A dream - running from the giant

A dream - running from the giant
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I was underneath a rocky overhang, hiding from the giant. It was about as tall as a sodium vapor lamp, about sixty feet high. There was a young girl in my charge hiding with me. My best friend was nowhere to be found, and I'd lost my horse.

It was raining in torrents, and I couldn't tell the footsteps of the giant apart from the peals of thunder. I peeked out from beneath the overhang and saw the giant, about twenty meters away. It had a man in its hand, and I watched as the giant bit off the man's head and chewed it slowly, savoring the flavor, and then threw the rest of the man away.

After it finished chewing and had swallowed, the giant sniffed around, trying to locate me and the girl. It seemed to home in on us, although it couldn't see us. It began to cajole us, complimenting us with our success at eluding it, and promising not to bite off our heads if we revealed ourselves. Then it began to berate and belittle us with insults in an attempt to persuade us to emerge, resigned to our fate. Then it lost its mind in a rage and stamped about, furious and frustrated.

The girl whom I was protecting gasped out loud, and the giant made a step toward us. Frantically and silently, I tried to calm the girl, but she struggled and then let out a piercing whistle. I thought we were doomed, and then my horse came running underneath the legs of the giant and toward us. I picked up the girl and ran beside the horse and caught its bridle. I slung us both onto the horse's back and we rode away at full gallop.

The giant was enraged, and it roared deafeningly. I could feel its thunderous footsteps slamming into the earth as it chased us. I slapped my horse on the neck, urging it to run faster, faster, faster! I glanced down and saw the horse's hooves cycling in a blur, churning up the rain soaked mud like an overpowered machine for digging furrows. I glanced back once and was dismayed to see the giant about a hundred meters behind us, and gaining close to ten meters with each stride.

About a thousand meters ahead was a long ridge that spanned the horizon from South to North, and the setting sun was shining brightly underneath the trailing edge of the storm front. I leaned forward and buried my face in the horse's mane, urging it to please go faster, and I could feel the arms of the little girl in my charge squeezing tightly around my midsection. There was a secret redoubt on the other side of that ridge, with a hospital buried underground... but I knew that we weren't going to make it.

Then I heard a voice shouting from ahead of us, and I shielded my eyes with my hand and saw, atop the ridge, the gesticulating figure of a man. He started down the hill at an angle roughly perpendicular and to the right of my path, running wildly and yelling:

"I've gottim, I've gottim! Go thataway! I've gottim away from ya, go thataway! Thataway!"

It was my best friend. I'd thought he had deserted us, but there he was, running down the slope of the ridge, and drawing the giant torward himself and away from us. I clenched my teeth and squeezed shut my eyes to stop the tears, and yanked the reins to the left and away from my friend as he ran on a suicide mission to lure the giant away from me and the girl.

We made it to the top of the ridge, where I paused to get a look and to find my bearings. Down below on the other side I could see the exposed roofs of the redoubt stretching away to the left and to the right. I spotted a trail that would take us down to the nearest roof, and before descending I turned around to get a brief bead on the giant.

I cried out with a wordless sob when I saw that the giant had already finished with my friend and was sprinting all out, covering at least twenty meters with each stride, and was nearly to the base of the ridge. When it arrived it paused and raised its massive hand to its brow, then bellowed like Hells Bells as it spotted us at the top, silhouetted against the sun. The giant immediately began sprinting uphill.

I spurred my horse down the trail. Upon reaching the roofline, we followed it North until another path appeared, leading us to ground level. I dismounted quickly, the girl in my arms, and dashed to the nearest entrance and inside. With the girl perched upon my back, I raced down hallways and past many people, each of them with a growing expression of perplexity as we ran by.

I was searching hastily for a stairway to the underground hospital when I heard a mighty crash just a few tens of meters behind us. I stopped and turned to see a giant foot thrust through a jagged hole in the roof of the redoubt and planted in the middle of the hall, followed immediately by the thunderous cacophony of a giant fist as it made another hole in the roof, much closer to myself and the girl.

I ran with the girl on my back as sections of the ceiling cracked and fell around us. I passed a woman holding a broom in mid sweep, stuck to the spot, her face frozen in horror at a vision that I didn't turn around to see. There was a spiral stairway ahead that led down, and I leaped toward it with all of my strength and tumbled down to the next floor, just as the roof collapsed above us.

I picked up the girl and, holding her in my arms, I continued downward.