The Cannibal King
Part One: Pensacola
The gator had been acting weird for three days.
Florida Man noticed it first on Tuesday, when Biscuit—named for reasons lost to a particularly foggy night in '09—started circling the dock instead of sunning on it. Wednesday, she wouldn't eat. Thursday, she was gone.
'Gone' was the wrong word. Biscuit had lived behind his trailer for seven years. Gators didn't leave. They were territorial as hell and twice as stubborn. But her spot by the water was empty, the mud smoothed over like she'd never been there at all.
Florida Man stood at the edge of the swamp, a can of Natural Light sweating in his hand, and watched the water. It wasn't moving right. The surface had a sheen to it—black and slick, like someone had poured motor oil across the whole marsh.
On his shoulder, the squirrel chittered nervously.
'I see it,' Florida Man said. The squirrel—named Merle, for reasons that made sense at the time—had been with him for three years. Smartest damn rodent he'd ever met. Could open jars, fetch tools, and once hotwired a boat engine while Florida Man was fighting off a python. Right now, little Merle was pressed flat against his neck, fur bristling.
'Huh,' he said.
The water split open.
What came through wasn't Biscuit.
It had been a gator once. Maybe. The shape was close enough—low and heavy, dragging itself from the water on too many legs. But its scales rippled like oil on a hot road, colours sliding across the surface that shouldn't exist. Its mouth opened sideways. Its eyes were holes.
Florida Man had seen a lot of things come out of Florida swamps. Pythons, boars, a naked man on a riding mower at 3 AM. This was different. This was wrong in a way that went deeper than strange. Looking at it made his teeth ache.
It screamed. The sound was wet and sharp and it went straight through him like a cold knife.
Florida Man threw his beer at it.
The can bounced off its snout. The creature lunged. And then the world tore in half.
The portal felt like getting flushed down a cosmic toilet—spinning, cold, and over before he could process it. One second he was falling backward off his dock, the next he slammed into hard-packed dirt under a sun that burned white and merciless.
He lay there for a moment, squinting up at the sky. Wrong colour. Too bright, too empty. No clouds.
Something chittered near his ear. Little Merle had made it through too, clinging to his collar with tiny desperate claws.
'Well,' he said, 'that's new.'
He sat up. Around him stretched desert—endless, flat, and brutally hot. In the distance, something that might have been a town shimmered in the heat haze. Behind him, a scraggly line of dead trees marked what might have once been a river.
Movement in the trees.
Florida Man went still. He knew that shape. Low to the ground, sliding through shadow, eyes catching the light. Gators. Three of them, maybe four, circling through the dead brush like they'd been waiting for him.
But they were wrong too. Same oil-slick sheen as the thing in his swamp. Same wrongness in the way they moved—too fluid, too deliberate. These weren't animals. These were something hunting.
'Hey now,' Florida Man said, rising slow. 'Y'all got the same look as my cousin's dog. Porchageese water dog. Got possessed. Bad situation all around.'
The lead gator opened its mouth. Black ooze dripped from its jaws.
Florida Man pulled his knife—always kept it on him, a habit born from too many bar fights and one unfortunate encounter with a vending machine—and backed toward the town.
The gators followed. They didn't rush. They didn't need to. The desert was their territory now, and they knew it.
He kept backing up. The gators kept pace.
This went on for about a mile before he hit the edge of town.
Part Two: The Barrens
The town didn't have a name he could read—the sign had been scoured blank by sand and time—but it had the bones of civilisation. Wooden buildings with swinging doors. A water tower. A chapel with a bell that had long since stopped ringing. Everything sun-bleached and dust-bitten, built low against a wind that never really stopped.
The people were something else entirely.
They dressed like cowboys—wide-brimmed hats, long dusters, boots worn soft from years on the trail. But they carried themselves like soldiers. Like knights. Posture straight, hands never far from the revolvers at their hips. And those revolvers—Florida Man noticed it even through the heat haze—had symbols etched into the metal. Runes. The kind that caught the light wrong.
He walked right down the main street, knife still in hand, trailing oil-slicked gator prints behind him.
People stared.
A woman in a marshal's duster touched the brim of her hat as he passed—a greeting or a warning, hard to tell. An old man sitting on a porch nodded once, slow and deliberate, like he was acknowledging something Florida Man didn't understand yet.
