Summary of The Memory Hounds of Bak-Ankham by A. W. Prihandita (4.0)
Uncanny #68, January/February 2026
In a factory compound controlled by the powers of Bak-Ankham, workers live without memories, their pasts erased nightly by enormous black hounds that lick them clean of recollections. The workers are told they have a memory illness and that the factory shelters them from a war-torn world beyond the river. Each night, the houndmaster brings his creatures to perform “reconditioning,” removing any memories that accumulate during the day.
A young woman named Tesua stands among these workers, though she doesn’t remember her own name. She has learned to inscribe warnings into her body rather than her mind: “Never say you remember.” A man who stands to her right keeps breaking this rule, insisting it isn’t right that they don’t remember. When a factory accident involving blistering chemical burns triggers his memories, he declares that they’ve been made to forget. The guards summon the hounds for “reconstruction,” and the eldest hound—distinguished by white flecks around its maw—devours the man entirely, leaving only his severed head.
Key Plot Points
- The hounds are revealed to be a grotesque form of reincarnation—consumed workers are reborn as hounds from the bellies of their devourers
- The man returns as a juvenile hound, still remembering Tesua and refusing to cleanse her memories
- Tesua discovers their true identities: she is Tesua, he is Peteya, and they were bonded shields—elite paired warriors from their clan
- They were captured fighting to defend their village from Bak-Ankham’s forces and have been forced to manufacture the same poison gas weapons used against their own people
- Tesua is caught visiting Peteya’s kennel and is consumed by another hound as punishment
During her transformation in the hound’s belly, Tesua’s unshackled mind recovers all her memories. She remembers the green plains of her homeland before the war, the partnership she shared with Peteya as warriors whose backs were always pressed together in battle. She recalls how he always urged them to fight while she counseled strategic retreat. Their capture came when he refused to abandon their village, insisting he would rather die than be the clan’s last surviving shield.
When Tesua is reborn as a hound, she emerges transformed in body but not in spirit. Unlike Peteya, who has been broken by repeated punishments into fearful submission, she retains her fighting instinct. The story closes with her charging at the guards in a final act of defiance. Though her collar will soon singe her into compliance, in this moment before the pain begins, she is most powerful—because now she remembers everything, and that memory itself becomes an act of resistance against those who would erase her people’s identity and turn them into weapons against themselves.