When this giant first picked me up and placed her other hand above me, I was sure she was going to crush me right there.

…But she didn’t. As her body heat started to build up in-between her hands, I understood what she was doing. She must have seen how I was trying to warm up and decided she should help me. I didn’t need help from a giant!

I started to move and she opened her hands. I wasn’t near used to the image of her immense figure staring down at me, so I flinched when I looked up at her. Not that she was hard to look at. If she weren't so immense, I might have considered her to be attractive.

Then she dropped me. I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the end against the cold metallic floor, but it never came. The surface I landed on was everything I had not been expecting...it was warm, soft, and covered by a thin fabric. I opened my eyes and realized she had dropped me onto her stomach.

I attempted to stand up, but the unstableness of her body caused me to fall forward. This only brought her to laugh a little, shaking the world around me as I grabbed onto her shirt for safety.

She murmured, “Sorry,” and looked at me with a smile.

I gave up on standing and just sat down. I could feel myself lightly rise and fall with each breath she took, which intimidated me even further.

“Feeling better?” Her voice startled me with its sudden volume. I wished she would just stop talking!

I have been calling the giant a she, but I had been in a mental war with myself over if I should use ‘she’ or ‘it’ to refer to the giant.  This wasn’t a person. She… It… It was a monster.

I know what you’re thinking. No, no, she’s nice, right? I have no reason not to believe that. You see, we’re taught a lot about giants when we’re in school, and most of it tends to be the negative things, I admit. But I had a reason to believe these stereotypes, and I had a reason to fear her.

I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old when a giant came to my small town. It was a female, like this one. It, however, had rough black hair and icy blue eyes that would send a chill down your spine. Her smile was the worst; she would peel back her lips into a devilish grin, showing off her striking teeth. My mum and I were in the garden, as we usually were in the mornings, when she approached.

The earthshattering rumble as her enormous boots came forcefully came down right in front of my neighbor’s house was not a sound I can ever forget. My mother shooed me inside of our house and I ran to my room before I realized she hadn’t come in behind me.

Then I heard the ear-shattering laugh. It was horrifying, like someone would as they were playing a simple game. The very sound brought tears to my eyes, but I ran to the window anyway. I nearly died inside when I saw what the monster was doing. It was holding a bunch of people, people I knew, as if they were toys; swinging them around its gigantic fingers and making them hold on for their lives.

Including my mother. My blood curdled with rage and I ran outside of the house, shouting. The giant simply looked down at me, raising an eyebrow.

“What’s the matter?” She said playfully, “Do I have someone dear to you, little boy?”

It tightly closed its fingers around the people in its grasp, causing them to scream. It treated them like insects, not people. It was disgusting.

“Let my mum go!” I yelled, tears now streaming down my face.

It grinned at me, that horrible grin, and dropped all of the people except for my mother. They all hit the ground with a horrible 'crack!' all around me. I felt like I was going to be sick and pass out.

I fell to my knees and looked up at the monster, my body completely shivering now. It brought my mother up to its enormous mouth and just put her inside of it. I tucked my head into my knees and felt like I was going to die.

Everything else in my memory is a mess. I saw blood everywhere, and the only thing I could hear was my own pulse and the screaming of other people trying to get away. The last thing I remember was the giant stomping its enormous foot down, sending me flying from the force. My thoughts dwindled on the realization that my little sister was still in the house as my mind went blank.

A few weeks later, I woke up in a strange house and tried to sit up. An old man came over to me with my little sister in his arms. He told me that he had rescued us and that it was going to be alright, but he didn’t respond when I asked what became of my hometown. This was this man who raised me. I never knew my true father, but he might as well have been.