He found a saloon and pushed through the doors. Cool air. Shade. A bar. The important things.
'Beer,' he said to the man behind the counter. 'Whatever you got.'
The bartender looked at him. Looked at the knife. Looked at the wet footprints he'd tracked across the floor.
'We don't serve wanderers without colours.'
'Colours?'
'Who do you ride for, stranger? What house? What lord?'
Florida Man blinked. 'I'm from Pensacola.'
The bartender's face changed. Not confusion—recognition. The wrong kind.
'Pensacola,' he repeated. 'That's in Florida.'
'Yeah.'
'Florida's gone, stranger. Has been for a hundred years.' The bartender's voice dropped. 'The Burning Waste. Oil fires that never go out. Water so black it eats the light. Nothing lives there now except the Gator Cult—and the things they worship.'
Florida Man thought about his swamp. The oil-slick surface. Biscuit disappearing.
'Huh,' he said.
The bartender studied him for a long moment—the clothes that didn't fit this world, the knife that wasn't a revolver, the complete lack of recognition at words like 'colours' and 'house.' Then he poured him something dark and thick that smelled like burnt honey and regret. Florida Man drank it. It was terrible. He ordered another.
The door banged open.
A man stumbled in—older, heavyset, dressed in clothes too fine for the dust coating them. His coat bore a symbol on the shoulder: a tower wrapped in thorns. Some kind of heraldry. His face was red with heat and something worse. Panic. The kind that went bone-deep.
'Please,' he said, to the room at large. 'Someone—anyone—my daughter. They've taken my daughter.'
The saloon went quiet. People looked at their drinks. A few hands moved toward holstered revolvers, then stopped. Nobody stood.
Florida Man turned on his stool. 'Taken where?'
The man—Mayor Barton, as it turned out—stared at him like he'd grown a second head. 'Who are you?'
'Don't know yet. Taken where?'
'The Whisper Mine. Black-Eyed Bill's riders took her this morning.' His voice cracked. 'They say he's doing some kind of ritual. A sacrifice. And Clara—my Clara—she's just a child. Sixteen summers. She never hurt anyone.'
'Black-Eyed Bill,' Florida Man repeated. 'He summon oily gators?'
Barton blinked. 'What?'
'Gators. Black eyes, slick skin, move all wrong. Like they're not really there.' He tapped the bar. 'Those were waiting for me when I got here. Followed me into town.'
A murmur ran through the saloon. A figure rose from the shadows near the bar—a man, lean and weathered, with the look of someone who'd spent more nights under stars than roofs. His duster was plain—no heraldry, no symbols. The revolvers at his hips were iron. Just iron. No runes, no blessings. Working guns for a man without a house to call his own.
'You saw Bill's creatures and walked away?' he asked. His voice was rough, like he didn't use it often.
'They weren't that fast.'
'They're summoned things. Bound to the Cannibal King. Most men freeze when they see them—the wrongness gets in your head.' The man's voice was calm, almost conversational.
'Seemed more like gators to me.'
The man studied Florida Man for a long moment. Something shifted behind those weathered eyes—interest, maybe, or the ghost of a decision being made. He pushed off from the bar.
The bartender snorted. 'Cade. You don't ride for anyone. Why do you care?'
'I don't.' But Cade's eyes hadn't left Florida Man's. 'But a man with no colours walks through Bill's gators and orders a drink? That's either stupid or interesting. Either way, better than sitting here.' He nodded once. 'I'm in.'
Before anyone could respond, a small shape darted out from behind the mayor—a kid, maybe twelve, all sharp angles and quick eyes. Clothes too big, boots held together with hope and twine.
'I'm going too,' the kid said.
The mayor turned. 'Sparrow, no—'
'Clara's my friend.' Sparrow's jaw set in a way that said arguing wouldn't help. 'I know the mine. Used to run messages for the silver crews before it closed. I know the back ways.'
Florida Man finished his drink. 'Gators, you just don't let them get a hold of you. Keep moving, keep calm, don't splash around like prey.' He looked at the unlikely group that had formed around him—a wanderer with iron guns and a kid who knew the tunnels. 'Where's this mine?'
Part Three: The Whisper Mine
The mine sat against the hills like a wound in the rock. Old wooden beams framed an entrance that had seen better decades. Warning signs—faded, splintered—hung at angles that suggested someone had ripped them down and someone else had nailed them back up.
