Land Of The Giants

• Mackenzie Tooth
• Short Story
• 2012

It was a Sunday when it happened. My name is Tayla Ann-Johnston and I am 14 years old. I was in a plane on its way to New York while my family waited for me there. I stared out the window. We had just left Sydney and I was already bored.
Suddenly there was a huge explosion in the engines. We were going down, fast. I held onto my seatbelt and braced myself for impact. Other passengers were screaming, I was scared and frightened. CRASH! The plane collapsed on the ground and split in two.
I groaned and took off my seatbelt. All the other passengers were gone. I stood up and looked around through the debris. I took a moment to get over the shock of being enclosed by dense forest, or at least that’s what it looked like. All the treetops vanished into the swirling black clouds and I was standing next to a flower that was taller than me! Then the ground started shaking violently; I had to hang on to the flower to stay upright.
That’s when I saw him. A gargantuan giant. Each foot was the length of a bus and had moss and dirt all over it. He had short, dirty black hair and a nose shaped like a mushroom, while his small beady eyes were darting around everywhere.
Then he looked down at me. I shrieked and he roared, leaving me deaf for the next few minutes. But I could still feel his footsteps thundering right behind me as I ran into a clump of bushes.
5 seconds later a gigantic foot landed in front of me. I had to clamp my mouth around my fist to stop myself from screaming loudly. My hearing came back just as the giant wandered away after a new source of interest.
I cautiously poked my head out of the bush and looked around. Nothing. I stepped out and swivelled on the spot. When no giants came tearing through the trees, I relaxed. I extracted my fist and saw deep teeth marks in my skin. I grimaced and let my arm drop. Then I chose a direction and ran.
I was running for an age, and when I finally stopped I was out of breath and at the edge of a clearing. I decided to stay under cover for the night and curled up underneath a huge leaf to sleep.
I woke to find myself encircled by giants. I blinked. No, I wasn’t surrounded; the giants were sitting around a fire in the middle of the clearing and grumbling to each other. I quietly slipped away, unnoticed.
As I sprinted, I changed direction every five minutes until I arrived at a long stretch of beach. I turned and saw a fire surrounded by other survivors from the crash. Relief flooded over me as I jogged over and sat. “How did you know where to find us?” a man asked.
“I didn’t,” I answered briefly. “I just ended up here.”
We were 14 survivors out of 32 people from the plane. It didn’t take long to realise we were on an undiscovered island with no hope of rescue. For all we knew, we may never get off this island, or see civilisation again.
And then there was the problem of the giants...