Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop

by Patrick Stephens

  Melanie took it and started towards the trunk, unlocking it and kneeling down to get a better view of the fuse box. Davion tiptoed near her, and Melanie, for the first time since I’d known her, looked to him for re-assurance. He nodded, and whispered that she could do it, and added, “I have faith in you.”

  Annalise then looked at me. “You and I are going to go stock up on provisions. Kayt and Lancaster - I’m going to set you two up in the den so you can keep an eye on the street in case the Belovores start coming. Davion?” Annalise stopped when he raised his hand.

  “I will keep Melanie company,” he said. “I’m sure there is much she wants to talk about.” A tinkling of something metal hit the pavement beneath the car, and Melanie picked it up just as fast as it had fallen. My vision flashed, and suddenly Melanie and I were sitting back in the cellar, with her digressing onto a topic of distrust for Davion. She’d never intended on getting this far. But then, what did she expect? I suppose, that question could have been asked by any one of us. We all expected death, but carried on because we were too afraid to ask why it hadn’t come for us.

  With a second key hidden in her palm, Annalise turned and opened the door inside. Instantly, the smell of tomato soup and garlic assaulted my senses. My eyes watered, and I craved more blueberries. Part of me hoped she’d picked some that morning and had left some on the counter, like a candy dish. Of course, the reason why I’d craved them doesn’t elude me now. Then, I tasted them in the back of my throat. But now, I can tell you what I couldn’t acknowledge then: Daniel makes the best blueberry pies I’ve ever tasted. He adds a hint of cinnamon from the Nova colony, even though the tariff on importing it is pretty expensive. Often, it tastes just as fresh as the berries picked right from Annalise’s bush.

  The smell of soup and spice pervaded the walls, but there was no garlic to be seen. Both odours carried a hint of age with them, the spicy scent of Sondranos preservatives. I’d smelled them first on the transport over here, and confused them for curry spices. I’d never found curry served on the menus, but suspected it wasn’t beyond passengers to pack their own meals. In Annalise’s home, the scent made sense. Something about it was comforting.

  The door opened into a kitchen decorated with vanilla wallpaper and a glass-side door that opened to the backyard. Annalise’s bedroom sat at the end of a hallway just shy of the door entering the kitchen. In a straight line, out of the doorway from the kitchen was her office. Six bookshelves lined the wall, with a desk fitted with a monitor of gel and hardwiring. That room turned to the left and opened into the sitting room, where the bay windows opened to the street. Inside was a couch set against those same windows, and a loveseat propped against the opposite wall. The vanilla colouring stretched the entire interior. Hardwood panels acted as crown moulding against the carpet and ceiling. It amazed me that, in such strange and hostile territory, I could still feel comfortable within her house. With what I’d learn later, it also surprised me that Annalise had stuck it out there, and maintained such a homely atmosphere.

  Annalise stopped me in the kitchen, and led Kayt and Lancaster to the sitting room. There was an island as tall as my waist where she’d stopped me. Behind it was a range with an instant cooker slung above it. It had been installed within the cabinets. Below the cabinets was a countertop complete with kitchen knives, utensils and a teapot big enough for six or seven cups. At the far end was a box of letters. Most looked like bills and easily disposable electronic pads. I suppose she didn’t have to worry about paying those any more.

  I listened as Annalise slid her blinds down. I crept around the corner to see what she was doing - Annalise had twisted the bar on the blinds to close them, and fingered two small wooden cuts open on each side so that Kayt and Lancaster could look out. They both attended to their duty silently, hardly looking at each other. Annalise clapped Lancaster on the shoulder as she left. I returned to the kitchen and started fumbling through a stack of mail on the nearest table. Returning, she made a bee-line for the box of letters and pulled out a few.

  “I’m going to run into my bedroom and pick up a couple bags,” she started. Take a look at these while I’m gone. You might get a kick out of them.”

  I stammered, about to ask why, but she left before I could. I opened the first envelope, dated a couple weeks prior.

  Dear Annalise,

  With your record, we would appreciate that you do not attempt to interact with our children in any way, shape or form. If you feel the need to lecture them about your property, contact us first and we will deal with it ourselves.

  Your neighbours,

  Chase and Ashleigh Tennant

  I held back a nervous laugh.

  What had she done? I pictured her in a bathrobe standing on the threshold of her garage with a gun, yelling for the neighbouring kids to get off her lawn. I rolled my eyes and looked at the second. A seal stamped in green ink had faded to unrecognizability. As I read, the attempt at looking not-as-serious as government letters was laughable.

