DOG DAYS, at his master's beck and call.

CHAPTER ONE: "PRE-REHABILITATION", the life that death begat.

     Dusky. If it is a word, it describes the insufferable light here. The light that's not quite bright but not exceptionally dim. That comfortable degree of light one would keep in their house, only it's outside, and it's for all day apart from the furthest hours into the night.

    It must be due to the dust. Dust clouds cloak the sky, if not the world itself, it seems. And dust clouds don't let rain fall, or let the calming sound of thunder beckon in the sky. The dust clouds will bring storms, though, but a more unpleasant variety.

    Below the dust was the dirt. The dirt and dying plants and grass that find their home near here. The dirt that piles itself up until it forms plateaus. Plateaus that surround this town on two sides.

    This town. Buildings no one would have built here being of their right mind. Not only buildings, but roads snake around the place. Without these buildings and roads, there would be no town, so they are more or less to blame. They were all made in the 1950's, and you could see the resemblence. Roadside stores, city halls, and the faded yellow and blue paint on the houses in the suburbs. The buildings weren't so close together like some colonial village, but not so far apart that one could go an entire day without seeing another person.

    That made the town very personal, in the sense that everyone knew that there were other people there, living near them. Walking down a street, one would see them; keeping to themselves, tending there wares and livelihood, or just sitting and waiting for the dust to kill and bury them in one fell swoop. Seeing these streets would dry your mouth alone, but that's where these people made their homes.

    However, one can hear a diversity of life if they listened up on the streets, especially at dawn. Coyotes barking and howling, cats fighting, crows cawing, buzzards picking at meat, and old radios fizzing out. There aren't any stations, but the white noise would drown out the other sounds.

    There were no prisons, as there were no criminals, as there were no laws. There was a judge at city hall who, when approached, would take the various cases to decide the fates of wrong-doers. The judge was never approached. No one ever stirred in a town of less than three hundred.

    One would think a town like this would shrivel and starve. Unfortunately for its inhabitants, it made due. People would find game in hare and coyote if they needed to, and there was plenty of sour cactus fruit. Everything rather than that was shipped into town, but that seems rather normal of most modern towns. The town got the money for these shipments through oil. Dead in every other way, the land was rich with oil. Rigs took one leveled off area of the outskirts and were all connected to the refinery at the edge of town. The only reason this wasn't some booming city was the location and atmosphere. Of course no one would live in this desert, but this is a desert shrouded in dust, which is even less appealing. So it may not have been a true-blue desert, but it was no less miserable. And it did not give the pleasures of a quick dehydration death that deserts so generously deal. Thanks to the skinny river that ran through the east part of town, there was a ready supply of polluted water.

    There are no street names, nor house numbers. The town's name is Fellow Cliffs, so in order to get one's mail, one would go to the Fellow Cliffs Post Office and pick it up. It is a moot point, however, because no one pays taxes, there are no newspapers, no loved ones that would reach the town. The town sold its oil via cargo truck once every two weeks. But the town recieved no money. See, the cargo trucks came filled with produce, medicine, and various other staple. It left with a tankard of oil. That's how the system worked. The supplies it brought were evenly distributed to the townsfolk, or to the stores that could divi them out for themselves. It is pure, filthy socialism.

    In one house was a young man, Andrew, and he, like most men in Fellow Cliffs, worked at the oil refinery, unfortunately. He had a stout build, short hair, and was ugly as all outdoors. Not in the sense that he was born ugly, but the years of working in industrial facilities and breathing in dust and sleeping four hours a day had taken there toll. He was a cautious boy, always keeping an eye on the corner of his eyes.