Florida Man studied the entrance. The others spread out beside him.
Cade stood apart, arms crossed, iron revolvers sitting plain and unblessed at his hips. He hadn't said much on the journey. Hadn't needed to.
Sparrow crouched near the entrance, studying the marks in the dust. 'Three, maybe four patrols,' the kid said. 'They've been busy. But they're using the main shaft. There's a ventilation tunnel about fifty yards east—comes out near the old foreman's office.'
'You know this place,' Florida Man said.
'Used to run messages for the silver crews. Before the whispers got too loud.' Sparrow's eyes were old for a twelve-year-old. 'Clara and me used to play in the upper tunnels. Before her daddy became mayor and she had to start acting proper.'
'We should talk about Bill,' Cade said. 'What he was. What he became.' He checked his revolvers—plain iron, no runes, nothing blessed. 'He was a knight of the Round Table once. Rode with the King's own guard. His revolver was blessed by the Archbishop himself—one of the sacred twelve.'
'What happened?'
'Power happened. He wanted more than honour could give him.' Cade's jaw tightened. 'Killed his sworn brothers. Took their guns. Broke them down and forged something new—something that answers to the old things. The hungry things.'
'The Cannibal King.'
'An old spirit. Older than the Barrens, older than the kingdom. It feeds on sacrifice. Human sacrifice. If Bill completes the ritual—'
'So we bust up the church service.' Florida Man shrugged. 'Done that before.'
Cade stared at him for a long moment. Then he laughed—a short, rough sound. 'You're either the bravest man I've ever met or the most foolish.'
'Probably the second one,' Florida Man admitted. 'Let's go.'
The mine was dark, but not quiet.
Sparrow led them through the ventilation tunnel—a cramped passage that smelled of old air and older secrets. The kid moved like smoke, pausing at junctions, listening to things the rest of them couldn't hear.
'Left here,' Sparrow whispered. 'The main shaft's twenty feet that way. We stay in the service tunnels, come up behind them.'
They moved in single file. Florida Man. Cade. Sparrow scouting ahead, slipping through gaps that made the adults squeeze and curse.
Whispers slid along the walls—not voices, not quite, but something close enough to make the hairs on his neck stand up. The stone hummed with a frequency he felt in his teeth. Every now and then, they'd pass markings carved into the rock. Old symbols. Wrong shapes.
'Don't look at those too long,' Cade muttered.
Florida Man had already stopped looking. Some things you knew not to stare at. Like the sun. Like the inside of a motel ice machine after 2 AM.
They moved deeper. The whispers got louder.
Sparrow held up a fist. Everyone stopped.
'Tripwire,' the kid breathed, pointing at a glint of metal across the tunnel. 'Leads to—' Sparrow traced the line with their eyes. 'Dynamite. Rigged to blow the whole passage.'
'Can you clear it?' Cade asked.
Sparrow was already moving, small fingers working the mechanism. A minute later, the wire went slack. 'Next time, ask after I'm done.'
Patrols found them twice after that. Little Merle spotted the first—the squirrel chittered a warning from Florida Man's shoulder, one paw pointing down a side tunnel. Florida Man handed the squirrel to Sparrow, circled around, caught the rider from behind, and dropped him quiet. Took his hat, too. It fit pretty well.
The second patrol came around a corner with guns drawn. Cade was faster. Two shots, iron-loud and brutal, nothing blessed about them. Just aim and will. Both riders went down before they could shout.
'Nice,' Florida Man said.
Cade shrugged. 'Don't need runes to shoot straight.'
The third patrol had one of the gators.
It came out of the dark without warning, sliding across the stone floor like it was still in water. The oil-slick hide drank the torchlight. Its eyes glowed the faint, sick green of something that had died and forgotten to stop moving.
Sparrow scrambled back, pressing against the wall. Cade drew his revolvers but hesitated—iron bullets didn't seem like enough for something like this.
Florida Man stepped forward.
'Hey,' he said. 'Remember me?'
The gator opened its mouth. Black ooze dripped. It gathered itself to lunge.
Florida Man didn't wait. He grabbed a broken mine timber from the floor and swung it like a bat, catching the creature across the snout with a crack that echoed through the tunnel. The gator shrieked—that same wet, sharp sound from his swamp—and thrashed sideways.
