'Bait' is what the sign read on an enormous wooden shark effigy. Someone had once mentioned to me that it was carved over a hundred years ago. The owner of the tackle shop had bought it, propped it up, and painted a four-letter word on it in red.

I hate sharks, can't stand the look of them. Advertisements for Shark Week turn my stomach. Sometimes when I am sitting in a bathtub or in a pool, I get this feeling like a shark could be coming up behind me. It's a phobia, I suppose, to feel that way, but I've never considered phobias to be irrational, since phobias are always something that could kill you, since anything can kill you.

Mentioning my fear, my phobia, Galeophobia, contrasts the courage associated with the work I do for the coastguard, as a rescue diver. Sharks are ubiquitous in the waters I work in. The internet misinforms people about the waters that sharks inhabit, saying sharks don't like cold water or that they can't handle fresh water. To a shark, those aren't facts. Sharks go wherever it pleases them to go.

My favorite quote about sharks is from one of the Jaws movies, where a character says, "Sharks don't seek revenge." which is a strange contradiction of the title 'Jaws: The Revenge'. I suppose a more accurate thing to say is that "We shouldn't anthropomorphize a creature that has evolved from the depths of natural history with our emotions, nor should we believe it has no other motivation than to eat and swim."

Perhaps I spent too much time ruminating about sharks.

Our rescue helicopter was flying low, during a break in the storm. The flooding was worse than ever before, and the waters were rising two inches per minute, ten feet in the last hour. With hurricane winds, it wasn't safe to fly, but the winds had died down. We heard over our communication network that the storm was returning soon. We circled the flooded neighborhood, searching for trapped survivors.

After I had glanced at the shark effigy, the 'Bait' sign, I had felt a premonition, a kind of terror, foreshadowing the horrors to come. All my thoughts and feelings about sharks had rushed into my mind, quaking my body with dread.

"There's a whole family of them." Michael pointed them out. To rescue most of them, we would have to take their place on the rooftop. Both Michael and I volunteered to give up our places in the rescue helicopter.

We fit as many as we could on board, and then waited on the rooftop with the strongest neighbors, having evacuated the women and children, the injured and those too afraid to stay behind. As we watched the chopper head for safety, I told them we were on our own, that it couldn't return until after the next wave of the storm had passed. I looked at the rising and swirling waters all around us. On the rooftop we would watch the waters rise, and we would probably lose our high ground.

To make it worse there were more winds coming.

"We have to hold out here. But David and I have dealt with worse." Michael told the others.

As the sky darkened, I noticed a glow in the water, from the headlights of submerged cars. Several vehicles still had their batteries intact, despite the angles of the upturned wrecks. The lights created an eerie underwater landscape of lawns and streets that were underwater. There were many chunks of floating debris and garbage and clouds of sediment churning and mixing with the seawater that had flowed in, mixing in swirls of different salinity and temperature.

I watched it as the waters rose and the rain fell around us. I hoped the storm would miss us and the waters would begin to recede. While I hoped I heard two of the men with us praying loudly.

That is when I saw the dorsal fin of the shark. I turned the beam of my flashlight on it, and I clutched the flare gun in its holster. Everyone was wearing life jackets we had brought, but Michael and I both had survival utility belts on with waterproof fanny packs containing first aid kits and extra flare cartridges for our flare guns. I could see that the shark was fifteen or sixteen feet long, and a sandy color with tan stripes all over it.

My beam shone into its eyes, and I realized it was staring at me, swimming effortlessly against the current and appearing to hover over the lawn in the clear part of the waters. A cloud of oil and garbage flowed over and around it and all I could see was its fin.

"There's a shark in the front yard." I said.

Everyone looked, and Michael's flashlight beam and mine illuminated it as the flow of water cleared up around it. The shark was still there, as though it was waiting. The waters were still rising, and it was slowly beginning to circle the house. We kept following it around, as the waters were visibly climbing towards us. Soon it had made a complete circuit, and all the while we could see its watchful gaze, staring into the light of our flashlights and seemingly aware of us.

"We are safe up here. Sharks can't leave the water and they don't attack people on rooftops." One of the men stated. I shuddered, and I did not believe him.

My fear had started out cold and numb but had risen to crackling waves of panic as I realized it wasn't going to leave, and that it actually could reach us. Sharks can jump out of the water, they can and do attack prey that is seemingly out of reach. I wished that the concept of sharks and jumping were as silly as they sounded together, but I had seen those images of Shark Week, and I knew it was possible for sharks to lunge from the water at prey that should be safe.

As we watched the shark and it watched us, the distance grew thinner. We had waited on the roof for nearly an hour, the winds hadn't come, but the shark arrived. The water had risen most of the way up the roof, leaving us all clustered on the very top. The movements of the shark terrified me in their deliberation. It swam lazily and calmly and patiently, like a primeval force, as old as the flood, as old as predation.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"We aren't safe." I said. I got out my flare gun, intent on using it if the shark decided to attack.

"Sharks don't eat people. It is just curious." One of the men said with confidence.

"Sharks don't eat people?" I asked with disbelief. I recalled stories of sharks both killing and eating people. "Where did you hear that?"

"Surfers get attacked on rare occasions and they survive because the sharks don't eat them. They just mistake them for seals." The man said. He sounded so sure. I shook my head.

"That's superstition, isn't it? You don't hear the stories where the shark kills someone and eats them afterward because there isn't a survivor. Sharks kill and wait and then they eat. They aren't in a hurry. Not every attack a shark makes is predatory, they are capable of territorial aggression." Michael argued with him.

