“A Hostile Environment” by Charles Lambert is a perfect-bound chapbook published exclusively for Brian James Freeman’s Patreon supporters in June 2026 as part of Lividian Story Box: Volume One. This Limited Edition one-time printing features a full-color front cover, inside cover, and interior illustrations by François Vaillancourt.

Excerpt from the Chapbook:
The barking wakes him at quarter to six. He lies there, trying to block the noise, but it’s incessant, monotone, the same grating syllable endlessly repeated. He tries to transform the sound into something else, an aid to sleep, a chant, some wished-for ambient music but the bark cuts through to the innermost part of him, refuses to let him be. He puts his head under the pillow, but that only accentuates the noise, or his denial of it. He tries to appropriate it, to go with the flow. When it stops, he finds himself fighting back tears of gratitude. And then it starts again.

This happens day after day, beginning at some point between half past five and six, continuing until mid-morning. There are pauses, certainly. Even dogs must eat and drink, he supposes, gritting his teeth. But they only add to the suffering as he waits for the dog to resume its infernal wail. That’s what it sounds like, a single long-drawn-out wail broken down into just manageable fragments, arranged like notes along a line, with the silence between each note as integral to the piece as the bark itself so that what he hears seems uninterrupted.

The day this story begins, he gets up after half an hour, dresses slowly, sighing with exasperation when he finds his fingers buttoning his shirt in time to the dog. He stands by the window as soon as he’s dressed, concealed by the folds of the drawn-back curtain, reaches around to open it a little, not too much because who knows who might be out there watching, and tries to work out where the barking is coming from. The sound plays tricks on him. Sometimes it seems to originate from directly above, sometimes swerve down from the side. He imagines the dog moving around, reproducing, spawning smaller dogs, each as insistent as the first, and shudders. It isn’t a thought to be borne. He wishes he could control his thoughts more effectively sometimes; they play with him, take him to hostile places, betray his trust too often. And then there is the possibility of an echo to be taken into account, he thinks. He pulls on his shoes, elastic sided, he hasn’t bought shoes with laces for decades now, and walks along the hall to the door. He walks as quietly as he can, he doesn’t want to spur the dog on or let it know what he’s doing. Besides, he hates noise, always has…

Publication Format:
This Patreon supporter exclusive chapbook is perfect bound, printed entirely in full-color, and signed by Charles Lambert and François Vaillancourt. Limited to a print run of 600 copies. Shipped with the other chapbooks in Lividian Story Box: Volume One.