Log Four

The Dogscape. That's what we call it. Us humans that banded together, I mean. We sit around campfires and cook the whelps we collect from the dogtrees. The only flammable material we have is the acrid fur that grows everywhere. It offends all senses, but soon the meal is prepared. The only food sources are the dogtrees and the mothermounds. Some foolish enough dig for meat. Though the reward is great, many don't come back, for the dogflesh regrows above them, trapping them inside the moist ground. Primitive tools are forged from bones and leather, such as shovels and knives and clothes. I have lived here for as long as I can remember. There are faint shimmers of the time before the Dogflesh, but what use is there dwelling on the past when it cannot fill our stomachs in the present? I am our tribe's scribe. My name is Dok. I used to have a real name, but it escapes my memory. I record all of our findings and knowledge in my leather pages, using dog blood as ink. There were times when there were more of us. The tribe started with as many as sixty people. Now, our numbers are as few as twenty. Our leader is Keef. He instructs us to find food, build shelter, and bring fire. He abuses his power, taking five wives and eating more than his share of the food, but those who speak against him meet death in the night. It is hellish, but there is no other choice. Without guidance, we will die out here, so we must remain under his leadership.

It has been two days since my last writing. I am lucky that Keef cannot read, for if he had seen my statements about him, I would be dead. Yesterday, one of our tribe members, Kot, was killed by accidentally stepping into one of the open dogmouths. His screams of pain as it chewed forced me to crush his skull with a shovel, killing him instantly. The bastard Keef claimed Kot's food ration as his own. I can sense the others are beginning to tire of Keef's position of power as well. Nobody spoke a word at that night's feast. I will not sleep well tonight, hearing Kot's screams in my nightmares.

I fear for my life. Fek was killed in front of all of us by Keef today. He refused to continue digging for meat, so the monster beat him to death with his bare hands as a sign that he would not tolerate a refusal to work. I cannot stand for this much longer. Fek was not even an adult; he could not have been more than seventeen human years. This brings our numbers down to eighteen. There is Keef, his five wives, me, and the remaining 11 diggers and gatherers. The others whisper to me in secret that I should be the leader instead. I guess they think I have all the answers because I am the scribe. Only time will tell.

I was awoken at the crack of dawn by one of the diggers, Gar specifically. He told me that tonight would be the night. The others had a plan. They want me to announce that I am the new leader during the feast. When he is distracted with rage, they intend to kill him from behind. I tell Gar that I accept his plan, and will assist them tonight. What have I gotten myself into?

Damn them all. I told Keef I planned to replace him. He arose, filled with rage. I waited for the blow to strike him. It never hit Keef; instead it hit me. Gar was Keef's spy all along. They dragged me far away from the Gardens, and tied me to a barren dogtree. He said that a quick death would not befit me, and I will waste away under the deathly sun. I can just barely reach my journal from here. I suppose this is the end of me.

When the sun was highest in the sky, the heat became unbearable. I saw figures on the horizon. They were not human; they were the hounds that come to eat what the humans leave behind. I thought they were going to eat me. Instead, they went for the blood-soaked meatropes that held me in place. I was free. I kneeled down to the hounds, and looked deep in its eyes. I told them I knew where they could fill their bellies to the brim. It barked once in what I assume was confirmation. I stood up, and we set off to feast.

When we reached the settlement, it was amidst their feast. I approached, death in my gaze. Keef was shocked and angry. The diggers and gatherers were quick to his defense; I guess he bribed them. I whistled, and the hounds slinked through the fur to my side. We struck like a lightning bolt. My fist smashed into Keef's face just as my hounds pounced upon his closest guards. Though I was physically weak, I was quite fast. I stole a shovel and quickly buried it into Keef's bloat while he was disoriented. The smell was sickening, as I expected from a man like him. The hounds made quick work of the rest. I helped, of course. None were spared. I made sure I had my vengeance upon Gar. The hounds were quite full by the end. I took my time and buried each corpse (or what was left of them). I leave this book upon their graves in the hopes that someone who can understand it finds it. If you do, take heed of these words. The Dogscape knows all, and is strict but fair. She provides justice where justice is due.

