GTS run

  By The Lucky One

  It is a strange story I have to tell, of our small world and the godforsaken creatures that suffered on it. Things are very different in your world, at least from what I have been able to understand. The evidence seems to suggest that my world somehow stemmed form yours, as if some careless scientist of yours had created us and left us to die. I wish to know how this hell-world was created and to what end. Did our creators not understand the pain we felt? Did they simply not care?

  I may sound as if I write out of bitterness; I assure you I don't. A miserable life is still better than to never have lived.

  In any case, and out of a wish to keep this affair short, I accede to your request. I will detail here my experiences from my bizarre hunk of pseudo-reality. I trust that you will keep your end of the bargain and use this information to discover how and why I and my people came to exist.

  ...

  The physical reality that I knew as my world operated as far as I can tell according to the same physical laws as you have on yours, and my people seemed to operate according to the same social ones. I will go as far as to say that for all practical purposes we were you, as I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary.

  I found myself born into a village of about 800 souls. This village lay nestled peacefully in a lush valley, surrounded on all sides by steep, impassable cliffs, which stretched higher than our undeveloped, isolated minds could even imagine. A river flowed down from these mountains and down the valley, bringing us life and peace for three quarters of the year. The water was pure and clear, and it brought with it bountiful fish and other foods. It watered our fields, washed our bodies, and slaked our thirst.

  The rest of the valley, that is to say the areas of the valley that we could explore, was green and lush. Nutritious, edible plants grew in abundance. Our lives were simple, consisting mostly of leisure and sport. We lived in peace and in harmony with nature for all but one quarter of the year.

  During this other quarter of the year, which in temperature and daylight hours corresponded roughly to the phenomenon that you call summer, our river dried out. We were unable to discover a way to preserve the plants or the fish over this period, and I suspect that if we had it would have been taken from us.

  There was, however, one way out of the small valley we lived in. It was a narrow tunnel, hidden in the rock high above our village, and only accessible during the summertime because of the ice that made the path a deathtrap during the rest of the year. Entry to this tunnel was forbidden to all except for a band of men that would go out once at the start of every summer.

  The tunnel led to a kind of outside world, not your world of course, but a world similar to both of ours in all ways except for scale. We needed to go to this world once a year because out there we could find a special plant, which, when boiled and prepared in the right manner, would yield a drug that allowed us to sleep for the remainder of the summer. Since the river dried up for many nights the consumption of this drug was necessary for our survival.

  This outside world was a horrific, violent place, for one reason. In it lived a young woman of fantastic proportions, whose fingers were the size of our longest men, and who seemed to depend on us and others like us as a source of food. It is the reason for the existence of this merciless goddess I wish to learn, because she exacted upon our village misery beyond description with her lust for violence and hunger for our flesh.

  We were forced to stray into her territory because of our need for these wondrous plants. The nature of the terrain offered us many opportunities to hide from her, and we were not the only misfortunates who had to brave her flashing hands and stomping feet. We often saw other bands of men, searching like we did for the magic plant in the majestic valleys and caverns of this outsized world. These men were generally the same size as us, although most were different in form.

  The giantess herself was not always present during these hunting trips, which usually lasted between four days and a week, depending on the availability of the plant we sought. I presume she roamed across her vast territory in search of prey.

  She was, as mentioned before, of monstrous proportions, large enough to swallow a man whole or to crush the bodies of five men with a single step. She was of slender build, and looked more like a member of our tribe than any others. That is to say she had light skin, although darker than ours, long blonde hair and blue eyes, the gaze of which was so fearsome that it was enough to pin a man frozen to the dusty rock. She was lean and well-muscled, presumably from the hunting she had to do. She wore some kind of clothing over her breasts and genitals - its make was indeterminable from where I watched her but it seemed to be some kind of brown leather. I don't know if she had a name, or aged.

  I remember vividly my first encounter with her. It was during the first hunt I was able to go on, when I was twelve summers of age. I was only a boy, my muscles were underdeveloped and weak, but I wanted to go on a hunt, and cajoled and whined enough so that the others allowed me to.

