Somewhere Warm
Prologue: The Cabaret
Florida Man was sitting at a table he didn't remember choosing, with a drink he didn't remember ordering. The ice wasn't melting.
The cabaret was somewhere in Florida—half dinner theatre, half assisted living activity room. The crowd spanned decades: retirees in sequins next to twenty-somethings in leather, everyone watching the stage with the same glazed intensity. The bartender polished a glass with too many fingers. Little Merle sat on the table, nose twitching, unusually still.
Something was off about this place. Florida Man couldn't quite put his finger on it, but the corners of the room didn't seem to line up right.
On stage, a drag queen in a sequined gown finished her number. The applause was polite, scattered. Her shadow settled into place a half-second after she stopped moving.
She stepped off the stage and walked directly toward Florida Man's table.
"Oh, honey." She looked him up and down, something ancient and knowing behind the false lashes. "You're not supposed to be here. You smell like bubblegum and heartbreak and somewhere very far away."
"I'm from Pensacola," Florida Man said.
"No, baby. You're from nowhere now." She touched his forehead, traced something invisible on his skin. Her fingers were cold. "But that's okay. I'm gonna do you a favor. Send you somewhere safer. Rustier. You'll figure it out."
"I don't—"
She kissed his forehead. Whispered something that tasted like salt and cypress.
The world went sideways. Little Merle screamed.
Part I: The Haystack
The hay smelled like summer. Or maybe spring. Florida Man wasn't entirely sure what season it was, given that five seconds ago he'd been in a cabaret watching a drag queen's shadow move wrong.
He was face-down in a haystack. Straw poked into places straw had no business being. Little Merle was chittering furiously somewhere near his left ear, the kind of sound that meant something's licking us.
Something huge and wet dragged across the back of his head.
Florida Man turned over. A blonde cow with spots and gentle eyes stared at him, still chewing. She licked his face again—long, deliberate, like she was deciding whether he was food.
"Hey there," he said.
The cow mooed. Behind her, a cart sat in the road—she was still hitched to it, had just stretched her neck over to investigate the haystack. The driver watched from the seat with raised eyebrows.
Rolling green hills. Stone fences. Chimney smoke rising from a village that looked like it belonged on a postcard. Or a Renaissance fair. Hard to tell anymore.
Music. Laughter. The smell of roasting meat—something sweet, something with heat, exactly like those Doritos Flamin' Hot Beef Jerky strips from the Pensacola Wawa. His stomach growled. Little Merle's stomach growled louder.
The driver climbed down from the cart. He wore a long coat, road-worn but dignified. Had the air of someone who'd been important once, and wasn't anymore, and was still deciding how he felt about it. A large suitcase sat on the seat behind him.
The cow—Mula-Mula, Florida Man would learn—went back to chewing, satisfied that the stranger was not, in fact, food.
The man looked at Florida Man—rumpled, hay-covered, squirrel on his shoulder, cow spit drying on his face—and raised an eyebrow.
"You're not from around here," the man said. Not a question.
"Nope."
"And yet you're heading to the feast."
"Smells good."
The man considered this. Then he nodded and gestured to the cart. "Climb in. I'm Movidat. I'm bringing mushrooms."
Florida Man climbed in. The mushrooms were in a basket, fat and pale. They looked like they might be magic mushrooms. Florida Man's interest sharpened. Little Merle's nose twitched.
"I'm Merle," Florida Man said. "This is Little Merle." He gestured at the squirrel.
Movidat glanced at the squirrel. Something flickered in his eyes—recognition, maybe, or memory—but it passed too quickly to read.
"Did you name yourself after the squirrel," Movidat asked, "or did the squirrel name itself after you?"
"Doesn't really matter."
Movidat considered this. "Hmm." He clicked his tongue at Mula-Mula, and the cow ambled forward. "Devious creatures, squirrels. Evil, some would say. Do not underestimate them."
Florida Man looked at Little Merle. Little Merle looked back, the picture of innocence.
"He's alright," Florida Man said.
Part II: The Chair
The village green spread before them, and the feast was everywhere.
Long tables under the open sky, groaning with food. Torches planted in the ground, flames dancing against the deepening dusk. Harvest garlands strung between posts. Children running between tables, chasing each other with stolen rolls. The smell of spiced beef hung in the air like a promise.
