The story begins with the grandmother trying to convince her family to cancel a trip to Florida, because of a vicious criminal who is on the lam somewhere in the Southern states. Everyone in her family ignores her except for her granddaughter, who mocks her. The family does take the trip and, in an ironic twist of fate, the father, who is grandmother's son, reluctantly agrees to take a fatal detour down a dirt road that grandmother insists leads to an old plantation she once visited. On this road, the cat that grandmother secretly brought along in the car attacks the father, causing an accident. While recovering from the accident and deciding what next step to take, the family is visited by the Misfit, the very criminal whom the grandmother feared meeting before the family began their trip.

The remainder of the short tale involves the interaction of...