  We had been gathering the plant for three days and we reckoned we had enough to last us for the summer. We were fortunate in that we hadn't yet encountered her, and since we were close to the tunnel we hoped we had made it this time with no casualties. We spotted a band of other men about an hour's walk in the distance, collecting the plant from a large river plain that we had been at little more than one hour ago. These men were like us, only they were shorter and more heavily built, and moved more slowly. Some of the men had sticks and rocks, presumably to fight against other groups.

  As we observed them, the giantess came into view from around a cliff face behind them. Electric fear arced through our band as we saw her stalk the band of heavier men, and we watched to see what fate would befall them.

  The giantess' strategy when encountering a group of men was to injure as many of them as she could straight away, and then hunt down and devour any remainder, before collecting the wounded for a future meal. We observed the devastating speed in which she put this strategy into action.

  She ran the short distance towards the group of small men, who instinctively scattered and ran as soon as they sensed her heavy footfalls. Her first move was to sweep her giant right foot through the thickest bunch of men, kicking a dozen or so of them far through the air, some of whom smashed into rocks and died, others just fell into the river, or sprawled across the grassy plain. She kicked again with her left, sending a half dozen or so men on a low arc, and they rolled to a stop, moving but not standing, several bones broken and ligaments and muscles torn. They cried in agony but could do nothing other than watch the carnage unfold upon their friends.

  With flashing feet she tried to stomp on as many of the remainder as she could, pressing their bodies deep into the soft grass of the river plain, her footprint creating a shallow grave for the pathetic creatures. When there were too few remaining, due to having been crushed or having found a hiding place, she began to pick up those she could reach in her tree-like hands, before lowering them, struggling and screaming, into her cavernous mouth. Her great appetite was evident from the frenzy in which she seemed to be in as she ate, and the obvious pleasure she received from consuming the men.

  The other men in my group ran towards the nearby tunnel entrance, and shouted to me to follow. But I was enchanted by this vision of feminine dominance, and I stood still as if fixed to the rock. The movement of our group attracted the attention of the giantess, and her icy blue eyes scanned the area around us.

  Upon detecting the intruders to her realm, she began to run towards us, provoking a mass panic amongst the older men, who scrambled the short distance to the hole in the rock that meant safety from that other hole, the one leading to her stomach. I couldn't find it in myself to move. Although I was deathly afraid, something in me wanted to stay, to experience being at the mercy of this wonderful beauty.

  Her slender legs, easily the length of the tallest tree I had ever seen, strode the landscape in a direct line towards us. Swamps that we were forced to slog through just splashed under her feet, a gaping chasm that took ten minutes to navigate was simply stepped over. Within a half minute she had made up the distance it took us an hour to cover.

  Without pause, she bent over when she got to me and snatched me up in her hand. Feeling her awesome strength, I didn't even bother struggling. She had grasped me around my torso and I could look directly into her face from where I was. She opened her mouth and with a sense of peaceful finality I accepted that I was going to be eaten.

  But for some reason she paused before devouring me, and instead opened her fist to look at my squirming body. She studied me closely for a moment, her lips twitching, presumably as she imagined eating me.
  Inexplicably, she laid me gently down on the rock. Standing up straight, she towered above me, and I assumed for a moment that she was going to stomp on me and save my supple young body to be eaten later.
  I then realised that if she had wished to incapacitate me she could simply have crushed me in her hand.

  Without lingering, she turned and walked quickly back to the remains of the group she had previously destroyed, to collect their bodies and to feast.

  My knees shook violently as I watched her strong buttocks propel her back over the swamp. I felt weak and dizzy from the experience.
  Just then three strong men from my tribe took me and dragged me off to the tunnel entrance. I didn't struggle.

  When we got back to the village the occurrence was explained to my father, who gave me a tremendous beating as punishment, so severe that during the days of the preparation of the sleep elixir I could hardly walk.

