Made in Russka
 

Tiny footsteps hurried through the grass, a crying child running screaming for his mother. The sky was growing dark and a bite of cold carried on the wind. The child's boots squeaked as he ran, arms of his over sized wool line coat flapping. A group of houses were marked in the growing dark by the lights from their windows away in the near distance. Between the houses and the boy lay a stretch of tall grass and rocks, a shrub here and there. An obstacle course that the boy might not make through in time to see his mother again.

Behind the boy a shadow blacker than the night itself followed. An eight foot giant holding in its one hand a sword mighty enough to cleave through a bear, in the other a chain with which to drag the the boy back into the dark of the wilderness that lay on the horizon. Each stride of the shadows long legs quickly closed the distance between him and the boy, soon enough bringing both together. The giant reached out with one large hand and grabbed the boy by the hair. The boy screamed and kicked and cried, but the giant ignored the pleas.

With the chain the giant began to bind the boy, wrapping the coils from the boys feet up. What he would do with the boy, no one knew. Every so few years a child went missing, and the easiest explanation was nature itself. More popular though was the rumors that a monster lived among the trees, waiting for a single lost child to come along and snap it up for a meal. The story was favored for putting fear and doubts into the children's minds, since more than once there was proof something was out there. Most often in came in the findings of a missing child's clothes left behind among the tall grass close to the houses.

The giant shadow finished binding the sobbing, panicked boy and easily laid the child over his shoulder, turning to head back to the trees from which he came.