Remember it for me

It was the fifth week of the summer holiday. I'd returned from my trip to Europe and was fresh and ready for a new year. My mind had already turned to lesson plans and the studies to complete before the children returned to school. A new year with a new set of fresh young faces waiting for me to transform their owners into potential engineers and mathematicians.

And sleep. I slept soundly and peacefully until Carol hammered on my apartment door. There was a ferocity that dragged me out of sleep and had me inviting her in before I was properly awake. I made coffee as she told me what had happened.

"It was terrifying," she said as she slumped into my sofa.

The coffee pot boiled on the stove as the whole story came out of her. She'd been walking her dog Jake at daybreak, just like she'd done every morning since she'd moved to the town. Her route was the same: through the woods, across the fields to the stream and down to the main road. It was while she was walking around the long grass ready for the harvest that she found it. A pyramid.

"You've got to see it," she told me. "You simply have to."

I placed a small espresso cup in front of her and sat in the chair opposite. I asked her to describe it.

"That's just it," she said, burying her head in her hands. "It doesn't matter how hard I try I just can't. I mean I see it, I know I can remember it, but when I try to describe it..."

She cried. I comforted her.

A colleague, that's all she was. I know she thought she wanted something else, but I would not give it to her. She was a nice woman, a good friend who would remain that way. It was her dog. I'm allergic and she does love her dogs.

Coffee drunk and her tears dried I drove us to the lane that ringed the field. She led the way. Pointless really as the dirt path only went in one direction.

There it was. Nestled amongst the tall green grass just as she'd said. Almost just as she said because now I could see it for myself and understand why she'd been so upset.

Each side looked to be about a metre and each was the same length. They butted against one another in an edge that looked sharp enough to cut through steel. The faces were the purest white I'd ever seen, every wavelength in the spectrum reflected in perfection.

That wasn't what astounded me though. It hovered above the ground as far above it as it was tall. It rotated slowly in a clockwise fashion.

It left me speechless.

"See?" Carol exclaimed.

I didn't understand how she couldn't describe such a vivid scene. Until I turned my head to look at her. At that moment all memory of it faded. I knew there was a pyramid there, I could sense the word in my mind. But only the word.

I turned back and instantly I recognised the strange shape floating above the ground. Every detail was as I remembered it.

"Do you see it?" Carol shouted. "Can you see it?"

Again I turned away, and the memory vanished. I had no memory of what it looked like, how large it was or any detail that might help me describe it to another.

My heart pounded in my chest. A wave of anxiety flooded through me as my tortured mind tried to make sense of what was happening. I looked at the pyramid and memory flooded into me. I looked away and a vast chasm appeared.

Without speaking we decided we needed to move away, only we had to keep looking at it. Slowly we stepped backwards, each keeping our eyes on it so as to remember what we were fleeing. Sometimes we had to check our progress and suffer the instant amnesia, so we took turns to look behind.

After a few metres we reached the bend in the path that would hide it from our view. I wanted to stay, to hold the memory in my mind out of an irrational fear it might vanish forever. Carol pulled at my arm, desperate to leave it behind. She pulled a little too hard and I staggered backwards. My eyes left the pyramid.

Such an empty feeling. A profound sense I was missing something from deep in my soul. Something that was so important that without it I wouldn't be whole again.

But what was it?

I knew it was along the path and I ran forwards, ignoring Carol's shouting. It was along the path; I was sure of that. I thought I remembered it was in the grass, but where?

My legs were shaking by the time I reached the gate at the far side of the field. I must have passed it by. I turned and jogged back, looking left and right for something. Something hidden in the grass. Something that Carol was looking for too.

"Thanks for coming to pick me up," Carol said vaguely. "I guess Jakey must've run home."

Yes, I told her, he must have run home. I couldn't find him in the grass.

When I drove away the feeling I'd forgotten something slowly faded.

A note from Alex

This was originally written as a series of Tweets. My cunning plan was to share the story in reverse as replies to people's posts. However, the issue would of course be that delete one post and the entire story is lost.