The Monster of Mtubu: VII

***Learning more of the horrors of the monster...***

The whole world seemed to shake as the giant woman crashed back down into her pit, and I was mortified to see that the prisoners who had escaped the cage were either frantically running about in the open or pathetically trying to climb rocks. Three of them had now made it onto our rope, clambering up desperately, but they were nowhere near the top. The giant woman looked furious, and wasted no time in metering out punishment. She quickly bent over the cage, where a few prisoners remained trapped by their own fear, and she hauled it up into the air and spun it around, pinning the hole we had created up against the rocks, blocking it and crushing one poor soul who was halfway out. Some four final prisoners were spread out about her, trying to plot a route to run, but with frightening ease she swept both hands down, lifting two in one and one in the other. The final man, who began a frantic sprint away, she apparently decided to make an example of, and she lifted a mighty foot over him. His fastest sprint could not take him away from one simple stride of hers, and that bare foot landed on him as powerfully as a falling cart, squishing him as she might a cockroach. She ground the ball of her foot onto him, then stepped away, leaving a horrific smear.

The monster tossed her handfuls of prisoners back into the cage, then plucked another pair from the rocks and threw them back too. Then she spied the rope and strode over with a curious expression. She ran a finger under the top of it, shaking the terrified climbers beneath, then gave it a tug and snapped it from where it was tied. The rope was dangled in front of her now, one man immediately losing his grip and plunging to earth with a horrible cry, whilst the other two clung on for dear life, swaying for its frail support. She took her spare hand to the nearest climber and lifted him from his tight grip, giving him a squeeze so he let go. She placed his top half in her mouth and held him between her teeth as she thought for a moment. His legs kicked in terror, but he was perfectly secure there as the giant woman now shook the rope in her hand. The final climber was a plump lady, hanging with unwavering might to a position now some fifty feet high. The giant woman shook the rope again, but the woman hung tight, whimpering. Disappointed, the giantess simply released the rope, though, and the lady shrieked down to hit the ground with a gruesome thud. To be sure of her demise, the monster rose a foot and stamped down onto the lady. Turning her attention away again, she chewed slightly on the man hanging from her lips, then sucked him into her jaws and finally gulped him down.

I watched for some moments as the giant woman casually wandered from one cliff to another, lifting a last couple of final escaped prisoners and throwing them back into the cage. From what I could see, she had rounded up all those who had made it out, and finally went to inspect the cage’s contents, as though aware of who might be missing. Sure enough, something upset her and she reared up to her full height with an angry growl. She spun, scanning her lair, and I knew it was time to leave.

I rushed back to Betty and took her arm to lead her away, popping to the cave to pick up what supplies we could carry. We scrambled down the cliff face as fast as possible, but the giant woman was soon out of her pit, the vibrations telling us she was heading our way. Betty and I dove under more tree roots and hid in the mud, where we lay for almost an hour as the giant woman tore about us with devastatingly heavy footfalls, searching all she could see. She never looked closely at our tree, though she came within a few giant steps of it, and eventually we finally felt safe. As the sounds of the monster’s search fell away, I roused Betty to leave, and the pair of us hurried away from the lair. We moved without talking for some time, but when we had put some miles between us and the pit, headed in an admittedly random direction, we finally slowed and took stock.

Betty asked if I was part of the rescue party, and I told her, grimly, that I was the only part now left. She thanked me, hugged me, and tears formed in her eyes at the realisation that her horror might finally be over. I told her in no uncertain terms, however, that we were a long way from safety. By my calculations, we were at least six days' walk from the edge of the Mtubu region and Lybl, if we walked in the right direction, and Heavens only knew what distance we were from safety in any other direction. We had the food for maybe two days’ hiking, and that would put us no healthy distance from the enormous strides of that giant woman. Betty had another solution, however, claiming there was a river about a day’s travel to the west which would surely lead out to the sea. Her father had found it, and meant to use it to escape himself.

It was difficult for Betty to tell me of her experiences, as they had struck her into a broken shell of a young lady, but as we marched west for the next day and a half she did recite accounts of the Spillerson expedition for me. They had fared in a similar manner to us, facing the wrath of this giant woman. They had understood the shrine we had encountered for its intended use, however, having followed a procession of Lybl villagers out as they dragged a reluctant captive there and tied him inside. The locals all fled as the woman had first come into view, and only Spillerson’s group were left to witness her retrieve the sacrifice and devour him before their eyes. Someone in the group unfortunately made a noise that gave away their position, in shock at the sight before them, and the giant woman advanced on them. She ate two of Spillerson’s men there and then, crushing a third underfoot and catching the others in her hands. They were carried back through the jungle for an uncomfortable and panic-stricken walk, all the way back to the cage. From there, captured amongst natives, the expedition members were systematically eaten over the course of a week or so. The sheer hopelessness of the situation choked tears from Betty, for they had tried everything they could to open the cage, or claw through the wood, or climb out when their captor came to select her next meal. Every occasion met with dismal failure or disastrous discovery from the giant.