  In my youthful naivety I believed that what I had felt as I stood there was love. The fact that the giantess didn't eat me although she held me in her hand was definite evidence of that, I thought. The leader of our group and defacto chief of our tribe explained to me a few days afterwards that the only reason why she didn't eat me was because I was too young, and she didn't eat the young, or women, unless she was really hungry. I realised then that the only reason I wasn't being dissolved in her stomach right now was because some others were suffering that fate.

  For some reason that wasn't clear to me at the time I felt compelled to masturbate as I recalled the encounter with the giantess.

  ...

  The next few years I wasn't allowed to go out with the main group as punishment for my foolish behaviour. The group didn't encounter the giantess that year anyway - I don't know if that makes it a good or a bad thing that I wasn't there.

  Let me tell you about an interesting ritual that our village had developed. Every year, around ten days before the hunting expedition was dispatched, a ritual intended to please the giantess was performed. The most beautiful young woman in the tribe was chosen, and she played the part of the giantess.

  During this ritual, which lasted several hours, all of the men who were to partake in the hunt worshipped the chosen woman like a goddess. She had a thin stick that she used to beat them - the stick was about as thick as a thumb and left considerable bruising and usually caused the skin to break and bleed. While beating beaten, the men lay prostrate and licked and kissed her feet. These actions were meant to symbolise submission to the will of the giantess.
  In the next part of the ritual the men would lie down beside each other in a row, with no space between them. The young woman would then walk on top of them, supporting her weight entirely on their bodies. While walking on them, she would stomp hard on the face of every man several times. This particular act was extremely painful for some of the younger hunters, as they were often little more than boys and much smaller than the woman who they lay under. However, it was thought that this would make them aware of the dangers if they should be seen by the real giantess.
  The third and final part of the ritual was the bloody finale. The hunters, in the days before the ritual, first had to collect small animals. A platform was constructed, which consisted of a small tower almost the height of a man, accessible by a wooden ladder. The uppermost floor of the platform consisted of a bed of hard rock, upon which the small creatures were placed. The men would gather around the platform so that it was just below eye level, and from that vantage point imagine themselves as some of the creatures.
  The young woman would climb the ladder, and pulverise the small creatures underfoot. The most common small creatures were baby mice, small fish and insects, although baby birds were not uncommon. She would stomp on them with all the fury of the real giantess, sometimes crushing several with one step. Their crushed bodies lay mangled and still, blood and innards oozing over the rock. Tiny skeletons and ribcages were flattened, their bones snapping pathetically. The young woman didn't stop before every creature placed before her was crushed lifeless. This ritual was meant to symbolise to the men the dangers of the outside world for creatures such as them, and it was also hoped that via the young woman stomping so many helpless creatures that the terrible lust of the real giantess would be sated.

  ...

  My next encounter occurred when I had survived 16 summers. My behaviour on the last trip was either considered irrelevant or it was forgotten, and so I joined again. That year, for reasons which I still don't understand, I offered a beloved pet mouse to the stomping ritual. As he lay on the platform I immediately felt regret, but to interrupt would have exacted a terrible punishment for me.
  As it happened, the young woman that year stomped only on the back half of my pet's body at first, which didn't kill him straight away. I was forced to look into the eyes of my little pet as he lay there, slowly dying in agony. Fortunately the woman soon came back and crushed his head under her heel. But the haunting image remained with me and I cried myself to sleep for some nights after that, wracked with remorse.

  That year the river ran out earlier than usual and we were charged with bringing back a larger amount of the bitter red plant. We set out, therefore, with greater than usual desperation.

