The Giant (G/T)

Part 14

With my troubled thoughts, I didn't sleep soundly through the night. I tossed and turned on the giant's chest, finding myself awake several times. When I drifted off, I had a terrible nightmare that Chester succumbed to his rapacious appetite. In my dream, he tore the roof clean off the house and grabbed both my parents right out of their bed. They screamed and squirmed in his mammoth fist, but were defenseless against his immeasurable might. He threw his head back and dropped them into his gigantic maw. Their screams echoed as they disappeared down his gullet.

Oh, but he didn't finish there. He stomped into town, causing earthquakes with every footfall, destroying buildings by flattening them under his boots or kicking them over. He reached into the chaos of panicked people scattering like ants and chose his preferred specimens at his leisure, snagging them with his fingers and shoving them through his parted lips. His Adam's apple bobbed continually in his neck as he gulped each captured human alive down his throat. With every swallow he became more crazed and violent, as if his brutal thirst for blood only increased along with the number of his helpless victims.

I found myself down among the crowd, paralyzed. The giant towered over me, seeming to grow even larger than he was in real life. He morphed in front of me, his hair growing long and blond, his eyes cold and hard with icy rage, his face lean and gaunt. The massive bony fingers plucked me up and lifted me miles into the sky, above the cloud layer, up and up until I finally reached the giant's face somewhere in the stratosphere. He was so enormous, that I was nothing more than a speck of dust on his finger, yet the white-hot intensity of his fury was focused entirely on me. He opened his jaws, and his mouth was like a black hole in his face, stretching outward and sucking in the stars, the clouds, the light, into the terrible void of his gullet. I, too, was dragged in, sliding along the slimy tongue, past the craggy mountains of gleaming white teeth, into the fleshy mouth that was as roomy inside as a cathedral. Rivers of saliva dripped down his tongue, lips, and from the roof of his mouth far above. As I surfed over the crest of the tremendous mass of his tongue, under the huge red uvula, and slid down his throat, I was so microscopic at this point that he didn't need to contract his throat muscles to swallow me; gravity did all the work, and I fell down the tunnel of his throat into darkness.

I fell a long, long way, with the slick walls of meat flying past all around me. I gazed up, watching the circle of light from his open mouth far above shrink smaller and smaller until it vanished completely. I kept falling for miles and miles until I dropped down into his stomach with a splash. I was swimming in a sea of half-digested corpses and bones, churning in the gastric fluids of the enormous stomach. The acid burned, and I raised my hands and watched in horror as my flesh liquefied into a red pulp, leaving only bones behind. Eventually, the bones started to get eaten up as well, and I lost my limbs entirely. My mind came unhinged and I screamed uncontrollably as my torso began dissolving and spilling out organs.

With that pleasant imagery in my head, I woke up in a cold sweat, to the sound of Chester's empty stomach gurgling underneath me. I must have been struggling in my sleep, because I had somehow fallen off the giant's chest and slipped down to his belly button. Spooked, I clambered back up onto his chest and far away from his belly. I curled up into a fetal position and shuddered. That dream had been so horrid, and felt so realistic. It took me several minutes to calm down.

Once I had gotten a grip and my mind had settled back into the real world, I checked up on Chester, who was still asleep. He clearly hadn't slept well either. He was pale and sweaty and clammy, almost as if he were sick. His skin was stretched and saggy, with dark bags under his eyes. I caressed his chin with sympathy, and his eyes cracked open into slits. He gave me a weak smile, but it broke when his stomach complained with an exasperated groan. He gripped his abdomen with both his hands and let out a painful sigh.