The Burden

The copy of the book showed up in a soggy cardboard box that was left on the doorstep overnight during one of the worst storms of the year. Twenty-two books and fourteen of them had excessive water damage, the five on the bottom layer water-logged being beyond saving. 

I wish I’d wondered why somebody had been so desperate to abandon these books like a swaddled baby on the steps of a fire station. I wish I’d noticed how the book seemed to be nestled protectively directly in the middle, protected from the soaked pavement below as well as the hailing rain from above. 

I hadn’t, though admittedly I’ve never been terribly observant. That day I’d been late to work and in a lazy attempt to nudge the box inside with the toe of my sneaker, the bottom had dissolved into a papery pulp that smeared across the warped hardwood. In a fit, I’d thrown the drenched books into the dumpster around the corner and haphazardly placed the rest into the employees only area of the store. 

Three hours later, once the next employee came in, I finally got around to sorting through the titles. Primarily made up of James Patterson and spaghetti Westerns typical of an older man, I’d dismissed the box of containing anything of interest for myself or the bookstore. That’s when the title caught my eye from its discarded place underneath the table. 

“The Everlasting Pursuit of Compliance” by H. Leiberten, one-hundred and eighty-three pages of cramped, inky black writing. A book and an author that I had never heard of, the cover was a nondescript photo of a derelict shack in the woods. 

The back cover contained a singular quote:

“I am burdened by my own inability to suffer through the mundanities of life alongside my companions in this human experience.” 

A little pretentious, I thought, on my first go at the quote. Flipping through the book, I saw more of the same and shoved it in the first empty space I could find in the classics section. Even though I and most likely everyone else on the planet hadn’t heard of it, it was full of the self-gratifying, woe is me type of writing I’d come to associate with the classics. 

But standing behind the scuffed wooden counter for seven hours with my laptop open to a blank Word document, I often found Leiberten’s small book calling out to me from where I’d buried it in the shelves

Eventually the small novel wound up in the back pocket of my jeans throughout nearly every shift. I read it back to front three times, often as my cursor sat blinking at me from the remaining blank screen. 

Quotes from the book would swim up in my mind’s eye during mundane activities. Brushing my teeth in the mirror, standing in line for a coffee, scanning groceries at the self-checkout. Everyday tasks that I’d participated in without a second thought for years now felt suffocating to me. As if I was wasting my time doing the things necessary to keep myself alive. 

I became obsessed with the book, the words swimming around my mind as I tried to sleep and narrating every aspect of my day. I relentlessly searched the Internet for information about the book, Lieberten, and anyone else who seemed to be suffering the same psychosis as I was. 

H. Lieberten only exists in the context of his singular novel, and barely at that. “The Everlasting Pursuit of Compliance” won no awards, has no critic response and is only mentioned on the very fringes of the Internet, usually in conversations revolving around the fetishization of your own sadness. Lieberten’s Wikipedia page consists of one sentence about the book and his first name isn’t even public knowledge, nor is his status as alive or deceased. 

The only other mention of the book was an article from two years ago, about a man who’d attempted to kill a touring singer and had the book in his backpack. The article was more interested in drawing comparisons to Mark David Chapman than anything about the actual book. 

Brant Carlyle was his name, and the article had attached a picture taken during his arrest. With his hands cuffed behind his back, and shadowy facial hair, he’s an imposing tower of a man. Farther down in the article was a photo of his mugshot and I was unnerved to find that I recognized the sad, vacant look in his eyes. The same look I saw in the mirror as I brushed my teeth. 

I’d quickly closed out the tab and had some orange juice, with a heavy pour of vodka in an attempt to clear my mind of Brant Carlyle and the mysterious H. Lieberten. 

Waking up to a pounding headache and the unforgiving wood grain beneath me, I’m excited to see a full page of writing, something I rarely see. However, to my surprise there’s multiple full pages of writing. And none of it sounds like my voice. 

The pages are full of pessimistic ramblings, paragraphs of words that seethe with self-loathing and absorption. Reminiscent of H. Lieberten’s own words, I’m struck by the nihilistic nature of what I’ve typed. 

Highlighting the entire three pages, I’m about to press the delete key but instead let my laptop shut with a resounding thud. 

An identical thud when I close my car door behind me, intending to drive to work at the bookstore but instead driving aimlessly onto the nearest on ramp. Accompanied only by the classic rock radio station and a nimble spider slowly crawling across my dash, my car weaves through traffic and eventually off the beaten path. 

A dirt road leads me further into the woods, my hands on the steering wheel seeming to be possessed by somebody else. I couldn’t find my way back to the freeway if I wanted to. 

The road eventually ends in a circle of thick tree trunks and I abandon my car, keys left in the ignition, door open on the occasion that the tiny spider would like to leave the confines. 

I’m not sure how long I walk until I see the cabin’s chimney rising in my vision, but I regain the bounce in my step when I do. Stepping over fallen trees and clumps of poison ivy , the cabin draws nearer. 

Blink and you might’ve missed it, the sickly pale face watching from out of one of the grimy window panes. Long hair barely hanging on from the hairline that’d receded towards the very back of his head. In a past life, maybe even this life not so long ago, I would’ve been afraid of that sight. But in my current state, I feel ever drawn to that darting figure 

I walk nearer to the cabin that feels as familiar to me now as my childhood home. It had sunk further into dilapidation since it’d been photographed for the cover, part of the roof is sunken in and providing refuge to a tweeting bird and her chicks. Moss clings to the rotting wood of the exterior. Still, my feet continue forwards. 

Birdsong surrounds me and the gentle crunch of nature beneath my battered sneakers calms my fluttering nerves. I’m close enough now to set my hand on the rounded handle of the door, feeling the splintered wood attempt to sliver under my skin. The door opens with a whine, presenting to me a dark, dusty interior, the only light being the thin beam of sunlight that filters in through the dingy windows. 

A man so pale he might as well be translucent sits alone in a rocking chair, thick cobwebs hanging off of the arms and each bar of the backing. A quiet creaking echoes through the small space as the rocking chair glides back and forth on its track. The man eyes me silently, unsurprised to see the door open, yet unwilling to acknowledge the change. 

H. Lieberten finally clears his throat. 

“We were wondering when you’d join us.” 

Puzzled by the ‘we’, I swivel my eyes around the room until they land on the crouched man in the corner. His head turns to face me and despite the beard that’s grown much longer, I recognize the hollow expression of Brant Carlyle. 

My two companions in my burdened human existence.