Log Three

The stream trickled warmly past the black leathery edges of the puppy mouth stream. The saliva waters churned as they flowed from the bed of the stream lined with the ever-lapping tongues of eager greeting puppies.
To feel a rock on the shore is to find sharp milk teeth of weaned dogs, cast to the tufts of mange weeds growing into spits and bank.
The head of the stream is split by a single mound of golden fur. Like an upholstered boulder set with a large golden eye that swerves to see passing visitors. The waters will bubble and froth should the eye see you.
The tongues lapping nervous loving greetings with gurgled yips.

Log Two

I dug down once. Down beneath the dogs. Beneath the hair and the ears and the barking. It was hard, and took a lot of planning - I had to destroy one of the dogtrees with my hands, rip out the twisted, yards-long communal spines that served them as branches and lash them together with tendons and skin. But soon I had tools - pitchforks, spears, shovels. I picked a spot where the dogfloor seemed shallower and set to work.

The blood started spurting when my spear first broke the surface, and didn't stop for hours and hours and hours. I was drenched in gore and viscera, covered in flecks of bone and meat and brain. But I learned to ignore the sickening squelching sounds, ward off the smell, and just kept going deeper and deeper, spearing and levering out dogs of stranger and stranger size and build, dogs with two heads, dogs with human hands, and dogs with writhing tentacles where their back legs should be

Eventually I came to the end of the dogs. Or perhaps the beginning of whatever lies beyond dogs. An expanse of multicolored, patchwork fur that extended as far as I could dig in any direction. I could pierce it with great difficulty but it barely bled, and try as I might I could only barely peel the skin away, revealing a layer of striated grayish muscle beneath. It started to tremble as I watched it, shaking the very dogmatter around me, and I realized that the dogscape was beginning to regenerate itself, close in over me, seal me in - so I fled, climbing back up into the light.

Log One

I awaken. I don't know it at the moment, but this day marks my fourth straight year of existing in the dogscape. I push myself up from the carpet of writhing, twitching dogflesh beneath me and rise to my feet, stretching in the morning sun. It took me a while to learn to balance on the layer of solid dogs that now blankets every inch of solid ground, but nowadays I can walk and run as easily and as fast as I ever did on soil or concrete. Perhaps faster.

This was a city once, I think, though which one I can't remember. I only owe my guess to the massive pillars of dogs jutting into the sky, perhaps ancient buildings now completely filled and overgrown by canine biomaterial. I climbed one once, sinking my fingers and toes deep into the dogwall to gain purchase, and after hours and hours of climbing was rewarded with an incredible vista - fur and eyes, panting tongues and wagging tails, hugging the contours of the once-barren land and stretching in a single amoebic mass farther than the eye can see.

Now I don't do that, though. Now I merely go about my day. I hike to the Gardens, where the dogplants sprout up in bizarre shapes from the floor of the dogscape, and reach up to pluck the fetal puppyfruits right off the wagging, energetic branches. I bite into the succulent flesh, the juices dribbling down my chin and dripping down to be reabsorbed by the groundflesh, and revel in the savory taste. I’m thirsty, so I range until I find one of the Mothermounds, and there I suckle at a teatpatch until I’ve had my fill of milk. Sometimes I see other humans around me, as well-adapted to the dogscape as I am, but I barely acknowledge them, say nothing. What, after all, is there to say? The world is different now - what meaning would our old words have?

Free-ranging dogs are becoming rarer and rarer to see now, and those I do see seem as lost, as passive as I am. They too graze on the dogplants, step carefully over the undulating, bleeding dogfloor, and dimly acknowledge myself and one another. In the distant sky, and on the far horizon, I sometimes see massive forms sail or crawl or undulate, and I wonder if in this new world normal, singular, ambulatory dogs have become as obsolete as I am.