Denisse's TV blasted the news, she hadn't moved a foot outside her apartment, and the news seemed to indicate no one had. She saw the events be reported as if in a trance.
"The world is going mad, what is going on?" she thought to herself.
The reporters were crying, some shaking, some unable to describe events coherently, but nonetheless talking about the same thing: animals gone crazy and millions, millions dead.
Mostly newborn babies. Everywhere, rich and poor alike, around the world.
She heard about Japanese whalers attacked and sunk by whales, afterwards being circled by them as if they were sharks, and of men swallowed whole. The Greenpeace boats nearby were not spared. She saw the bodies of babies bloodied by cat, pecked at in the eyes by parakeets, taken out of their mothers' arms by dogs and shaken to death in their jaws.
She saw bulls handlers stomped to death. Zoo keepers mauled and thrown around as rags, long after their death, for apparent entertainment. Everywhere, the same story.
News clips played in loop of a mass killing here, a multitude of mourners there. It was until they were all formed in front of the UN building that the stations started switching their attention to New York.
A group of animals stood defiantly and without opposition in front of the UN Headquarters, and were now splitting in two groups. In the middle, a woman walked forward with a chimpanzee in each hand.
"This is nuts. Good god, this is nuts. What the hell is going on?"
The hair on the back of her neck rose -- someone was intently looking at her from behind.
She nervously turned around to find nothing unusual with her apartment.
Then, she looked down.
Yakko was sitting, looking at her directly in the eyes. Not as her trusty dog waiting for food, but as if he waited for her to finish her news update.
Then, he barked. She was sure he barked, because she heard it. But inside her skull, the bark reverberated into a clear and precise message. Almost authoritative, as if their roles had always been reversed.
"Sit down," he said firmly. "We need to talk."