Giants

The ground shakes. I stop.

They are coming!

M y feet slip on the smooth ground as I try to get out of sight. They can't know I'm here. I gain my footing and launch myself towards the gap in the cavern's walls. I make it through - just in time.

The terrible echo of their footsteps reverberates in my little cave as I lie frozen, hoping they didn't hear me. The giants have returned. This is their lair and now my home.

My baby crawls up to me. I'd left her in the corner, far from the entrance, but she is getting stronger everyday. Maybe soon she'll be strong enough to travel? Maybe soon she'll crawl to outside when I'm not looking...

My baby crawls to up me from the place where I had left her. She sighs and I hush her, my heart pounding faster than the rain upon the cave's mighty walls. I pray the giants do not hear. They thunder clumsily about, their misshapen faces groaning in primitive tongues. At least I can hear them coming. I don’t fear them the way I fear the beast. The beast is silent. The beast can see in the dark.

S he sighs and I her her! My heart pounds faster, rattles my ribcage harder than the giants' clumsy strides rattle the sheer walls of my little cave. I pray the giants do not hear. But they wont. Their flat, misshapen faces groan in primitive tongues and they drown out all else. At least I can hear them coming. I don't fear them the way I fear the beast. The beast is silent. The beast can seen in the dark.

***

When my family first came to these caverns we thought that we'd found paradise. The ground was perfectly flat and the little caves cut into the white-washed walls gave us shelter from the midnight sun that sometimes shone through the caverns. These caverns were a stroke of fortune that we'd never dreamed of. Our journey to them was plagued by hunger and death. We marched for what felt like an age, prey to the elements as much as any toothless monster that might descend from the skies to sink its hooks into one of us and carry them away. The fields would flood with poisonous waters and we would have to swim or drown. The black deserts would burn with overwhelming moisture and distort the air around us, making it impossible to watch for predators. Some were taken by the heat, some were taken by the floods, some were taken from above. All of this to find a better world.

We thought we found that world here. We though we were safe. We rejoiced. We feasted. I gave birth here. Then, one by one, we began to disappear… The first time I saw the beast, my husband was clenched in its jaws.

Now it is just my baby and I. She is still feeding from me and now she starves because I starve. But we cannot leave. She is too weak and I am too alone. Perhaps more of us will come? Perhaps together we will leave this place to find a better one? Until then I am forced to scavenge the scraps that the giants leave about, clinging to life in the squalor of this cave, waiting for the day that the creatures outside realise we’re still here.

***

I rest a while. My brief venture out into the caverns was in vain. Even if there is something to eat out there, the giants will consume it and we will go hungry again. Then, as if to taunt me, the smell of meat wafts into our cave. The giants have brought back a kill and are tearing it apart in the cavern down the passage. My stomach groans... The smell may even draw the beast out. Perhaps the giants will feast upon the beast as well? I would gladly forego a meal to see that creature suffer.

They eat and roar for hours... My stomach screams at me and my baby groans with exhaustion, pressing her nose into me. There is nothing for her to feed on. She will have to wait. I know what is coming: the giants will retire to slumber and the world will darken - and I will seize my chance.

Soon the rumbling dies down. They thunder off and night falls... All is quiet. My baby yawns and I press my face to hers, waiting until her soft, vulnerable eyes drift closed.

I creep to the entrance of my cave and peer out:

... no giants.

I look for shadows moving silently in the dark:

... no sign of the beast.

I hesitate. The sounds of my baby's tiny breaths rustle the hairs in my ears. I take a breath...

Let's go.

My shadow moves down the cavern's walls. My cave is on the edge of a thin passage that lies between two great caverns. The smell of the kill is everywhere so I follow logic: if there are scraps, they will be where the noise was coming from before.

I round the corner of the passage way to a great cavern. This cavern has shelves which the giants have crudely hewn into the cavern walls, destroying their natural beauty and rendering surfaces as flat as their ugly faces.

There is still meat leftover, I know there is. Using all of my senses, I scan the great cavern:

Where is it?

My nose guides my eyes... There! Upon the lowest shelf: Meat! More than I could possibly eat!

The cavern walls - white-washed though they are - still have a roughness which remains, leaving little nooks and pockets just deep enough for me to dig my nails into.

I climb and my limbs scream in protest. It has been days since my last meal. I slip. The drop is just high enough to be dizzying. A fall from here might not kill me straight away, but I doubt I'd live long. But I have done this before. I can do it again. I climb... and climb...

Finally, I pull myself over the top. Pressing my face onto the cool surface, I allow my breath to catch up with me.

There is one final obstacle: a deep, silver pool of foaming water, cut into the shelf by thousands of years of trickling. The water emits the most putrid smell I have ever come across. I know if I ingest any of it, it will kill us both, if it did not burn my flesh off first.

All I have to do is get around the pool. There are two paths: the first is wider but covered in stagnant puddles of the putrid water, the second is dry, but skirts the shelf-side narrowly, a sheer drop to the cavern floor awaiting one misstep.

I pause. The putrid puddles or a perilous balancing act? Which shoul-

-Did something just move out there?

I scan the cavern, holding my breath so none of my senses are dampened:

... nothing.

