Chapter 8: The House at the edge of Town (8)

The tall man took a step forward.

It wasn’t brave.

It wasn’t dramatic.

It was the same way someone might step toward a spilled drink to mop it up, annoyed, resigned, already thinking about what came next.

The cocoon reacted instantly.

The massive arm that had been clawing toward Lena twitched, hesitated, then snapped sideways with explosive speed. Fingers like broken scaffolding wrapped around the tall man’s leg just below the knee.

There was a fraction of a second where gravity seemed to reconsider its options.

Then the creature yanked.

The tall man vanished from where he stood, his body lifted clean off the ground and whipped through the air like a discarded toy. His spine bent sharply as momentum took over, coat flaring out behind him.

“Ah,” he said, conversationally. “That’s new.”

The arm slammed him into the dirt.

WHAM.

The impact wasn’t a sound so much as an event. The ground buckled beneath him, soil erupting outward in a wet spray as his body hit with bone-crunching force. Blood burst from his mouth in a thick, dark arc, splattering across the grass and the lower half of the cocoon’s silk.

Before the echo faded, the arm lifted him again.

Up.

Around.

Down.

WHAM.

This time his shoulder took the hit. Something shattered, collarbone, maybe rib, and the sound was swallowed immediately by the nauseating squelch of meat striking earth. Blood sprayed again, heavier now, painting the ground in uneven streaks.

The cocoon thrummed.

Not a sound. A vibration. A pleased, furious resonance that rippled through its silk as if it were discovering joy in repetition.

The arm swung again.

And again.

And again.

Each slam was worse than the last.

The tall man’s body stopped resisting after the third impact, not because he had lost consciousness, but because there was no structural integrity left to resist with. Whatever coordination or tension had held him upright collapsed all at once, muscles failing to respond as they were meant to.

His limbs flailed loosely, no longer following intention, arms and legs moving in delayed, useless arcs. Joints popped in directions they were never meant to bend, sharp, hollow sounds swallowed almost immediately by the chaos around them. His head snapped side to side with each motion, chin lolling forward and then back, as if it were attached by a hinge that had lost all tension.

Gravity took over where control had ended.

He sagged, half-falling, half-dragged by the momentum of the blows, body reacting rather than acting. There was no fight left in him, only motion without purpose, a frame reduced to pieces that no longer worked together.

WHAM.

Blood pooled where his spine struck, soaking into the dirt until the earth could no longer absorb it and it began to run in thin, glossy rivulets.

WHAM.

His ribs collapsed inward with a sound like a box being crushed, wet fragments of something unidentifiable splattering outward in a sickening fan.

Lena watched, arms braced, jaw clenched, not horrified.

Assessing.

“Wow,” she muttered. “You really pissed it off.”

The cocoon lifted him higher this time.

It twisted its arm, spinning his body midair before slamming him sideways into the remains of the house’s foundation. Stone cracked. Wood exploded. His body struck and slid, leaving a thick smear of blood and something darker behind him.

A normal man would have been paste.

He coughed.

Blood ran freely from his mouth and nose, dripping down his chin in steady streams as he dangled upside down, leg still trapped in the creature’s grip. One of his arms hung at a grotesque angle, bone visibly protruding through torn flesh, glistening wetly in the moonlight.

He looked at it.

“Huh,” he said. “That’s not ideal.”

The cocoon didn’t care.

It slammed him again.

This time straight down.

The sound was indescribable, a heavy, sodden thud followed by a rippling splap as his body rebounded slightly before settling. The earth beneath him churned into mud, mixed with blood and pulverized tissue.

Chunks of him stuck to the ground when the arm lifted him again.

Actual chunks.

Lena grimaced. “You’re going to need that later.”

The tall man blinked slowly, blood bubbling at his lips. “I’ll… manage.”

The cocoon’s silk rippled violently now, no longer still or merely trembling, but convulsing with frantic energy. 

Its surface writhed as more human limbs pushed and scraped uselessly against the ground, fingers clawing at dirt, heels gouging shallow furrows that collapsed almost as soon as they were made. 

The silk stretched and recoiled with each movement, fibrous strands tightening and relaxing in sickening rhythms, as if the cocoon itself were breathing.