Movidat headed for the kitchen with his mushrooms. "Make yourself comfortable," he said over his shoulder. "I'll be back."
Florida Man wandered through the crowd, stomach leading the way. Little Merle rode his shoulder, nose still twitching toward the kitchen where Movidat had taken the mushrooms.
"Go get us some," Florida Man said.
Little Merle chittered once—acknowledgment, mission accepted—and vanished into the crowd.
At the head of the main table, there was an empty chair. Heavy oak, carved back, worn smooth with age. A plate sat in front of it, untouched. A cup of cider, still full.
No one was sitting there. No one seemed to notice it was empty.
Florida Man sat down.
The chair was comfortable. The spiced beef was amazing—better than anything he'd had since that one barbecue joint in Ocala that burned down. He washed it down with the beer. Also amazing. Cold and crisp and tasting faintly of honey.
He was reaching for seconds when the torches flickered. Not dramatically. Just wrong. Like they forgot how to burn for a moment.
Something was standing at the edge of the fields.
Tall. Made of wrong angles. Straw and stone and old wood, assembled into something almost like a man. It wasn't there a moment ago.
Florida Man blinked. It was gone.
No—not gone. Closer. Standing amongst the crowd near the bonfire. No one else saw it. No one else reacted. The feast continued around him, laughter and music, everyone oblivious.
He looked away for a second. When he looked back, it wasn't there.
But he could feel it now. Right next to him. The smell of dry leaves and turned earth. The cold of autumn pressing against his shoulder.
He turned.
The thing stood beside the chair. Its face was worn smooth like something left too long in the weather—features suggested, not defined. Its eyes were too deep, too knowing.
Across the feast, an old woman—white hair in a long braid, shawl older than most buildings—was staring directly at them. At the thing only Florida Man could see. Her face had gone pale, her hands trembling around her cup.
She could see it too.
"You sat in my chair," the Warden said. Old. Slow. Like wind through dead stalks. "You are not from this village."
"Ah, hell." Florida Man looked at the beer in his hand. "What'd that guy put in this?"
The Warden waited. It did not acknowledge the question.
"You are not from this village," it continued, as if he hadn't spoken. "Good. Perhaps you can help me."
"Look, man, I just sat down. I haven't even finished my beer." Florida Man squinted at the thing. "Are you from the Blair Witch Project? You look like you're from the Blair Witch Project."
The Warden did not acknowledge this either.
"There is something wrong in my flesh," the Warden said, pressing on with visible effort. "A dead thing, where dead things should not be. It has been hurting me for... a long time."
"Like shrapnel," Florida Man said.
The Warden tilted its head.
"I got something stuck in me too." Florida Man gestured vaguely at his right hip. "Butt cheek. Can't get it out. Doctors said it'd be more trouble than it's worth. Just gotta live with it."
"I cannot—" The Warden stopped. Started again. "I cannot live with this. Will you find it? Will you take it out?"
"You want me to take something out of your butt?"
"Out of my bounds."
"Right, right." Florida Man took another swig of beer. "Where is it?"
He waited for the thing to turn around, show him its back, point at a spot. That's how this usually worked.
The Warden's straw-and-stone face shifted—confusion, frustration, something like shame.
"I do not... know. I feel it. Always. A wrongness in my bones. But I am the fields. I am the fences. I am every inch of soil within my bounds."
Pause.
"It could be anywhere."
"Wait, what?" Florida Man's brain was struggling to catch up. He was still hungry. He wanted more of that beef. "You're the... the fields? What does that—"
The Warden vanished. Not dramatically—just stopped being there, like it had never been.
"—mean," Florida Man finished, to no one.
The feast had gone quiet. He looked down at his plate. Still had some beef left. He reached for it.
Everyone was staring at him.
"What?" Florida Man said.
The old woman with the white braid—Grandmother Yarrow, he'd learn—was the first to speak. Her voice was barely a whisper.
"You sat in the Warden's chair."
Movidat came out of the kitchen, mushroom basket empty, and froze. His face went through several emotions at once.
"That seat," Movidat said carefully, "was left empty for a reason."
Little Merle chose that moment to return from wherever he'd scampered off to. In his paws: one of Movidat's prized mushrooms, fat and pale.
