The Ghost of Akimograd
The ghost of Akimograd, Sana’s old home, flickered into existence. It glowed bright on the horizon, a flame that filled Sana with the longing of a frenzied moth. With practiced speed, Sana and her band of young scavs gathered their gear. The young were less susceptible to the ghost cities. Most of them hadn’t been born back when they were real, living places, and those who had only held the faintest memories. Still, Sana had trained them well: they feared the cities, but understood the opportunities they held.It’d been almost a year since Akimograd last appeared, and they’d been making do with smaller, less profitable ghost towns.
Everything within wavered and shimmered in luminescent translucence—impossible to tell the difference between the jagged ruins of solid building and spectral projection. Unless you knew Akimograd like Sana did.
The ghost city was perilous. It wanted to trick and trap. Open stairwells disguised as solid ground, impermanent doorways to inescapable rooms, labyrinthine streets that changed course. And the memories.
Sounds and smells tugged at the soul, promising things long-missed and gone from the world. Sana couldn’t step foot in Akimograd without her baby brother’s laughter echoing from playgrounds that weren’t really there. Without smelling the bread her wife baked to dip in the borscht steaming on the stove. If she just followed the call, then she’d be right back with them where she was supposed to be. It would be so easy. They were just around the corner, just up those stairs, just through that window.
But Sana remembered—she knew where the streets belonged, and who was gone and who was buried.
“Olya, you lead.”
She was the most promising of the kids: sensible and unimaginative, with a good memory for directions.
Olya nodded, and moved to the front of their group, picking a path straight to the hospital. Injuries were common in their line of work. Chances were the Akimograd State Hospital would still have decent stock—most scavs avoided it. The bigger the city, the more dangerous its ghost.
Sana kept close watch on Olya, ready to redirect if she took a wrong turn, but the girl remembered well. The deeper into Akimograd they moved, the more the city tugged at Sana’s concentration.
Every side street was the one she grew up on, air wafting thick with spring lilacs and snatches of laughter from back gardens. Her brother called her name on every corner. There—her apartment building, where she’d lived with her wife. A glittering reproduction of their clothes hung out to dry on their tiny balcony. And there it was again on the next corner, soft classical music playing out the open window—her wife on the piano.
If only she could forget—not them, never them—but that the city wasn’t how it used to be.
Sana passed all her favourite restaurants, two, three, four times. Her mouth watered at the scents of sizzling Indian spices, of cheesy khachapuri, of baking cookies, and of deep-fried chips. Since Akimograd faded to a ghost, Sana hadn’t eaten much that didn’t come out of a tin or a sachet, and most of it expired. What she wouldn’t give for a salad or a slice of fruit. For something fresh baked or hot off the stove.
Akimograd sent her wave after wave of memory, until Sana was all but drowning in it. But when they got to the hospital with its eerie, empty corridors, and found a storeroom with boxes still packed with sterile dressings and antiseptic liquids, Sana didn’t feel relief.
Their work—sorting through loot, sending Olya off with a couple other scavs to track down antibiotics or painkillers, packing up everything they could carry—was a nuisance. A weight over Sana, holding her back from partaking in all the beauty of Akimograd.
“You know the way back?” she confirmed with Olya, when it was time to leave. She hadn’t made a single misstep coming in, but if she was nervous returning—
The girl nodded and Sana felt the weight slide from her shoulders to Olya’s She was strong enough now, to bear it. Stronger than Sana.
“Go on then, lead them home.”
Sana hung at the back of the group, and then broke away, following the hum of her wife’s singing and the sweet promise of hot milky tea and a shared slice of cake.
When Akimograd’s ghost winked away again, it took Sana with it. Home.
© 2026 Aggie Novak
Aggie Novak lives with her wife in Australia, where she spends most of her time hiding from the sun and heat. She writes around working as a pharmacist and entertaining her dog. She loves all kinds of speculative fiction and often draws inspiration from Slavic folklore and mythology. When not writing she can be found drinking tea and reading everything in sight. Her published works can be found in Flash Fiction Online, Aurealis, Hexagon, and several anthologies! For the full list see aggienovak.com.