When the giant came to consciousness, the first thing he knew was that he was dying. The second was that he was a giant, this condition being new to his life. He was much more confused at the first condition than the second. This pounding in my head, he thought. This ache in my back.
He could feel death like a slowing wheel, struggling to keep its inertia. His bones were crushing themselves under their own weight, their internal lattice not meant to support his size. His cells were starving, eating him as they kept him alive.
His vision went in and out, shrinking to a single speck of light at its worst. He tried sitting himself up but could only manage to prop himself on his elbows. He let the weight of his head roll back and squinted. The trees…he thought. The trees. He was unused to so much light in the forest. Where are the trees? He had tried to grow sunflowers in his garden once, but they hadn’t even flowered. The pines were too tall. They took up the entire sky.
His back ache had spread itself to his shoulders, and the giant’s torso now shook with the effort of staying up. He pressed his palms against the ground, digging his fingers in to find stability, but he couldn’t find it. He collapsed back down. Something sharp embedded itself where his neck met his head. He twisted his head to the left, to the right, trying and failing to dislodge it, but pressure made the pain go away. He pressed his head into the damp earth, pushing the rock back to where it came from.
When the giant was a human, he had lived in the forest for the last thirty years. He used to start his days before light appeared as little dots on the mossy floor. He would make his coffee, pull his chair up under the little awning — which he had built himself with wood from a tree that had stood fifteen feet away — and would watch the woodpecker hole in a tree that stood eight feet from his front door. A family lived there. He would sit and wait for them to emerge for the day, only giving himself permission to begin his work after they had begun theirs. In the forest, this was what was available to him.
He tried again to sit up, but something pricked his finger as soon as he placed his hand under the small of his back. He snatched it back, holding his hand up to his face. A long shard of glass stuck out of the pad of his index finger. He couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, so instead he shook them about, flailing, the shard eventually flying out and sticking into a tree trunk a hand’s length away. The giant’s hands searched further beneath his back, trying to find what he had crushed. He pulled out more glass, planks of broken wood, porcelain, cloth in all colors, pieces of metal painted red. It took him a few seconds to recognize his license plate when he held it between his finger tips.
The giant shivered. Where are my bedsheets? Where is my bed? He should have asked that question earlier, he thought. My car. My house. The house I fit in. It was all gone, but it was his bedsheets he missed the most. The feeling of being covered. He curled into himself.
The giant spread his arms out to both sides until they reached the wall of trees that surrounded him on all sides. When had the gaps between each trunk become so small? He could slice through with a single finger.
He dragged his arm back and found it covered in tiny green lines that only memory informed him were pine needles. How many trees were pressed beneath his body? How many rocks? How many birds and insects?
He wondered if they were still alive down there, if they knew that he hadn’t meant to do it. He had gone to sleep. Something else…they did it. Something else did it, must’ve put this on. Suddenly, he grew convinced that he could unzip something somewhere and take his skin off. He thought his old self was still asleep inside, waiting to be found. Not mine, not my body. The giant dug his nails into his back, trying to rip this layer off. Not mine, not mine. He pushed them further in, in, in until he felt the tips of fingers wet. He stopped, wobbling back and forth. He tried to move his arms to the side, but all he could do was fall back with his hands tucked behind him. The weight of him was crushing.
Yes, this was his body. He thought. He thought of the woodpeckers. He thought of the woodpeckers and the coffee, and he knew he was dying. The giant was exhausted and his body was starving. My body. My body.
The giant tried to get up again, this time only able to lift his neck for a second. And then it fell onto things already crushed, burying them in the ground.
The giant couldn’t feel his legs now. They didn’t hurt. He couldn’t feel his torso either. His hands. His arms. His neck. He was just a face looking up at the sun, blinking and wishing the trees would grow back faster so he could sleep in peace. He blinked again. Again. The sun beat bright through his closed eyelids for a few moments, and then it let him go.