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They received broadcasts from the northern regions. Hope for the future. Greenhouses. The cultivation of food and clean water. It was unknown how much of this was true, but the speakers would issue forth stories of a better world in locations throughout the city, installed around the apartment blocks, enclosed in dogflesh. Tribes would occasionally post threatening letters, scrawled in dog ink across parchment. They were accusing the station of misleading and confusing the populace. 'There was another world, before the dogscape there was a world abundant in colours, rich in life and resources. The dogscape has only taken. The dogscape gives not. And when we feed it, it takes more.' 'It is our belief that the dogscape emerged from some kind of failed experimentation. Human error. To apply a creation myth to this monstrosity...this only serves to hinder us, to distract us from destroying what is essentially a disease, a parasitic infestation.' Kaff sat back and lit a cigarette. Rationed from the old world. They were limited in availability, and soon would disappear altogether. His fingernails were dirty from clawing through dogbark, which was then piled into a fireplace to keep them warm through the nights broadcast. Rex began, 'Reports on hunters. We've had several this week. Shadowy figures seen throughout the local dogscape, in different towns and villages. We believe they are visitors from other dimensions, harvesting the grim resources of our nightmarish dystopia. Perhaps they are responsible for releasing the spores, planting the seeds that led to our current predicament. This is their farm, and we are like spider lice, infesting their produce. God knows...then again, sometimes I wonder if he can comprehend all this.' Kaff lit his cigarette and feared the day he'd be down to his last. Greasy black hair down past his shoulders. 'The studio band will be in tonight, playing songs from the old world.' Instruments recovered from the old world had been collected here, and friends of the studio who had learnt from books and sheet music would play against the howls of the dogscape. Satie's gnossienne five was a favorite. Superstitious tribespeople would block their ears, whilst romantic couples who dreamed of another world huddled beneath loudspeakers. The sky full of stars, the melancholy piano carried on the breeze, alien and yet somehow strikingly familiar to all those who listened. Rex looked out the window, across the grim, barren dogscape. Towers, trees, monuments, all suffocated by this disease, this monstrosity somehow inflicted upon the world. He sipped some fermented puppy fruit liquor, it tasted excessively sweet but he had become accustomed to the taste and was starting to tremble as he approached sobriety. Drink up. The numbing warmth of liquor, cigarettes, ways to be handle the insanity of this nightmare. |