'Fire,' Florida Man said. 'Grab that lantern.'
Cade was already moving. He snatched a lantern from a wall bracket and hurled it. The oil splashed across the gator's hide and caught.
The thing screamed. The sound was worse this time—deeper, more wrong, like something else was screaming through it. It thrashed against the walls, spreading flames, and then it collapsed.
The fire burned hot and blue. It smelled like nothing Florida Man had ever encountered, and he'd smelled a lot of things.
'Huh,' he said. 'Thought fire might work.'
'How did you know?' Cade asked.
'Didn't. Just figured—summoned thing, bound thing, unnatural thing.' He prodded the corpse with his boot. 'Fire usually works on things that don't belong somewhere. Clears them out.'
Cade stared at him. 'That's not—that's actually sound magical theory.'
'It's just gators.'
Sparrow crept closer to the smouldering corpse, nose wrinkled. 'Clara's past that. In the deep chamber. I can feel the whispers pulling that way.'
'Then that's where we go,' Florida Man said.
Part Four: The Whispering Cavern
They found the ritual chamber at the bottom of the mine.
The cavern was huge—natural, maybe, or carved by something patient and old. Symbols covered every surface, glowing faintly in a colour that hurt to look at. At the centre, an altar of black stone. On the altar, bound and gagged, was a girl. Maybe sixteen. Eyes wide with terror.
Clara Barton.
Around the altar stood figures in dark robes, hoods pulled low, their holsters empty. They'd given up their guns for this—traded steel for something older. And at their head, hands raised, voice rising in a chant that made the whispers in the walls answer back—
'Black-Eyed' Bill Thorne.
He'd been a knight once, and it showed. Under the corruption, under the dark power, there was still the bearing of a trained warrior. He wore a duster of blackened leather etched with those same wrong symbols. His hat cast a shadow that seemed too deep. And his eyes—the source of his name—were pits of pure black, no whites, no pupils, just darkness that went deeper than they should.
At his hip hung a revolver unlike any other. Forged from the broken sacred guns of his murdered brothers, it pulsed with a sickly light.
His voice was carrying. The ritual was already in motion.
'We've got maybe a minute,' Cade said, low.
'Sparrow.' Florida Man turned to the kid. 'You know another way to that altar?'
The kid's eyes darted across the chamber, reading shadows and stone. 'There's a ledge. Runs along the east wall. I can get to her while they're looking at you.'
'Do it.' He looked at Cade. 'Keep them busy.'
'That's the plan?' Cade asked. 'Walk in and start trouble?'
'You got a better one?'
Cade checked his revolvers. 'No. Just making sure.'
Florida Man stepped out into the open.
Bill stopped chanting. The whispers stuttered. Every head in the cavern turned.
'Hey,' Florida Man said. 'The gators said to tell you they quit.'
Silence.
On Florida Man's shoulder, Little Merle was eating an acorn. Slow. Deliberate. The same intensity as a man smoking a cigarette in a room full of people he's about to disappoint. His tiny paws worked the shell with mechanical focus.
The acorn slipped. Hit the stone floor with a crack that echoed through the cavern.
Bill's black eyes fixed on him. 'Who in the seven hells are you?'
'Nobody. Just here for the girl.'
Bill laughed. It was the laugh of a man who had traded everything for power and believed the trade had been worth it. 'You think you can stop this? A wanderer with no colours, no gun, no name? The Cannibal King rises. His hunger will be sated. One sacrifice now, and he grants me dominion over—'
'Yeah, no, I don't really care about that part.' Florida Man jerked his thumb at Clara. 'Just want the kid. You can keep the creepy cave.'
Bill's face twisted. 'Kill him.'
The cultists charged.
Combat in a ritual chamber was ugly work.
Cade's iron guns barked—no music, just thunder—and the first two cultists dropped before they got close. Three more fell in the next breath.
Florida Man grabbed a cultist and used him as a shield against another, then threw them both into a third. He didn't have a gun—hadn't thought to ask for one—but he had the knife and seven years of bar fights in every dive from Pensacola to Clearwater Beach.
Cultists fought sloppy. Zealots always did. They expected their faith to protect them, and when it didn't, they got confused.
Florida Man also fought sloppy, but his was the sloppiness of broken bottles and meth—unpredictable, relentless, and deeply unfair. He didn't get confused. He just got to work.