He held it up to Florida Man.
Movidat's eyes went wide. "That mushroom—"
Florida Man took it from Merle and bit into it. It wasn't magic. But it was delicious.
"You drugged me," Florida Man said to Movidat, chewing. "You put something in the beer, or the beef, and now I'm seeing things. Like that time my cousin Darryl's meth lab exploded and I saw a ten-foot raccoon telling me to repent."
"I did no such—"
"Some weirdo from the Blair Witch Project just appeared and asked me to remove something from his ass. So." He took another bite. "Thanks for that."
Part III: The Orchard
Grandmother Yarrow's wagon sat at the edge of the field, parked there for as long as anyone could remember. She called it a wagon. Florida Man called it a double-wide mobile home.
She poured tea while she talked. The history came out in fragments—the old pact, the Warden's protection, the village's promises. A seat at every feast. The dead buried only at the boundary ferns, never in the Warden's living soil.
"He said there's something dead in his bounds," Florida Man said. "Something that's hurting him."
Yarrow's hands trembled on the teapot. "That would explain... many things. The animals going mad. The blight on the orchard. It's been decades now, but..."
She trailed off.
Florida Man looked at Little Merle. "Go check the orchard. See what you find."
The squirrel sat up straight on his shoulder, brought one tiny paw to his brow in a crisp salute, and was gone.
They waited. Yarrow served more tea. Movidat sat stiffly in the corner, still processing the mushroom theft.
Then: shouting outside.
Little Merle came running back. In his paws, held aloft like a trophy: a severed dog's ear, covered in grey pus. He was also making a noise Florida Man had never heard from him before—a high, wavering "woooOOOooo" sound, like a tiny squirrel trying to imitate a ghost.
"Huh," Florida Man said, taking the ear. "You see something spooky out there?"
Little Merle nodded vigorously and did the ghost noise again.
Alderman Brynn stood outside with a group of men, all of them out of breath. The alderman was ruddy-cheeked, barrel-chested, and clearly not used to running. He had the look of a man who'd just seen something he wanted very much to unsee.
"What happened?" Movidat asked.
"Nothing." Brynn wiped his forehead. "Just some mad dogs. At the orchard. We put them down."
"Mad dogs," Florida Man repeated. He held up the severed ear, still glistening with grey pus. "This look like a dog to you?"
Brynn's face went a shade paler. "Where did you—"
"The squirrel took it," one of the men said, eyeing Little Merle with something between disgust and fear. "Right off the carcass. We tried to stop him."
Little Merle, perched on Florida Man's shoulder, made a noise that might have been a laugh.
"I'm going to the orchard," Florida Man said.
"No." Brynn stepped forward, blocking the path. "No, you're not. This is village business. Ferncross business. You're a stranger, and you've caused enough trouble for one night."
"He sat in the Warden's chair," one of the men muttered. "He ate from it."
"I know what he did." Brynn's jaw tightened. "Which is exactly why he needs to leave. Now. Before anything else goes wrong."
Movidat stepped between them. He was taller than Brynn, and when he spoke, his voice had dropped into something quieter. More dangerous.
"Brynn," he said. "A word."
They stepped aside. Florida Man couldn't hear what Movidat said, but he saw Brynn's face go through several emotions—confusion, then embarrassment, then something close to panic. Whatever Movidat knew about the alderman's personal life, it was apparently very personal.
When they returned, Brynn wouldn't meet anyone's eyes.
"Fine," he said. "Go. But don't say I didn't warn you."
He stepped aside. His men followed, reluctantly.
The orchard spread across the hillside, still healthy at the edges—villagers were working the far rows, harvesting the last of the season's crop.
It was a peachplant orchard. Florida Man had never seen peachplants before, but he recognized them immediately—the fruit was shaped like a peach on one end and an eggplant on the other. The overall effect was... suggestive. Very suggestive. The kind of fruit that would get you kicked off a family-friendly farmers market.
"Huh," he said. "Nice."
Movidat did not acknowledge this.
The healthy peachplants hung heavy and purple-pink on the outer trees. But as they walked deeper, toward the abandoned cottage at the orchard's heart, everything changed. The trees grew grey and brittle. The fruit had dropped to the ground, rotting, covered in pus. Shriveled and wrong. Even the innuendo had died.
