The Pyramid

About a year ago, facing self-imposed pressure to buckle down and finally write the book I dreamed of, I sought inspiration elsewhere. One of those places was flash fiction, which by nature are quick and spontaneous stories. I wrote a bunch, submitted a few to some contests, and one finished in the top 10 percent among 1,200 participants. This one however, is special for another reason: it was first.

The contest prompt asked for stories about lone survivors on deserted islands. It was a simple enough exercise, but simple beats complex almost every time. The challenge helped me break through to the next stage in my writing. The stories elongated until I felt ready to tackle that elusive white whale of the written narrative – a novel, an epic fantasy called THE DARKEST FATE, a quest I am close to completing.

But that’s for later. For now, we travel to a deserted island . . .

The Pyramid

By Sam Flynn

Everyone else was dead and he would soon join them.

He’d been running so long that he’d forgotten where he was going. It was midday. The sun beat down like an angry god, the green forestry flecked with golden light. The heat and humidity were so thick, his pumping arms and legs felt like they were underwater. They burned with the miles run and his heaving chest ached at the miles to go. But if he stopped moving, the jungle would catch him.

Hundreds of them there had been, gathered for passage to a new home in a new land, a fresh start for so many innocent souls. They’d left their homes for different reasons, for freedom, for opportunity, for love. But what they had in common was that they had no choice.

The storms they encountered were terrible but somehow wondrous. He had gazed from between the cracks of the creaky hull with amazement – and fear. But the fear had felt so far away. He knew now what he didn’t then, the reality he staved off for as long as possible.

The ship’s captain had promised a safe voyage and who were they to question them, they who had seen so little of the world? The crew was made up of men, almost all gray and bearded, identifiable by their wide-brimmed hats, their sun-dried skin uniformly cracked and wrinkled from years at sea and a sharp contrast to the sea of faces cascading aboard. Young men and women, black, brown, yellow, white, babes at their mothers’ chests, all covered in beaten and worn clothes. The future in human form.

He’d passed the captain and his mates, as austere as the mast against the sky, while marching across the harbor to the ship. He’d heard him say, “What a sad and sorry lot. You best be keeping them below, I tell ya, I’m more worried about them than the storm.”

The shipwreck was awful. He remembered flashes: rocks jutting violently through the hull, water pouring in, and the panic that pushed them to escape. But he remembered the screams most of all.

Bodies floated ethereally among the rigging and broken remains of their sinking ship. When he and the others broke the surface of the waves, they despaired. Until a flash of lighting illuminated a small island not far from the reef they’d collided with.

Seven of them remained, two sailors, including the second mate, and four of his fellow passengers. The second mate, shaky though he was, organized a signal fire and foraged along the beach for washed-up supplies, circling the island within three hours. He’d been offered to join, but the trees entranced him to venture into their depths.  

The island was paradisiacal. While the others searched the beach for scraps, he found the jungle alive with noise, trees full of fat, ripe fruits, taut with juices, upon which he gorged. He followed a stream inland to where a glistening waterfall descended into a glowing gully.

Light streamed through a clearing in the canopy to bounce serenely off its surface. His eyes followed the unnatural brightness to its source at the top of the waterfall. He stared transfixed at the grand golden pyramid from which the waterfall seemed to flow.

He lost count of the time he spent standing immobile before his compatriots found him. They too were mystified and absorbed by the singular structure. They circled it but found no passable way to the top. It stood, unapproachable and irreproachable. It wasn’t until one of the men broke his ankle attempting a climb that the second mate called for “the ungrateful lot of ya” to return to the beach camp.

Their camp piled up with fruit and fresh water. The island provided all they needed, more than shipwrecked castaways could ever hope for.

Yet their hunts proved futile and fishing in either the ocean or the gully yielded nothing at all. The sounds of life persisted, as if echoes only now reaching ears. One of his fellow survivors claimed the noise was loudest at the waterfall and that it came from the golden pyramid itself. It was absurd, he knew, yet he too was drawn to it all the same. He began returning in secret to it daily, sometimes to attempt the impossible climb to the summit, sometimes just to stare at its majesty, so real yet so far away.

Then, one night, the pyramid began screaming.

It awoke them all from nightmares, an endless cacophony that did not deaden with time. If anything, the sound only intensified. It burnt their nerves and shredded the semblance of peace they acquired. It dragged on from night to day until, as suddenly as the screams began, they stopped. And their compatriot with the broken ankle was nowhere to be found. The respite proved temporary. The next night, the screams began again, louder and shriller this time.

They never found any of the bodies.

Now he was the only one left. The golden pyramid was his alone.

It was night again when he finally stopped running yet his heartbeat quickened in his chest. His legs had delivered him back to the waterfall, back to the very thing he tried to flee. Back to the golden pyramid.

Their screams echoed in his mind, a constant ring. They boxed him in, forming the labyrinthine hallways he followed through the jungle. The echoes absorbed the chirps of the birds, the buzzes of the insects, and the roars of the beasts, consuming the sounds of life. The screams blotted out everything, like an aural eclipse.

He didn’t even realize his voice had joined theirs. 

Everyone else was dead and he would soon join them.