Across the chamber, a small shadow moved along the eastern ledge. Sparrow, picking a path through the darkness, getting closer to the altar with every heartbeat.
Bill stayed at his position, hands raised, chanting faster now. The whispers were screaming. The symbols on the walls were starting to pulse. Something was pressing against the fabric of reality, heavy and hungry and wrong.
Sparrow reached the altar. Small hands worked at Clara's bonds.
Bill sensed it. His head snapped around.
'No—'
His corrupted revolver cleared the holster. He fired.
The shot didn't sound like the sacred guns. It howled. Shadows erupted from the barrel—
Cade tackled Sparrow aside. The shadow-blast caught him instead, hurling him across the cavern. He hit the wall hard and didn't get up.
But Sparrow was already back at the altar, fingers flying over the ropes. Clara's gag came free. Her bonds followed.
'No more interruptions,' Bill snarled. The shadows coiled around his arm like living things. He raised the revolver toward the children. 'The King is coming. Nothing can stop—'
Florida Man threw his knife.
It wasn't a great throw. It caught Bill in the shoulder, not the throat. But it was enough to break his concentration. The shadows wavered. The chanting stopped.
Bill screamed—rage, not pain—and ripped the knife free. 'You DARE—'
'Gator trick,' Florida Man said. 'When they bite, you don't pull away. You punch them in the nose. Throws off their focus.'
He grabbed a piece of broken timber—still smouldering from an earlier fire—and charged.
Bill raised his revolver. Shadows boiled up from the floor. The Cannibal King's presence pushed against the world, desperate to break through.
Florida Man hit him at a dead run.
They went down together, rolling across the ritual circle, smearing the carefully drawn lines. Bill clawed at his face, stronger than a man should be, shadows wrapping around both of them. The presence of the Cannibal King pressed close, cold and vast and hungry—
And then recoiled.
Florida Man felt it—the thing in the dark, ancient and ravenous, pulling back. Not from him. From the fire.
The smouldering timber in his hand had caught. Blue flames licked up from the broken wood, spreading across the black symbols, eating through the shadows like acid.
Bill screamed. The real kind this time.
'Fire clears things out,' Florida Man said, and shoved the burning timber into the fallen knight's chest.
Part Five: Aftermath
The ride back to town was quiet.
Clara Barton cried for most of it—silent tears, the shock still settling in. Sparrow sat beside her on the horse, one arm around her friend, not saying anything. Some things didn't need words.
Cade rode slumped in his saddle, one arm cradled against his chest. The shadow-blast had cracked ribs, maybe worse. But he was alive. He'd taken a hit meant for a kid, and he was alive.
Behind them, the Whisper Mine burned. The fire had spread through the whole complex, purging symbols and summoning circles alike. Whatever connection Bill Thorne had forged with the Cannibal King, it was severed now.
Mayor Barton met them at the edge of town. He took his daughter in his arms and wept openly, without shame. Then he turned and pulled Sparrow into the embrace too—the street kid who'd been running wild through his town for years, who his daughter had never stopped being friends with, no matter how 'proper' she was supposed to act.
The whole town had gathered—knights and common folk alike, watching the strangers who'd walked into a sacred cave and walked out with their mayor's daughter.
'You have our gratitude,' Barton said, when he could speak again. He looked at the three of them—the wanderer with iron guns, the street kid who'd led them through the dark, and the stranger from a dead land who'd started the whole thing by walking into a bar. 'Name your rewards. Land, title, a seat at our table—anything within my power to grant.'
Cade shook his head. 'Just need a healer and a few days' rest. Then I'm gone.'
Sparrow looked at Clara, then at the mayor. Something passed between them—an understanding. The kid wasn't going back to the streets. Not after this.
Florida Man thought about it. 'You got any jerky?'
'...jerky?'
'Dried meat. For the road. Gator jerky, if you've got it, but I'm not picky.'
A long pause. Somewhere in the crowd, someone laughed—the startled, confused kind of laugh.
Cade limped over as the mayor sent someone to fetch provisions, one hand still pressed to his ribs. 'Where will you go?'
'Don't know yet.' He squinted at the horizon. The sun was setting, painting the Barrens in shades of rust and gold. 'Figured I'd wait and see where the next hole opens.'
'Hole?'
