In the rust-drunk cesspit of West Virginia, there sits a thousand acre stretch of burn scars. Trees do not grow there, and the ground is cluttered with such ruin that animals will not run across it. Occasionally, you may find a brick unmarred enough to still bear its skin; painted eyes, a spattering of letters that had once been cohesive. The sleepy city of Morllane, they used to call it.
It wasn’t much to look at, even before the burning. Even when all those bricks were still grouted in place, their buildings were arthritic shells of dead industry, creaking in winds too strong or when doors slammed too harshly. Any homes not in a trailer park were little more than boxes, strong enough to withstand the Appalachian rain while still taking dents from kids’ misthrown baseballs (and being there wasn’t much else to do, there were quite a few of those). Among these rows of battered shacks and half-homes was one indistinguishable from the rest—unremarkable, another amalgam of metal siding and shutters drawn tight. Just as unremarkable was the man who lived there. His name was Lester Lemmings.
Nobody liked Lester Lemmings. No, that’s not right—nobody really knew Lester at all. It was Lester himself that found his existence so loathsome. It was Lester that hid behind a phone for money because he could not stomach being seen. He hated the acne that scarred his face and the height his cheekbones sat at. He hated how his eyes scrunched together, and how their icy blues gave his pupils the look of poorly drawn cartoons. He hated his voice; it sounded like screeching, the dying noise a goose makes when caught by the throat. He was doing the world a favor, staying quiet.
And so when he turned into a cocoon, nobody cared.
He strung himself from a rafter in his house. A fleshy sack held up by webs of tendon, hanging between darkness and squalor while the world outside churned on. And he stayed there for weeks. His house was just another spot of disinterest; any form of neglect on his part blended right in with the town’s decay.
It was only found by happenstance, by the miscreant Merrick Cowl.
Merrick—nobody'd ever known what to do with Merrick. He was the middle child of five, not particularly good at sports or in studies; most of his seventeen years were spent dreadfully invisible. This wasn’t all that uncommon for the people of Morllane, their city itself an afterthought; kids knew from the time they were twelve they’d never amount to much, considered “lucky” if they came to be line cooks like their parents. But Merrick was different. Merrick loved himself. Merrick was destined for more. And he wanted desperately for someone to notice.
So naturally, he’d picked up vandalism. Stores, diners, school windows—nothing was sacred to Merrick. He was running from the cops that particular night, having sprayed lewd portraits on each wall of the police station. He’d taken to weaving through neighborhoods, between houses and whatever detritus he could fit under. Lester’s house was just one of the many he tried that night, and it was also the last—it turned out he’d forgotten to lock his door before undergoing metamorphosis. Classic Lester.
Merrick only realized the cocoon was there at all when he backed up against it. He’d been so overwhelmed by the clutter that its odor—sweat and grime—wasn’t enough to faze him; feeling it pulse, though—that did the job. The longer he held his hand up to its spider-webbing veins the more he grew assured of his finding: this was the fetus of God. His salvation.
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