Jim Peterson was one of Florida's most celebrated barbecue chefs. People traveled across state lines just to taste his food, and he built his reputation on an almost religious devotion to cooking.

Then something answered him.

Whether it was a demon, a hallucination, or something far older remains unknown.

It appeared as Red, a smiling cartoon slice of toast that only Jim seemed able to see.

Red never demanded worship.

It simply offered recipes.

And power.

Jim accepted.

After the infamous Meat Massacre, where dozens vanished and were unknowingly served to a cheering crowd, Jim disappeared from public life. His body had already begun changing. His skin blackened into heat-resistant armor, his blood burned like molten fuel, and he gained the supernatural ability to generate impossible fire from within his own flesh.

His victims weren't just meals.

They became ingredients.

His barbecue became addictive, drawing ordinary people into acts they never imagined themselves capable of committing. Every satisfied customer became another willing supplier.

The phenomenon eventually attracted the attention of The Gray Man.

Believing Jim to be an unexplained biological anomaly, the organization captured him for study. Rather than removing his abilities, they enhanced what was already there, grafting experimental electrical systems, reinforced musculature, neural accelerators, and advanced conductive implants throughout his body.

The project ended exactly as most Gray Man projects do.

Violently.

Jim escaped.

The Gray Man let him.

Officially he remains an escaped experiment.

Unofficially, he's a tagged field test, allowed to roam while the Gray Man quietly records what happens when supernatural power and experimental science are forced into the same body.

Now Killer Toast drives from town to town in his rolling smokehouse.

He isn't looking for victims.

He's looking for customers.