'That's how I got here. Hole in the world. My gator found one, or maybe something found her.' He shrugged. 'Either way, I'm probably not done falling.'
Cade was quiet for a moment. 'You saved her. Saved all of us, probably. Bill would have brought the Cannibal King into our world.'
'Wasn't that hard.'
'It was that hard. Bill had power. The blessing of an old and terrible thing. A gun forged from sacred weapons, turned to darkness—'
'He had gators,' Florida Man said. 'Just weird ones. Everything else was just a man who wanted something and figured the rules didn't apply to him.' He adjusted his hat—Bill's riders' hat, actually, but it fit well enough. 'That's every third guy in Pensacola. They're not that special.'
Someone brought him a sack of dried meat and a waterskin. He nodded thanks and started walking.
'Hey,' Cade called after him. 'You got a name?'
Florida Man paused. He thought about it.
'Merle,' he said.
'Like the squirrel?' Cade asked. 'Or is the squirrel named after you?'
Florida Man stopped. Little Merle chittered on his shoulder—offended, maybe, or just weighing in.
'You ever see those bumper stickers?' Florida Man said. 'The ones that say "who rescued who?"'
Cade waited for more. There wasn't more. Florida Man just nodded, like he'd explained everything, and kept walking.
The desert stretched out before him, endless and strange and not his home. Somewhere out there, maybe, was another hole in the world. Another fall. Another place that needed someone who didn't understand the rules badly enough to break them.
He'd find it. Or it would find him.
Same difference, really.
Epilogue
He made it about three miles before the road forked.
One path headed deeper into the Barrens—empty desert, endless sky. The other curved toward something dark on the horizon. A jagged shape. Buildings, maybe, or what was left of them.
Florida Man stopped. Squinted at the distant silhouette. Towers and steeples, broken and leaning. The skeleton of something that had tried to be two things at once.
Hoofbeats behind him. A rider from town—young, nervous, sent to catch up.
'Sir! Wait!' The kid reined in, breathing hard. 'Message from the mayor. Riders came in from the east while you were leaving. He thought you should know.'
'Know what?'
'There's witches holed up in the Shattered City.' The rider nodded toward that dark shape. 'Camelot's bones, they call it. What's left after the old world and the new one crashed together. Half castle, half frontier town, all ruins now.'
'Witches,' Florida Man said.
'Three of them. Maybe more. They've been there a week, doing something in the deep places. The knights won't go near it—too much old magic in those stones. But people are scared.' The rider paused. 'Mayor figured you might be interested. Since you're walking that direction anyway.'
Florida Man looked at the fork in the road. The safe path. The dangerous one.
He thought about Biscuit. About oily water and holes in the world. About the Burning Waste that used to be Florida, in this place that wasn't his home.
Witches might know something about that.
'Camelot's bones,' he said. 'That's a weird name.'
'It's a weird place.'
He adjusted his hat and started walking toward the ruins.
Clara Barton woke in the dark.
Her bedroom. Her bed. The familiar creak of the floorboards, the faint glow of moonlight through the curtains. She was home. She was safe.
She lay still for a long moment, listening to her own breathing. The mine felt like a dream now—the whispers, the altar, the man with the black eyes and the gun that howled. She remembered the ropes biting into her wrists. She remembered Sparrow's hands, quick and desperate, cutting her free. She remembered fire, blue and hungry, spreading across the symbols.
She remembered the cold.
Something vast and ancient, pressing against her mind. Hungry. So hungry.
Clara sat up. The house was silent. Her father had checked on her a dozen times before finally agreeing to sleep. Sparrow was in the next room—they'd given the kid a real bed, at last. Everyone was resting.
She was alone.
She crossed to the mirror without knowing why. The moonlight caught her face—pale, drawn, dark circles under her eyes from a sleep that hadn't been restful.
And her eyes.
Clara stared.
Her eyes stared back. Pitch black. No whites, no iris, no pupils. Just darkness, deep and endless, like looking into a well that had no bottom.
She didn't scream. Some part of her knew that screaming wouldn't help. Some part of her—a new part, cold and patient—knew that this was just the beginning.
The Cannibal King had been denied his sacrifice.
But he hadn't left empty-handed.
Clara blinked. Her eyes were blue again. Normal. Just a trick of the light.
She climbed back into bed and didn't sleep until dawn.