  Already on the first morning we encountered her. We had found a fairly large thicket of the red weed at the edge of a forest, and set about gathering it quickly, stuffing the plant matter into our large leather bags. It was actually me who spotted her first, her giant form coming into view from behind a mountainside. I notified the lead hunter by tapping him on the shoulder. Silent panic spread throughout our group, and we made for the safety of the forest. All but one of us, a youth of about the same age as me, who stood, transfixed as I had done that first time. One of us made the mistake of shouting to him to break his reverie.
  Upon hearing the noise, the giantess swung her head around, those piercing blue eyes filling me with horror as they gazed in my direction. I would certainly not stand in front of her this time.
  She must have seen the youth, because she broke into a run, covering the distance in a few seconds. A great shadow was cast over us as we cowered in the bushes.
  The giantess kneeled down over the youth to examine him. From where I crouched in the foliage I could see the curious expression on her face - presumably she was used to her prey fleeing in terror.
  With a bizarre level of caution she slowly leant over and sucked the youth into her gaping, hungry mouth. He didn't even try to struggle - he simply stood upright until her teeth closed around him, trapping him between her wet lips. She began chewing slowly, thoughtfully, the cracking noises clearly audible as we lay hiding within her grasp. With a groan of satisfaction she swallowed him, her massive neck muscles forcing the pulped flesh down into her ever-hungry stomach.

  Terror flowed through us as she began searching the forest with her hands, looking for more tasty treats. Fortunately she found none and gave up quite soon before standing up and thundering away in a different direction to where she came from.
  We lay still for a long time, no one daring to move or to speak. Most of us had seen, heard or sensed what had happened to the youth.

  That wasn't to be the last encounter with her that year.

  Some time during the middle of our hunt we had the misfortune to encounter a gang of thieves. Some tribes, reasoning that time spent in the outside world equated directly to the probability of getting eaten, chose to ambush other tribes and steal their bounty rather than gather it themselves. We were aware of the existence of such tribes and carried weapons to deter them.
  These tribes were usually quite unsophisticated and carried nothing more advanced than large sticks or rocks. Our tribe had had the fortune, some years back, of discovering the remains of a highly advanced tribe who had been destroyed by the giantess. Their technology lay strewn about the place, since the only thing of use to the giantess was their flesh.
  They had crafted weapons that were essentially long, sharp blades of metal fitted to a handle made of wood. In your world they're called swords. Such artifacts we had never seen before, but their combat potential was immediately obvious. We gathered them up - there were six in number - and they were given to the strongest hunters amongst us.
  These thieves had no such advanced weapons, but as they didn't recognise our swords they attacked us nevertheless. The encounter took place on a field of large rocks, which suited our faster and better equipped men.

  Literally a few heartbeats after the clash had begun, the giantess appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Being little more than a boy, I was armed only with a sharpened rock mounted on a long wooden handle, and was ordered to keep near the back unless really needed.
  The giantess stepped over me, and the path made in the air by the passing of her foot almost knocked me over. Although she stood directly in front of us, the most feared of all things in our little world, full attention was given to the battle.
  I assumed that she was going to snatch up unwary men to deliver into her waiting maw. But she did not. She must have just eaten, because the urgency that usually characterised her actions was not present.
  However, whenever a man fell from either clubbing or from being slashed by our blades, she immediately gathered him up and swallowed him. I gained the impression that she didn't really need to eat, but did so out of greed or just for pleasure. Still, I expected her to any moment begin devouring the uninjured.
  Our men did well to defeat the band of thieves, killing a few dozen of their number at the loss of only two of ours, neither of whom were swordbearers. It was hard to tell what the losses would have been without the presence of the giantess, for she swallowed every man who fell before he had a chance to rise again. I assume that some who were only lightly injured and would have survived were eaten instead.

  At the loss of a few dozen of theirs, the band of thieves retreated. We didn't pursue them, seeing no advantage in risking further losses. In any case it was almost nightfall, and we were more concerned with the actions of the giantess.
  Instead of devouring us she simply strode over us and away, each step shaking the ground as if to emphasise her awesome power. We were thankful that two encounters with this majestic woman had resulted in no more than three losses. In certain cases entire tribes had been eliminated in one encounter, the men finding themselves at the bottom of her stomach after a frenzy of feeding and the remainder having no way to survive the summer heat.

