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                “Amputate a man’s leg and he can still feel it tickling. Tell me, mum,
                 when your little girl is on the slab, where will it tickle you?”
                                Hannibal Lecter, Silence of the Lambs

                The sound of the door slamming open startles us away from the corpse we’re standing before. On our bellies, pressed down in the soft, dry dirt of the ground just outside the wooden shack, we watch through the tiny hole in the wall.

                We can see through the door into the main room of the shack. We can see a large shadow moving over the room. Its movements are odd and awkward. But it’s large. Very, very large. We hear a loud thud and we see part of a burlap sack fall into view on the edge of the door.

                I hear a whimper.

                “We need to get out of here.” Slate whispers. She starts to move.

                Sam Helms.

                I blink. I glance over at Slate. Her hands dug into the ground, she’s pushing herself off the ground. The dirt from the movement is caught in the middle of the air. There’s movement stopped in time. I glance back at the crack and look through to the massive shadow that’s just inside the shack.

                If you move, he’ll hear. He’ll know. He’ll follow.

                I grab Slate’s shoulder and push her down to the ground. She looks at me, but I just stare into the light of the shack. “If we move,” I whisper, my voice little more than air passing between my lips. “He’ll hear us. We won’t get away.”

                “We’ve got . . .” She starts, moving her hand towards the AK-47 that’s been slung over her side. But as she speaks, the shadow becomes alive.

                He’s large and round. His arms hang just a bit too low. His fingers are just a bit too long. And his skin is just a bit too pale. At first glance, as he walks around the doorway into the room just beyond the wall in front of us, he looks human. He looks normal. Or so.

                But he hobbles. His skin is rubbery and bulges over his gigantic body. His gut leads the way as his hairy shape steps into the room with the corpse. Slate and I freeze. We see him come behind the boy’s feet and we hear the behemoth rummaging around.

                With a wet slap, his belt hits the ground in front of us. I try not to shriek. I look over to Slate as she grabs her mouth.

                We hear a jingle and his pants hit the ground. Then his white shirt.

                Movement

                I turn past his meaty, pasty ankles to see the burlap sack shift. I hear a noise.

                “Uhhh . . .”

                It’s moaning. It’s a person. They’re alive.

                The behemoth storms towards the other room, dressed now in a faded pair of briefs and nothing else. He walks into the room and looks down at the burlap sack I can just barely see. He reaches into the sack and grabs a hand. With no effort, he lifts up a small boy.

                The kid can’t be more than ten. He’s dressed in regular enough clothes, jeans and a t-shirt and a baseball cap. The large guy looks the boy over once, then still with only one arm, lays him down on a table. I lean forward, trying to see better. Looking through the hole in the wall, I can make out the wooden room and half of a table. I watch the large man deposit the boy’s semi-conscious body onto the table and grab up a rope from the closest leg. He feels the rope out to its end and opens up a metal collar. He wraps the collar around the boy’s wrist, then pulls the rope taut.

                “Oh my god.” I hear Slate whisper.

                The giant pulls the boy’s limbs taut across the table, then walks over to the other side of the room. And I hear the last sound I ever wanted to hear: A knife being drawn.

                I look back at the boy. I can see his head. He’s starting to come around. He shakes off some delirium and looks around, just beginning to come aware. He looks back at the giant. “What?” He stumbles out, his words slurred. “What, what what?”

                The giant walks right up to the boy and punches him in the face. The blow jars the boy’s head down and blood spills out from his face. The giant grabs his face, digging his fingers into the boy’s eye sockets and pulls his head up as he wraps a fifth collar around the boy’s neck. He pulls the collar tightly closed, then draws the rope closed. The boy’s face begins to turn purple a bit as he strains to breathe.

                The giant pulls a rickety wooden chair up beneath his massive form and puts his free hand down on the boy’s stomach. The boy’s eyes go wide and he tries to speak, tries to scream.

                And then he does.