Fog clung to the earth here, only here. The air tasted like metal.
Little Merle went very still on Florida Man's shoulder.
"Have you seen my daddy?"
The voice was small. High. The voice of a child.
Florida Man turned.
She stood in the fog—a little girl, maybe seven, wearing a plain dress and a headband made of flowers. Semi-transparent. A slight shimmer at her edges, like she couldn't quite decide whether to be there.
"Hey," Florida Man said. "What's your name?"
"Elara." She tilted her head, studying him. "Are you a friend of Papa's?"
"I don't think so."
"Oh." She looked disappointed. "Papa said he'd come back. He said I could stay here because it was warm." She looked around at the grey trees, the fog, and frowned. "It used to be warmer."
Florida Man looked at the rotting fruit. The decay spreading outward from where she stood.
"How long you been waiting?" he asked.
Elara's face scrunched up, confused. "I don't... I'm not sure. It doesn't feel like very long." She brightened. "But Papa said he'd come back. So I'm waiting."
Part IV: The Digging
Movidat opened his suitcase.
Florida Man had seen a lot of impossible things. A suitcase shouldn't have surprised him. But the shovel that came out of it was full-sized, wooden-handled, iron-bladed, and definitely too big to have fit inside.
"Don't ask," Movidat said.
Florida Man didn't.
They started digging.
The soil was grey, dead, wrong. Each bite of the shovel threw up clods that smelled of rot. The fog thickened around them.
Then: movement in the dead trees.
Low shapes. Too many eyes catching what light filtered through the fog.
The pack alpha came first. A large dog—or what had been a dog once—muscular, mange-ridden, grey-eyed. It didn't growl. Didn't posture. Just watched.
Then it started walking toward them.
"Keep digging," Movidat said. He stepped between Florida Man and the pack, something old and sharp flickering in his eyes. For a moment, he looked less like a man and more like something else entirely—something that had been wearing a man's shape out of habit.
The alpha lunged. Movidat moved—faster than he should have, in a way that hurt to watch—and drove it back. It circled, snarling, but kept its distance.
Florida Man dug.
The shovel hit something.
He brushed away the dirt. Bones. Small. Wrapped in what remained of a blanket, half-rotted.
In the skeletal fingers: a carved wooden doll.
Elara drifted closer, curious.
"Don't look," Florida Man said.
She stopped. "What is it?"
"Nothing you need to see." He brushed dirt from the bundle, keeping his body between her and the grave. "Just... trust me, okay?"
She nodded, uncertain but trusting. She had no idea what she was looking at. What she was.
Part V: The Walk
He carried her bones wrapped in the sheet, cradled against his chest like something precious. Because it was. Had been. Still was, in a way that mattered.
Elara walked beside him, her small hand resting on his arm. He could feel it—just barely, like the memory of a touch, like cool air shaped into fingers. Just real enough.
Little Merle played at her feet, and for the first time since she'd appeared, the ghost girl almost smiled.
The village watched. They came out of their houses, lined the path to the boundary ferns. No one spoke. Children stared with wide eyes. Elders wept.
Grandmother Yarrow fell in behind them, humming something old. Others joined—fragments of a song no one had sung in decades.
At the foot of the hill, Old Tomas waited. He was sober for the first time in years.
"I should have said something," he said, voice cracking. "Years ago. Aldric told me... he said he put her somewhere warm. I didn't understand."
Florida Man nodded. Kept walking.
The boundary ferns rose in a dark wall at the edge of the village—ancient, towering fronds that swayed even when the wind was still. Cold even in the fading sunlight. It had the feel of a place where the dead were meant to rest.
Movidat helped dig. It didn't take long. The ground here accepted the shovel easily, almost eagerly.
They laid the bones in the earth. Covered them.
Elara stood at the edge of the grave, looking down. Then out—toward the village, the hills, the mist gathering in the distance.
A shape formed in that mist. Tall. A man's outline. Waiting.
"Daddy," Elara whispered.
She looked at Florida Man. Her eyes—sad, tired, but finally at peace.
"It's not as cold as I thought," she said.
Then she ran. Across the grass, into the mist, toward the waiting figure. The two shapes met, merged, and faded into nothing.
