The Monster of Mtubu: VIII

***The dramatic / traumatic conclusion to this harrowing adventure!***

We had been headed down the river for a day when the vibrations started again. The river was growing wider by the moment, and the trees were declining in size to the degree that we felt the marvels of Mtubu were finally thinning, but we had apparently not gone far enough. Betty shrieked the moment we felt the trees wobbling around us, with such a pitch and volume that the distant footsteps paused, birds rising squawking from the trees, and I knew right then that the giant woman had discovered us.

I took Betty by the hand and screamed at her to run, and run we did, down the river bank, as fast as our feet would carry us. We were running for maybe five minutes when the vibrations, so close to us, culminated in the terrific splash of the river as a giant foot crashed down into it. Panicking at the sound, Betty twisted back to look over her shoulder and tripped on a root, tumbling into me and sending us both to the ground. We came to an awestruck halt, looking back down the river to where the giant woman had once again come into view. After a few days in her absence, to witness that spectacle once more was a breathtaking sight, much as the probing look on her face filled me with terror. Those mighty eyes shot up and down the river, then fixed on us as a smirk crossed the giant face. A sense of purpose filled her expression, and the giant woman lurched forwards.

Betty screamed again as I rushed to my feet, pulling her with me, and we started running again. It was no use, for it must have taken the giant woman only three of her immense strides to suddenly plant a foot in front of us, and we came skidding to a horrific halt. The heel crashed into the riverbed metres before me, and the mud and rocks caved under it into the fast-flowing water. The river was almost a torrent here, yet it brushed against her giant foot without the slightest impact on her balance. I took Betty aside, meaning to run into the trees, but she was so dumbstruck by the size of this monster above us that she could not help but look up her dooming height. The sky was nearly eclipsed by her size, legs towering either side of us with more glory and might than any man could construct, and her lengthy hair fluttered in the wind as she looked down at us. With Betty distracted so, our retreat took us only a few steps before the monster crouched above us and a hand swooped down. Seeing her approach from above was no less dramatic than imagining the very hand of God coming out of the Heavens to reach for you, her torso blotting out all sun and the hand unavoidably immense. I rolled aside, feeling the rush of air above me as the hand passed, and came clambering to a halt with a fast-beating heart. I had avoided her grasp! But at what cost?

I twisted back around to see that the giant woman was rising up again, and Betty screamed a terrified ascending shriek as her legs kicked from the monster’s fist. I cried out after her, but there was nothing I could do except watch. The giant woman held the young lady before her face with clear familiarity: this was her favourite captive. Yet now the most troubling thing I had seen occurred: the giant woman spoke, in a booming voice, with a bare smile on her face. Betty never stopped screaming for a moment, oblivious to what was being said to her, but I could sense from the intonation of these tribal words that the monster spoke a message of rebuttal. It was not a mere chiding of her favourite toy, however. The giant woman was giving her the final goodbye, and promptly opened her lips over the lady in her fist. It seemed I could have had all the time in the world to prevent that moment, for the painful slowness of the way it occurred. Betty broke her hands free from the fingers that surrounded her, and flapped them with pleading cries at the mouth she was being delivered into, but it was to no avail. Nothing could stop the hand slowly moving forwards, with painful deliberation, to push Betty’s writhing form onto the tongue. The last words I heard the poor young lady scream came as pitiful yelps to one who has betrayed their master, “Don’t eat me! Please! I’m sorry!”

For all the time I seemed to have, in which I could have done anything to try and save that poor young lady, I stood rooted to the spot, and I did nothing. Those lips closed around Betty and her desperate legs were slurped in. I saw another unstoppable, sickening bulge glide down the towering figure’s throat. The giant woman put her hands to her stomach in a moment of relish, pleasuring in poor Betty’s descent into her stomach with a delight that made me nearly retch at her feet. I had no time to dwell on the sickness I felt, however, for the great head of that murderous monster looked down at me, now. I turned to run and was immediately struck down. Before I could fathom what had hit me, it squashed down around me, into the mud, and lifted up with a clamping motion.

I was just barely held in the gap between big toe and second, my arms pushed over these appendages as my legs hung freely below, but I felt myself being lifted with the greatest ease by this enormous foot. I pushed myself around as the foot came to a halt, finding the giant woman to be standing, staring at me, as she rested a hand on a tree so she might stand on one leg. From her toe, as I clung desperately onto it, I could see along the full length of her outstretched leg, what appeared like an impossible distance to her torso and the hungry look on her face. That massive tongue licked out across her lips, and she started to draw her leg in towards her. There was a brief pause as her stomach turned, making a gurgling noise, and I discovered the most terrifyingly horrible sound as Betty’s screams could be heard even now, like whispers behind the wall of a body that now contained her. The giant woman heard the sound too, and laughed. Her knowing pleasure at devouring a familiar pet was beyond explainable to me, and she spoke again in her rough boom of a voice, with words I would never understand but a tone of mocking triumph. I was stunned, hanging from her foot, to admit this monster was indeed a person.

Then, as she decided I’d waited long enough, I was snapped out of my trance.

I saw her hand rise, ready to pluck me from this foot, and I immediately shoved against her toes, looking down the vast distance below. I did not think, more than to recall poor Yules’ devastating demise, I merely acted, pushing free of the foot and falling. My stomach felt to leap through my skull for the sudden plummet to earth, but Providence had placed the giant’s foot above the river, and I plunged into the gushing water with a winding, icy impact. I plunged down, stunned, then rose up again, waving my arms to try and gain some control of my movements, but the water pushed me on. I caught a glance of the giant woman’s hand just as it closed over me, fingers cutting through the water, but I huddled up and cringed, letting the current carry me. I felt the hand tightening around me, but slipped through it, propelled out like a champagne cork back into the flow of the river. A moment later, I was some distance downstream, and managed to look back and see the giant woman spread her legs, hands on her hips, watching me depart. The final sight I saw of her, that titan stood above the river, with the small trees dwarfed by her sides, was hauntingly glorious.

I will not bore you with details of my subsequent escape.

Surviving the river was one problem, signalling a passing ship when I got to the shore another, but they bear nothing compared to the ordeal I faced with that giant woman of the jungle. As I say, it was the Basingstoke Wreath that rescued me, and we are now headed back towards England where I hope this story shall be received with the proper respect and caution it deserves. I hope it finds authority in time to recall Admiral Tulliger, for I fear he and his men will otherwise find themselves made meals by that unholy giantess. When we met the HMS Bulldog and I explained that she was maybe two days’ hike up the river, he decided that such a challenge could never be refused. They may well have already come to regret that.

I cannot begin to explain where that giant woman came from, whether there are more out there or not, but I can say for certain that her dominance in Mtubu is supreme. The people of Lybl seem to have accepted this, and it is with every respect that I declare she is the highest form of life in that region. There is no one who slipped into her grasp that survived it, and only through almost complete avoidance and pitiful cowardice did I survive myself: I do not wish others to learn that lesson the hard way. Sir Julian Montcliff was a great hunter, and he made not the slightest impact on her being. Please heed my words, for there are some areas man was not meant to tread, and unless you feel your purpose is to feed such monstrosities as her, I urge all of our nation, and others, to avoid ever troubling that lady again.