Instead, he opened Instagram.
It was worse than he'd thought.
The duck incident had legs. Someone had autotuned his “I hate that fucking duck” into a remix with a surprisingly catchy beat. There were memes—dozens of them. His face, mid-smother, plastered next to images of rubber ducks with threatening auras. A fan account had posted a side-by-side of him getting buried in vinyl next to a nature documentary clip of a goose attacking a jogger.
The comments were relentless.
bro got humbled by a mallard
death by sponsor is CRAZY work
Xtreme Doug: 1, Dustin: 0
I would literally pay money to see the full unedited footage
Fuck death? More likeduckdeath lmao
the way he just DISAPPEARED under there
Our boy Dustin got Daddie'd by a Duck and I can't stop laughing
Dustin nearly threw his phone across the room after that last comment.
He needed to do something. Something big enough to get people talking about something else. Something that would remind everyone that he was the guy who laughed at gravity, not the guy who got taken out by a cartoon waterfowl with a thumbs-up.
He knewexactlywhat he had to do.
There was a jump he'd never done. A jump he'd never had the guts to do, if he was being honest with himself.
Devil's Needle—it was a wing-suit flight through a gap in the rock so narrow that only two people had ever pulled it off. Everyone else who'd tried had either bailed at the last second or become a cautionary tale.
He and Tyler used to watch the footage late at night. They'd argue about approaches, analyze the successful flights frame by frame, and talk about what they'd do differently.
Someday, they used to say.When we're ready.
They never got ready. Tyler died, and Dustin put Devil's Needle in a box in his head labeledthings that don't matter anymoreand never opened it again.
Until now...
Maybe it was time to find out if hereallycouldn't die.
Before he could talk himself out of it, Dustin hit reply on the Apex email.
You want brand visibility? How about this: I'll try the Devil's Needle jump. Look it up. It's a wingsuit flight through a gap.
Only two people have ever pulled it off. I'll be the third, and you'll get full footage. Are you salivating yet? You should be.
My terms: If I manage this, I'll wear your logo. I'll do interviews, promos, whatever you want. But I'm done with Doug. No duck on my gear. No duck on my merch. No duck anywhere near me ever again.
Let me know.
Dustin
He hitSend.
For a long moment, he juststared at his phone.
His manager would be shitting bricks when she saw this.
