ll see the shaky post-rescue smartphone video of him with a blanket draped over his shoulders as he sips hot tea from a dented metal cup. You’ll marvel at the man’s strength of character. His will to survive. His unshakable faith in God.

This is not one of those stories.

Because, first of all, fuck God. I don’t want a miraculous rescue. I want a miraculous not-getting-lost-at-sea-in-the-first-place. I want a God that says, “You know, maybe I won’t send a rogue wave to obliterate Henry’s sailboat while he sleeps.” A God that doesn’t stand idly by while I desperately try to save myself from the sinking wreckage. Hell, I’d settle for a God that shatters my skull on the bulkhead, so at least I’d be unconscious while I drown.

Instead, I’m sitting on a fiberglass box that bobbed to the surface a few feet from where my wife went under for the last time. The box is long and narrow, delightfully coffin-sized, with just enough space for me to lay flat without my limbs dangling over the edge. And you know what’s inside? Lifejackets. Fucking lifejackets. Isn’t that a hoot? Isn’t that just the height of comedy? At least God has a sense of humor. What’s even funnier is that the box is upside down, so the lid is underwater, making the lifejackets inside maddeningly out of reach. I could theoretically slip into the water and flip the box over so I could open the lid, but fuck that. I’m not getting in the water again. Not after what happened to Annie. Not with that eye down there, looking at me. Staring at me. Watching me.

I have no sense of perspective, so I can’t tell how big the eye is. But from where I sit, it looks like it’s the size of a dinner table, with a pale blue iris that shimmers in the sunlight and glows in the light of the moon. It’s sunken in a socket of glistening black flesh under an eyelid that occasionally closes in a slow, languid blink. I can’t discern any other features, so I don’t know what kind of face it belongs to. Is it a whale? At first, I figured it must be. Then I realized that whales need to breathe, and whatever the thing with the eye is, it hasn’t surfaced for air in the three days I’ve been floating out here.

If it’s not a whale, then what is it? A giant squid? A fucking Kraken? What else is big enough to have an eye that huge? And whatever it is, why does it keep ogling me? If it wanted to kill me, it certainly could have done it by now. All it needs to do is knock me into the water and then suck me into its mouth like a piece of krill. I’d go down whole—it wouldn’t even need to chew. But instead, it’s gaping at me like I’m its pet goldfish. Shit, maybe I am. Maybe it wasn’t a rogue wave that hit us. Maybe our boat got snatched up and dropped into some kind of giant cosmic fishbowl. Then God gave it a good shake, and now he’s waiting to see what I’ll do next.

I’ll tell you what I’d like to do. I’d like to drive a spear into that eye, to puncture that endlessly staring orb. I want to feel it pop, to watch it fill with a stinging mix of blood and seawater. That’ll teach it. I’m not its fucking pet. I’m not here for its entertainment. I’m a human being. I have a name. I have parents. I have people who love me, people who are probably looking for me right now. Why haven’t they found me? Where’s the Coast Guard? Where are the search helicopters? Where’s my passing cargo ship?

It’s the eye of God. It must be. He’s watching me. He sees me. And he knows. He knows what’s in my heart. He knows the lie that I’ve been living. He knows my reconciliation with Annie was a farce, a ploy to get her to join me on the boat for the weekend. He knows only one of us was supposed to return home. He knows my cover story, the carefully constructed lie I intended to tell the police. He knows I could have saved her when she begged for my help. He knows that even as I fought for my own survival, a part of me was grateful that I didn’t have to drown her myself.

And yet, what’s he doing about it? Nothing. Just sitting back and enjoying the view. Typical God shit. He could help me if he wanted. Or he could kill me, quick and easy. I’d respect that—I deserve it. At least that would show some balls. But what I can’t respect is a God that just watches. A docile God. An impotent God. A limp-dick God who’s afraid to take matters into his own hands. I’m not like him. I take action. When Annie filed for divorce, I didn’t just sit by and let it happen. I made a plan and executed on it, one way or another. And that’s what I’m going to do again. Because you know what else is in this box I’m sitting on, besides lifejackets?

My spear gun.

I’m tired of being watched. The time has come for me to darken that stare. If I’m to die out here, I’ll die unseen.

Better a blind God than a passive one.

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