I creep along the narrow edge, staying low, pausing to regain my balance and scan the cavern over and over again.

My final steps are a relief. The meat waits for me. I dive onto it! There is too much for me to lift so I attack it with my teeth, ravenous from two days without food. My tastebuds explode, my teeth awaken with a groan. I never knew that cold meat could taste so sublime. I'm almost delirious. We may survive the week.

My chewing fills my ears... Soon, I'm almost full... I raise my eyes up into the leftover light that seeps in from the moonlight outside: two yellow orbs stare back at me.

THE BEAST!

I hurl myself backwards! It's paw - as big as my head - just misses. But the force of the wind from its swipe throws me back further, knocking me off balance. I pivot and run towards the foaming pool, but this time the beast's swipe lands and cuts a deep gash into my back. I have no time to feel the pain.

I sprint across the narrow shelf-edge. The beast pounces. I feel its paws come down on either side of me, then its legs, then its jaws - but I am just fast enough. I jump from the narrow ledge to the other side of the pool as the beast lands face-first into the ledge and tumbles into the putrid waters. Its yowls and hisses fill the cavern from what sounds like the most agony it has ever felt in its miserable life.

Coming up to the edge of the shelf, I pause:

Is there time to climb down?

Then- The ground shakes.

They are coming!

There's no other option. I jump. The cavern floor smashes into my ribcage and sends a savage burn with a great simultaneous CRACK throughout them.

The blood from my back leaves a trail as I slide across the smooth ground. With everything left in my, I round the corner to the passage way, slipping in my own blood.

But the beast is not vanquished! It launches itself out of the pool, ragged and angrier than ever. Like me, it slips on the smooth cavern floor and collides with the wall. It scrambles to regain its footing as I hobble towards my cave's entrance. The beast's tumbling turns into a gallop. I dive, pushed further forward by a final missed swipe from the beast's giant paw and crash into my cave. The beast's paw follows me but the cave is too small for the rest of it. I push my screaming baby into the corner. The beast's paw thrashes around blindly as its owner hisses and yowls in frustration. Then-

-A ROAR! A giant, having seen the soaked beast thrashing about, has become enraged. The giant chases the beast from the cavern!

Another giant thunders into the passage way. But this one goes quiet. Too quiet. I creep to the entrance: it is stooped over, peering closely at the trail of blood I have left. Its hideous eyes drift towards my cave. I duck back.

Does it know?

There is a long drawn out silence which is only broken by the arrival of the other giant. They groan at each other and then leave.

I groan, shaking from the shock that is finally permitted to consume me. My ribs are on fire and my back is going numb. Sliding against the cave wall, I collapse in from of my baby. It seems a lifetime since I've seen her. She nuzzles into me. She's hungry but I have nothing to give her.

Lying there, a puddle of my blood forms, pouring out of the gash on my back.

Maybe...

Hoping against hope that it will sustain her, I push my baby's face towards the puddle and splash some into her mouth. Desperately hungry, she takes to it without complaint. Nothing here goes to waste.

If I survive... Maybe there'll be something for me to give to her?

My eyes darken...

***

The days pass. I fade in and out... Sometimes my baby nuzzles into me, trying to draw a meal. I push her away when I am awake to do so. Other times, I awake and I can feel that she has already fed. Every now and then, I hear the beast pass by our cave and press its terrible yellow eye to the entrance...

Slowly the gash on my back clots and I am able to move. My stomach aches worse than my ribs. My baby has held on too somehow. My blood and what little milk she could draw from me has kept her going, but it won't for much longer. I know I have nothing left to give her.

I look around our cave. What used to be a home is now stained with memory and blood. No one will come to this place. There is no hope. There never was. If we stay here another day we will die. We should have left as soon as my members of my family started disappearing but we clung on, hoping things would change by themselves, denying the fact that there is no sanctuary for us in this world.

We must leave this place. I would rather face the floods and desert heat than die alone in this squalor.

We could leave tonight? We should leave tonight. But first, if I don't eat, we will be dead by morning...

Picking myself up with my shaking limbs, I creep over to the cave entrance: the beast is nowhere... nor the giants...

My nose catches something... something sweet and salty... milky... I follow it to the other great cavern.

There!

Hiding under a great mossy boulder that the giants often lie upon: a discarded portion of the giants' cheese... Soft, beautiful, delicious cheese - enough to sustain us on our journey... just sitting there, perched on a wooden slab as if fate had served it up just for me...

I lose all sense of danger. I don't care that I'm hobbling in the open air. I don't care that the morning light illuminates every inch of my body. Freedom is only a few hours away...

The ground shakes:

They are coming!

I can't go back. I'm over halfway there. I hobble and limp as they round the corner, grunting and gaffawing. I dive under the boulder. They stop. I freeze.

Silence.

Did they see me?

They seem to be waiting for something. There's no time to wonder what for. I climb onto the wooden slab and sink my teeth into the cheese's flesh-

-SNAP! My neck burns. The pain reverberates throughout my body. I can't move. A metal bar has been brought down on my neck with a force so strong as to snap all the bones around my lungs... My back is broken...

My eyes blur... My baby will wait and no one will come... She will venture out... The beast will find her...

... my baby.

***

The mousetrap had claimed its final victim.