"Hideous Fantasy"

February 11th, 2026

CC0 Public Domain Designation

By Anna Tchernikov

A line of black coats stream into an old fire-station, now a loft with metal stairs, buried deep in

the industrial outskirts of the city where I live and work. Cold wind blows and I see soot and ash settle

on strangers’ eyelashes. I clutch my small, hand-held computer to my side.

Boss said something innovative

is happening here tonight,

Big story if I go

and bring a morsel back

for a headline.

There is a silver mist everywhere, obscuring moonlight. A woman emerges in faint blue flowing

cloth, waving us all in, her nails protruding. A singer whispers her song over the speakers as people mill

about the room. Flower petals shower over the golden girl in the advertisement projected on the wall as

text falls onto the middle of the screen;

“Civilization, sovereignty, spirit.

The way of life on this new island-community

will be through total self-sufficiency.

All members will participate in mandatory exercise,

enjoy nutritious food, and live

guided by great thinkers in the journey forward

to their personal enlightenment.”

A man in a grey t-shirt smiles. Metallic arms dig in and out of the ground as I look out the

window, into the night, extracting oil all over the industrial zone in the winter dark. Someone

passes me a black membership card.

“Come back next week. We’re organizing the first flight out,” a soft voice says to me. I do not quite

make out the speaker’s eyes. I don’t get any answer as to where the flight is going, as everyone gets

ushered out. I forgot to wear my press pass.

I keep that soft singer’s voice in my head and my chest and my mind as I climb on the train-car

back, and I see reflections of everything inside. All the light bends everything the wrong way on each

worn metal seat. My face looks caved in, alien. I spray more nasal decongestant into my nostrils and

wince as the substance leaks somewhere deep behind my nose. I reach into my prescription container

and swallow a few tablets. I look at my bank account. I can get more medication refilled, or I can ask

my doctor about something else.

In the morning, my voicemail crackles. I can make out a few of my superior’s

words: “flight...compensated...”

Everyday, I run to get all the food I need from the grocery. The packaged quantities never last

long, and each package looks identical to the next. Cruel sun burns me as I stumble forward, a big

metal beast to the right of my slight body humming along. That red ember looks down at everything

here on this small island. I sweat. My stomach moans. It is all smooth, beige concrete here. Specks of

the desert-island dust and dirt accumulate on the small stitched figure of a man on a horse at the left

knee of my shorts. It is warm for one month and hot-hot for the rest, especially now. Small green

insects peek their heads out from below, pulling themselves out into my vision, rubbing their

miniature green limbs together. I’ve been told they are not meant to live here. I’ve been seeing them for

weeks now. There is nowhere to go except my new home and the beach and the store.

I see movement on the horizon. Women wearing white fatigues stop a man in passage. He is far

away, though he looks older and does not wear the same clothing as us. They hold something in their

hands, pointing it at him. Something pops before a car arrives, and they disappear from view

completely. I hear him yell out. My stomach growls. My feet keep their beat on the ground.

I run faster. The stitch in my side hurts. Can’t go faster than I am now. I slow down. In my

dreams, everything is almost the same as it is in waking. I lie on a thin mattress inside a high-ceilinged room painted in neutral colours. In the sideways-slant of my lying down I see worms and maggots crawling on the floor, closer to me, and hear that rattling, bubbling hiss of alive things coming out to show themselves to me. I wake those mornings as I did today, with a vague feeling of a slimy film pulled over everywhere, in between my joints and in my jaw and my temples and the back of my throat. I want the sun to take the leaking and the pressure from my nostrils out. I still can’t find my medication or my press pass anywhere in my living quarters. The electric hum of the vehicle driving past me slices my eardrums, and I break my run. I turn. The silver glint of the angular trapezoid-shaped car overwhelms me, loud in its hideous terror. I am soaked in sweat already, though it is not yet noon. It moves slowly right beside me, and I know I have a few more minutes to go. I can imagine the orange granola box and the apple juice and the dehydrated meat in the self-serve grocery store. I will be the only one entering there, and I will see no other shoppers, alone there just as I run alone now. There is brief shade from sparsely planted trees, though I’ve never seen them survive more than a week here. The maintenance workers keep planting them. The seeds are from somewhere I can’t pronounce or place. The cars never roll down their tinted windows here.

My uniform speckled with dust, I sit on the pavement and chew the dehydrated salty meat. It

burns a little. I swallow down the juice, my heartbeat thunderous. I forget how many days I’ve been

here. I am always waiting for the announcement of the next flight out, though it never comes.