She did not use her prisoners for mere food, it was also apparent. The monster would often take groups of them from the cage and lay them in front of her hoping for some entertainment. Sometimes they would dance for her, others they would fight, and on some occasions she provided the entertainment herself, pulling and pushing with her fingers or running them over her body. Always, these encounters had the potential to end with another poor soul in her stomach, and the natives often fought bitterly against one another to save themselves. For the people of the expedition, the giant woman’s attentions seemed slightly different. As I had seen of Montcliff, so, Betty said, had been done to some of their men, her father included. It was a terrible thought, but she claimed it did not always seem a case of pleasure, and I had to dread the idea that this monster might genuinely be attempting to get pregnant. Betty was hesitant to tell me her own role in all this, however, for the giant woman had clearly kept her alive all this time with small offerings of food and a certain level of mercy. I fear the poor girl was a favourite doll to her captor, played with often and in the most intimate, troubling manners that it would not befit her honour to speak of.

I asked if there were any others of the giant woman’s nature, and Betty said that she had seen no evidence of them. This seemed to be a unique being. I asked what else Betty had observed, and she reluctantly admitted that one day she had been absently tucked into the giant bosom and carted about the jungle as the monster went about her business. She drank at large lakes, and fed not just on humans but on other wildlife that she could snatch from the vicinity: birds, pigs and gorillas were all shoved into those cavernous jaws. She also enjoyed herself by scratching her back fondly on trees and washed her feet, and her hair, in a river. Betty was sickened to think of the moment the giant woman playfully massaged her own breasts together, squashing the poor lady in between them and laughing at her squirming plight.

Of Spillerson’s fate, I learnt this: he devised a plan to escape when the giant woman was going for a meal, when the lid was open. He was confident, through conversation with the locals and careful observation on the way there, of the river that would take them to safety. With the help of his men, he vaulted out of the cage and headed for a small crevice to hide in. This he achieved in an effort so brave and fast that the giant woman could not catch him before he got to the hiding spot. However, she did see him. Her fingers could not fit into the crevice, but she was resilient, and broke a nearby tree into a thin pole. Those in the cage, Betty told me with a shuddering cry, watched with perfect horror as the wood was jabbed into the hole, numerous times, and eventually came up hooked under one of Spillerson’s legs, dragging him out. He fell from the stick as soon as it was brought into the open, crashing to the floor and immediately attempting to crawl back into the hole, but the giant woman snatched hold of his leg and lifted him up to her face. Just as I had found myself watching, on numerous occasions now, Betty told me she stared in pure horror as her father was pushed into the waiting mouth and swallowed whole. Lady Spillerson’s fate was no less tragic than her husband’s: on one of their first days in the cage she drew attention to herself trying to hide her daughter, and as a result was picked up and devoured.

We reached the river without incident, to our great relief, and began to walk downstream, praying it would not be far to the sea. As we continued, Betty found further memories now surfacing, and seemed to feel that the best way to overcome the trauma would be to speak it aloud. Much of what I heard I will never forget, or repeat, for its sheer depravity, but some it is useful to note in this volume. Sometimes the giant woman would open the lid and lean over her captives with gnashing teeth, plainly intending to intimidate them and generate a panic, which amused her to the point of laughing. On occasion, she would also probe through the group, prodding and pinching as though trying to find the most suitably proportioned person before devouring them. On other occasions, she ran her hand through them, lifting and dropping people at will, almost as though just to see how it felt. Betty said she herself had been placed in that giant mouth a number of times, thinking it to be the end, only to have the tongue toy with her, to be licked and sucked and molested thus, before being placed back in the cage. She had seen the same happen to others, but on some occasions they had not been returned afterwards, but swallowed down the monster’s gullet.

I asked if Betty thought this giant woman was of any intelligence or civilisation, and the young lady assured me that she certainly was. Though the monster clearly did not speak our language, she was sensible in maintaining her captives with small items of food and a very secure cage. Her pleasures of playing with the small people at her disposal were reserved and sometimes delicate, rather than acts of mere feral curiosity or cruelty. Moreover, she clearly had a preference for swallowing her prey alive, very rarely chewing them, and could often be seen to revel in the feeling that followed, of their struggling as they were digested. Betty asked me, “What mere animal takes pleasure in feeding in such a way?” She also told me grimly of the times she had stared at that flat, enormous stomach with wonder at the poor people struggling inside it. Her voice wavered over the matter she had given much thought, “It was so frightening to think of being trapped in there, somewhere behind all that weight of hers, with no hope of escape.”

The locals conversely seemed to worship the giant woman to a degree, often chanting in her direction and occasionally facing their fate in her stomach with a sense of duty or even reluctant joy, rather than the panic that most showed. I must say, that was an understandable reaction: horrible as her hunger might have been, the monster was a beautiful and dominating creature that no one could rightly dispute as a most glorious, if destructive, force of nature.

Of course, such thoughts are easy to pen now, and were increasingly easy to consider as we made our escape. I was perhaps tempting fate to so much as consider such leniency, for we were not safe yet.