                The boy’s shriek echoes through the darkness. Like the shrill piercing cry of a bat on fire, the boy screams out as if the world itself was ending. And I see why.

                Looking at the almost white thigh of the giant monster, I watch as blood spills out onto his thigh.

                The boy’s head falls back, moving still and the giant leans over the boy. I hear wet smacking and a content grumbling coming from the giant. I lay in catatonic fear, staring through the tiny hole. The giant is almost completely obscured from my sight, but I can see his shadow, hear his movements, as he bends over the boy’s midsection. I can see him working with the knife as the boy moves convulsively. But the giant, bent over with his back away from us, doesn’t seem to notice. His attention is focused down, as still more blood and fragments of life fall down into his bare lap.

                “We have to get out of here.” Slate barely breathes to me.

                But it was enough.

                The smacking stops.

                The giant’s hairy head lifts up, his face tilted towards the door, towards us. My blood goes cold.

                The boy lifts his head up, tears streaming down his face. He tries to speak, but his breath is too constricted. But the giant doesn’t tolerate it. He grabs the boy’s face again, handling it as if he was manhandling a volley ball. He reaches over with a crusted, rusty cutting knife and grabs the boy’s jaw. I look away. I hear a sick sawing and the boy’s continued cries. I can hear him try to bite down on metal, metal I can only assume is the knife.

                When I have the courage, I look up. The boy’s head is dangling mercifully away from me, blood spilling freely from it. And I hear crunching. I glance over at Slate. Before she can speak, I cover my mouth and reach out to the ground in front of her. In tiny strokes on the soft dirt, I write ‘we run he gets us’.

                Thud

                We both look up in horror.

                The boy’s jaw bone is lying on the ground in front of us.

                There are no teeth left in the gums.

                “He, he ate the teeth?” Slate breathes out in horror, her eyes wide. “He’s, he’s not human.”

                But it was enough.

                I hear the snort before I see his head move. The shadow and form move in unison as the giant figure turns towards the doorway. His hand is buried too deep into the shadow of the boy for me to process, but his body is eerily still as he listens to the wind.

                And then I hear it.

                Sniff, sniff

Sniff, sniff

                Sniff, sniff

                “Oh no.” I think quietly.

                His can feel his eyes turning towards the door.

                “I . . .” Comes a sick, rattle of a voice, like wet rocks rolled around inside a sack made of human flesh. “I smell a girl.”

                I feel Slate swallow hard.

                The chair scrapes against the table and the giant stands up. “Are you a young little thing?” He rasps out, standing up, his blood stained body unbothered as he carries his knife. “I hope you are. A young, round little girl. A girl with no blood in her system, with no grass to pick out of my teeth.”

                He turns around, sniffing still. “I bet your folds are tender.” He whispers, his eyes wide. “I bet your labia will be like succulent chicken. And your tongue,” He says, rolling out his half-foot long tongue, slimy and just as hairy as he. “Is like roast beef.”

                He sniffs the air again. “I smell your blood. I smell it dripping down your thighs, staining a pretty pink dress.” He sniffs again. “No. Not a dress. Pants.” He sniffs again. I glance over at Slate. She’s beyond terrified. “Military pants.” He sniffs again, still turning like a drugged ballroom dancer. “Not a pretty little girl. No. A woman, who wishes she was a man.”

                He turns around completely, then stops facing away from us. His hair runs down across his back, mixing with his thick bush of body hair. But in his hand, I can feel more than see his knife. “I smell your blood. I smell your sweat. I smell your flesh. I smell your gun. I smell your . . .” His head turns. “Fear.”

                Andy my blood goes cold. My body goes hard and rigid. And I can’t do anything but watch as he turns and stares through the door way, staring down at us with his wide, beady eyes.

                He grins a blood-stained grin. “I see you.” He whispers, staring right at both of us.

                Suddenly, my eyes hurt.

                And then I hear a sound from right behind us.

                “I see you.”

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