  We hurried back to the tunnel entrance, not willing to risk our luck a third time.

  ...

  The next few years didn't involve any encounters other than distant sightings. The next, and final, time I encountered the giantess was the fateful mission of my 22nd summer.

  This summer was promising to be quite mild, with the river looking like it would dry up much later than usual. The stomping ritual that year even involved certain river snails which have usually departed well before that time. Looking back, there was perhaps a bad omen which we failed to interpret. The young woman playing the giantess slipped on the sludge created by the crushed bodies of the various creatures and fell over, crushing a large number of river snails and baby mice under her buttocks. At the time no one thought much of it, but in retrospect it was a very bad thing. We had displeased the giantess.

  The hunt had proceeded badly, despite the late summer. We were delayed some days by the presence of massive groups of well-armed hunters near us, and we were forced to remain at a high altitude to avoid confrontation. Eventually we found a small river valley which culminated at a lake. We knew before descending that there was no exit from this small valley, but night was not far from us, and the valley appeared to be rich in the red weed. What's more, we were getting desperate.

  We descended quickly, expecting to camp there for that night, and immediately began picking the plant of sleep.

  The destruction, when it came, was quick. With most of our gang spread out along a field beside the river, we saw the giantess appear above the ridge that we had descended from. She had spotted us, a fact that was made immediately evident by the fact that she came towards us in a straight path, paying no heed to the forest that she crashed through on the way. The look of animal lust on her face told me that she was beyond hungry. I knew this was a very bad sign.

  Our group split, an instinctual reaction to the sudden presence of a large predator, but she was upon us in seconds.

  She destroyed us in much the same manner as she did the shorter, heavier men of the other tribe whose demise I witnessed at age 11. First she swept her giant foot through us, sending a dozen of us flying through the air, some of us falling directly into the lake, others first striking the rock walls. She stomped a few, of which I was one. I survived however, thanks to my falling backwards at the moment of impact. I had wished to see her full length and beauty as I was crushed, and somehow I was knocked backwards instead, her foot landing on my legs like a hundred tons of rock, pulverising them beyond any chance of future use. I was pressed into the grass and mud and all my strength was not enough to move me even one handspan from where I lay.

  I could only watch as she dropped to her knees and began stuffing fleeing men into her mouth, hardly even pausing to chew. Her blonde hair hung down over her shoulders as she kneeled, obscuring me from her view. Sometimes I couldn't see but could only hear the end of my comrades as she gulped them down. It was an unmistakable series of sounds: a bloodcurdling scream silenced by a single chomp, a few wet smacking sounds before the gulp of swallowing and then a loud moan of satisfaction that echoed around the small valley.

  Having devoured all men in sight, she began fishing some of the others from the lake, lifting them from the surface to her mouth in a torrent of water.

  My end, when it came, was quick. Her hunger only slightly satiated from the flesh of a few dozen of my fellows, she picked me up roughly with three massive fingers grasping my upper body. With a fluid, well-practiced motion she lifted me high into the air - I could see across distances that would take days to cover on foot. My field of view was soon obscured by the last thing I saw - a cavernous female mouth, the red lips parting to reveal a pink, wet space easily the size of the largest building in my village. I was stuffed inside, the boulder-like teeth crushing my body twice before I was swallowed. I was still alive, although barely, when she swallowed me. I can clearly remember the sensation of her throat muscles pushing me downwards to join my fellow villagers in the final resting place of a hundred thousand souls.

  ...

  Since meeting my death in the innards of the giantess, I found myself experiencing something I had been led to believe was impossible. I awoke inside a large room surrounded by fantastic tools called machines. Some men and women of your tribe came to me and explained what they want me to believe is my story. They claim that I am a man of your tribe, of their tribe, and that the purpose of these absurd machines is to create a world outside of this one, one that I was 'fortunate' enough to experience. They say that it should take a period of time greater than 20 days for me to fully recover my memories of my life and experiences as one of you. This is the why I demand of you in exchange for my story. Please tell me the truth.