The wind died.
The fog lifted.
And the Warden appeared—sudden, abrupt, right in their faces—and for once, it didn't look like something in pain.
"You have given me peace," it said. "Thank you."
"Can you send me home?" Florida Man asked.
"I cannot." The Warden's too-deep eyes shifted to Movidat. "But he can."
It rested an arm on Movidat's shoulder. And something—Florida Man couldn't see it exactly, but he felt it—opened. Like a door that had been locked for years finally swinging wide.
Movidat inhaled sharply. His eyes went distant, seeing something beyond the boundary ferns, beyond the village, beyond this world entirely.
"The spirit-roads," he breathed. "They're... they're open again."
The Warden nodded once. Then vanished.
Part VI: The Roads
The carriage was a thing of mist and memory—half-formed, translucent, but solid enough to ride in. Movidat had conjured it at the village's edge, where the boundary between here and elsewhere grew thin.
"Thank you," Florida Man said.
Movidat stood outside the carriage, one hand on the suitcase that had been part of his own form once. He looked tired. Grateful. Almost peaceful.
"Safe travels," he said. "The roads will take you where you need to go."
Florida Man settled into the seat. Little Merle hopped up beside him, chittering contentedly.
Movidat's eyes fell on the squirrel.
Something flickered across his face. Recognition. Memory. And then—slowly, terribly—understanding.
His expression froze.
"That squirrel," Movidat said. His voice had gone very quiet. Very flat. "Where did you get that squirrel?"
The spirit-roads were closing. The carriage began to move.
"He's been with me a while," Florida Man said. "Little Merle. Good guy."
Movidat's eye twitched.
"It was you," he whispered. The words came out strangled. "The party. The fire. The—"
The roads closed.
Florida Man watched Movidat's frozen, horrified face disappear into the mist—and Little Merle, for his part, did his best impression of innocence.
"Huh," Florida Man said. "Friend of yours?"
The squirrel said nothing.
The spirit-roads were quiet. Mist everywhere, soft and grey, the carriage wheels making no sound on ground that wasn't quite there. At the edges of the fog, Florida Man caught glimpses of places—a beach with familiar sand, a highway overpass, the neon glow of a gas station sign he almost recognized.
Home was close. He could feel it.
Then something hit the carriage.
Not hit—smashed. A black mass tore through the side like tissue paper, sending splinters of light and mist in all directions. Florida Man grabbed for Little Merle as the world spun—
—and something grew.
Over his arms. His chest. His face. Cold and slick and alive, spreading across his skin like oil, covering everything in black. He could feel it in his mind, too. A presence. Hungry. Waiting.
They crashed through stained glass.
Epilogue
The funeral was in full swing.
Florida Man blinked glass from his eyes and looked around. He was lying in the center aisle of a church—high ceilings, ornate architecture, rows of pews filled with... people in costumes?
Capes. Masks. Spandex in every color. Someone in the front row was literally on fire.
A casket lay at the altar—or what was left of one. Florida Man had landed directly on it, shattering the lid. Through the splintered wood, he could see legs in blue spandex, still and posed, ending in boots with little wings on them.
The mourners stared at him. At the ruined casket. At the dead superhero's legs poking out from under him.
"Uh," Florida Man said.
He scrambled off the casket and looked down at himself.
He was covered in form-fitting black latex. Sleek. Almost organic. Very form-fitting. Extremely form-fitting. Every detail of his out-of-shape body rendered in glossy black relief. Beer gut, love handles, the whole deal.
So many snacks, a voice rumbled. Not in his ears—in his head. Deep. Hungry. Amused by its own hunger. We are going to enjoy this place.
A confused squeak echoed somewhere in the back of his skull.
The rodent is confused, the voice observed. We like the rodent. Fuzzy on the outside. Crunchy on the inside.
Florida Man stood up. Brushed glass off his shoulder. Looked at the superhero funeral. The capes. The spandex. The guy who was literally on fire and not doing anything about it.
"Gay pride parade again," he muttered.
Parade, the voice repeated, savoring the word. Yes. We like parades. So many delicious heads.
The thing inside him laughed. Low and dark and weirdly delighted.
And Little Merle, fused somewhere into the symbiote's mass, wondered how things had gotten so weird.