I said nothing. I felt terrified and some instinctive part of me, deep in the fear, worried that hunger and territory were not the only reasons that sharks had. As I watched our shark, I knew somehow that it was enjoying our plight, that the shark was happy to terrorize us, that it was motivated only partially by hunger or territory. The thought that it simply enjoyed what it was doing, scared me to sit frozen, with my flare gun in one hand and flashlight in the other. My only movement was to slowly track it with my aim, as it slowly rotated me as the shark gradually circled the house.

Then I said, speaking from the voice of fear: "We don't know what it wants, only what it does."

And somehow my words ended the conversation. We all knew I was right, that we couldn't know what the shark was thinking, only what it was doing. Then, without warning, the shark moved at calamitous speed and turned towards us, thrashing wildly up the side of the angled roof and splashing us and tearing loose some of the shingles with its abrasive skin.

Its teeth and eyes sped out of the water, and it snapped its mouth shut mere inches from the face of the man who had assured himself that the shark wouldn't attack. It missed, but barely. Somehow the imperfection of its sudden attack seemed to anger it, for its swimming had taken a decidedly less casual pace. It swam at speed around and around the house, following its pattern but with energy and force.

I gasped as I saw the litter and spills in the water were leaving a trail, a sort of churned eddy or whirlpool around us. I realized that I was imagining that the shark felt frustrated, but it was the best idea I had about how it seemed. I reminded myself there was no way of knowing what it was thinking or feeling, but to me, it seemed like it was angry.

Michael fired the first flare at it as it swirled around and came at us for another attack. The flaming ball bounced off of its side and popped in the water, floating for a few seconds before it sank. Then he was screaming and falling off the roof. The shark swam away, letting him roll into the water, which turned a sickly crimson color.

I holstered my own flare gun and handed away my flashlight so I could go and help him. When I saw what the shark had done to him, I nearly let out a scream of horror. The hand and arm he had held the flare gun with were shredded, hanging as ragged flesh from the cracked bone. In an instant, the shark had done that, rendered his arm into a ragged bloody mess.

"Help me get him up." I commanded, my voice hoarse and shaking. I'd seen some pretty gruesome injuries before, but never when the cause of them was a massive predator watching me and about to make more such attacks. Fear could have frozen me in place, but I forced myself to turn my back on the water and help him.

When a tourniquet was tied around his arm I used my radio, but there was no communication. We were on our own. The winds were starting to pick up. The only chance we had for rescue was to reach higher ground. If we didn't act, he would die.

"We have to evacuate this position." I said. I looked at the shark, sensing that it had forced this decision on purpose. I took back my flashlight and shone it around, spotting something large and floating past us. I cringed as I realized it was the wooden sign from the tackle shop, the massive shark totem, broken free and drifting.

"We will use that as a raft." I decided. "I will need help bringing it here."

"Are you crazy?" The man who was an expert on the harmlessness of sharks asked me.

"Don't worry. Sharks don't eat people, remember? Now that it has had a taste it knows we aren't food." I retorted. My fear was mixed with some kind of anger, and I found those words. Michael was in real danger if we didn't get him into surgery, in a hospital. The shark, I told myself, was only a danger in my mind. I handed off my flare gun and the flashlight.

I thought about being in a bathtub or in the pool. There was never any shark, just my fear. I somehow called upon that fear to help me pretend that all the fear I felt was just in my mind.

I had the paracord and was swimming out to Bait. When I reached it, I finally let myself hear the screams of alarm and terror. The same screams were bursting within me as I frantically splashed across the street, swimming the deep flood waters to reach the flotsam raft. I looked and the shark was certainly interested in my efforts. A flare landed on it and it submerged, losing the burning ember. Then it came back bumping into Bait with considerable force and nearly knocking me off of it.

"Pull me in!" I cried out, the panic breaking in my voice. The men on the roof were reeling me in, but something was resisting. I turned and my eyes widened with horror and disbelief. The shark had bitten onto the tail of the wooden one and was pulling it. For a moment it held like that, its eyes locked on mine, and then it let go, swimming under and then around me, nearly brushing my legs that were dangling in the water as I straddled the raft.

When we had the wooden shark alongside the roof, we loaded Michael onto it and lashed him to it. The anatomically correct shark effigy had stayed upright, even with my weight upon it. Whoever had carved it had done a miraculous job with it.

"Give me the flare." I said. I shoved off, telling them to come with me. We had to swim, using kicking power to move it. Each of us had a position on a fin, a hand or two on it as we swam beside it and kicked. Bait floated on its own, and could be steered by one person, while the rest relied on their life jackets for buoyancy.

I rode upon its tail, facing backward, steering and aiming. Before long, our enemy shark came for us. In my mind it briefly flashed that it would come at us in a frenzy, biting each of us and letting us linger and bleed and scream, finishing us off one by one at its leisure. I knew that is what it wanted, and I didn't tell myself I was wrong. I had never felt so sure of the thoughts of another person or creature before. I just knew.

It started with me, having lost its respect for the flare guns, which had proved useless against it. But when it lunged for me, I was steady, although shaking with fear. My aim was both, I did not miss despite the fearful trembling in my hand.

The flare struck it inside of its mouth. The shark was done. It thrashed crazily, turning over and over and then it stopped, it was sinking, and its body convulsed in spasms. I watched it sink and I thought that I had killed it.

When we reached higher ground, we were also able to call for help. The storm had passed, and an ambulance helicopter came for Michael. He wasn't conscious, but he told me after his recovery that he remembered a ray of light.

"It was like a break in the clouds, a beam of sunlight shining down on me. It felt warm, and I knew something was looking out for us, in our darkest hour."