Episode 1 — “After the Culling”

Culling doesn’t forgive. It files you. Labels you. Shelves youwith the rest of its hauntings.

Jimmy Gillmore Jr. was catalogued at birth—Gillmore,son of the mortician who knew every family in town by their grief.His father, Jimmy Sr., taught him two things: how to hold still whenthe world shakes, and how to keep the dead from looking like thedead. Then the unthinkable: a murder that stole Sr. from the livingand turned the Gillmore name into a campfire curse no one had towhisper anymore.

The Annual Culling came and went, the kind ofnight when the town purges its sins with rituals older than thehighway out. By dawn, Jr. chose his own ritual: leaving. Hebought a one-way to Flora, Florida—a place thatsounded like it might grow something inside him besides emptiness.

Flora isn’t paradise. It’s honest. Palms that sweat. Neon thathums. A diner with a broken O that reads PEN 24 H URS,which feels about right.

That’s where Al “Alchopya” found him. Alisn’t a saint. He’s a fixer with a compass that points to people,not places. Al didn’t ask about Culling. He slid a coffee acrossthe counter, then a truth: “You don’t look like someone whowants to live. Lucky for you, wanting is optional. Showing up is thejob.”

Al became mentor, map, and mirror—showing Jimmy the work thatkeeps a man breathing: odd jobs in the shadows between legal andnecessary; learning how to read a room before it reads you; keepingscore with kindness you don’t advertise. In Flora, the dead don’tneed makeup—they need answers. And Al knows where answers hide.

By week’s end, word reached them: something old from Culling hadfollowed Jimmy south. Not a person—a practice. Thekind that chews up small towns and spits out legends. If Jimmy won’tbe a legend, he’ll have to become a lesson.

Tomorrow: Al opens a locked drawer. Inside is the first favorJimmy will never forget.