Arms emerged only partway before being dragged back in, elbows bending at wrong angles as resistance met resistance. 

Hands grasped at nothing, nails snapping or tearing free as they raked across stone and soil. The limbs were unmistakably human, too human, and that was the worst part. They moved with panic, with intent, with the desperate urgency of something that knew it was running out of time.

The massive arm tightened its grip.

Its fingers dug deep into the tall man’s leg, sinking past fabric and into flesh with crushing force. Muscle bunched and gave way beneath the pressure, bones shifting as the grip constricted further. The arm didn’t jerk or strain. It closed with slow, inexorable certainty, as if adjusting rather than attacking.

The man’s body reacted on instinct alone.

His leg twitched violently, the rest of him jerking in delayed sympathy, but the motion only seemed to encourage the grip to tighten. The fingers flexed again, knuckles grinding as they found purchase, pinning him in place with terrifying finality.

Behind him, the cocoon thrashed harder.

The silk split in thin, hairline fractures that snapped shut almost immediately, threads knitting themselves back together faster than they could tear. Each movement sent ripples through the mass, the writhing shapes beneath shifting position, pressing outward as if testing for weakness.

There was no coordination to it. No escape.

Just blind, shared desperation trapped beneath layers of living restraint, while the arm held fast, unmoved by struggle, unmoved by sound, unmoved by the certainty that whatever was happening here was already far beyond saving.

The pressure should have severed it completely.

Instead, his leg elongated slightly, joints cracking and sliding as if his body was reluctantly accommodating the force rather than yielding to it.

The creature reacted with visible irritation.

It swung him harder.

Faster.

The impacts came in rapid succession now, a brutal rhythm:

WHAM. WHAM. WHAM.

Each strike sprayed fresh blood across the clearing, droplets arcing through the air and spattering against the cocoon’s silk, Lena’s boots, the wrecked cars. The tall man’s coat disintegrated, torn away in strips until his torso was exposed, skin split, bruised black and purple, ribs visibly shifting beneath it like something trying to crawl out.

At one point, his head struck the ground at an angle that should have snapped his neck cleanly.

It did.

The sound was sharp and unmistakable.

His head lolled sideways, eyes unfocused for half a second.

Then his neck popped back into place with a wet crack, vertebrae sliding home like puzzle pieces forced together.

He winced. “Okay. That one hurt.”

Lena barked a short laugh despite herself. “You’re unbelievable.”

The cocoon hauled him closer now, dragging his battered body through the dirt, the arm leaving deep gouges behind it. His back scraped along the ground, skin peeling away in strips, muscle exposed beneath.

Blood soaked everything.

The ground.

The silk.

Him.

The creature loomed over him, its vast bulk casting a distorted shadow that swallowed him entirely. The pressure intensified, not just physical but conceptual, like it was trying to compress him into an idea that fit its understanding of prey.

It slammed him one last time.

Straight into the earth.

The impact cratered the ground, dirt and blood erupting upward in a grotesque fountain that rained back down in thick clumps. The tall man lay there for a moment, unmoving, half-buried in churned mud and gore.

The cocoon paused.

Its arm twitched.

Waited.

Lena tensed, not afraid, but alert. 

Then the tall man’s fingers twitched.

He pushed himself up on one elbow with a wet, sucking sound as his body peeled free from the ground. His chest rose and fell unevenly, lungs gurgling, blood dripping freely from his mouth.

He looked up at the cocoon.

“Well,” he said, voice hoarse but amused, “I’ll give you this-”

The massive arm reared back again.

“-you’re enthusiastic.”

The cocoon slammed him once more, harder than any time before, driving him completely out of sight beneath the surface of the earth with a sound like a sack of meat dropped into water.

The ground shuddered.

Blood seeped up through the dirt in thick, bubbling patches.

For a moment, it looked like he might actually stay down.

Lena exhaled slowly.

Then the ground split.

The tall man’s hand burst up through the soil, fingers clawing, snapping into place as he hauled himself free, body reassembling with loud, angry cracks.

He stood, crooked, broken, soaked in blood, and looked at the cocoon with a tired smile.