  Annalisa Davenport,

  We, the Homeowners Association of Covenant Street, would first like to thank you for your service in last week’s picnic. We are sure everyone enjoyed listening to you talk about your job and status as a citizen of Sondranos in a different light. I personally enjoyed the strawberry rhubarb pie you brought, and was disappointed to see that there was only one.

  This letter, however, is to inform you – again – that the maintenance on your garage door is lacking. Your neighbours can hear the squealing and scratching from inside their own homes. As you might expect, this can be a problem due to the ever increasingly pleasant weather we have been experiencing this fall. While this may be a trivial concern, we believe that it would be the first step in declining maintenance. This letter is in no way a formal inquisition; however, I did feel it my personal duty to contact you before it had to come to that. I am certain you recall the incident of Miss Erikson three years ago. There is no excuse. We appreciate your presence here. If you fail to comply, we cannot allow your home to fall victim to lazy maintenance.

  If the situation is not rectified within two weeks, the Association will be forced to fine you 2500.00 for negligence, per the code of the Homeowners Association, clause 18B.

  Thank you,

  Abilene Crawford

  “That one was sent to me over a year ago. They never did get their money,” Annalise said. She’d walked in carrying two large bags made from a fabric I didn’t recognize. I laughed, but part of me felt sad to see such a notion spelled out on paper. It was an obvious attempt at trying to hurt her, and Abilene Crawford seemed to have written it guilt free. I hoped I didn’t have to meet that woman. She reminded me of Daniel’s mother.

  “Look at this one,” Annalise said, pointing to a small notecard at the bottom of the pile she’d given me. It had been mailed in an envelope twice its size. “It’s my favourite.”

  We don’t want convicts here. Leave.

  There was no signature with that last one. Annalise knew who it belonged to all the same. “Rachel Sell – the most bigoted, homophobic, racist woman I’ve ever met. She’ll tell you anything to avoid confrontation and then do anything to make sure you know what she really thinks. God, this must be driving her crazy.” She leaned in to look at the note. “I hope you never have to meet a woman like her.”

  “Why is that?” I grinned.

  “Well, unless you like hearing about Alpha Xi Delta and her frat boy exploits for hours and never getting deeper in subject than how cold it is outside, then go for it. But really, it took her months to discover her cat had a penis. Still not as bad as the Fuson family though.”

  “Why is that important?”

  “She’s a biology teacher at the local high school.” Annalise balanced on the balls of her heels, as if touting some unknown victory. “She left it thinking I wouldn’t know who it was. I watched her put it in the mailbox. But that’s not the point. Rachel Sell might be a worthless human being, but that’s because she
has nothing to think with. No redeeming qualities. Abilene had the courage to at least sign hers.”

  “Who is she again?”

  Her face twisted into mock horror and fear, “The head of the Homeowner’s Association.”

  “What did they hope to accomplish with this?”

  “They don’t want me here,” she said. “All registered criminals are supposed to identify themselves within forty-eight hours of moving in. I had to go door to door telling them what I’d done, and who I was. Fortunately, I’d recorded it for the parole chip – so when some of the neighbours tried to lie and say I’d never informed them, the records were right there.”

  “Why didn’t you move?”

  “And start it all over again?” Annalise scoffed. “Why would I let someone else dictate my own life? I’ve done that more than anyone ever should. I don’t plan on doing it again.”

  “Were you innocent?”

  “God, no.”

  “I don’t understand you, Lise,” I said.

  “Judgment. We are bonded in pre-judgment, Leon. I could spot you a mile away,” Annalise sighed. “People hear about Beaumaris and I get the equivalent of a pink slip for life. People look at you and think you’re meek and quiet. If I had to, I would guess you weren’t exactly truthful about why you came. We’re better than that. We can be better than that.”

  “Daniel would say ‘we have to be better than that.’”

  “Which is why we have to stick together – just because I’ve been judged doesn’t mean I don’t care about the same things you care about,” she said, taking my hand. “And don’t think I didn’t hear you say the name Daniel. I’ll want to know more about him later. But right now…”

  A loud clattering from the garage made us turn our heads. Melanie’s voice could be heard through the door – she yelled, “Stop telling me what I can’t and can’t do, I’m not your daughter!” We listened for a moment, trying to hear what was said afterwards, but all we could make out was that she wasn’t angry – at least, not as passionately angry as she’d been when I’d first seen her in the Abbey. Davion’s low voice hummed below comprehension.

  Annalise tossed the first bag at me. “Go into the cupboard. Grab anything dry that won’t spoil if it has to sit in a car for a while.”

  “What are you getting?”

  “Dinner,” she smiled, and turned to the island. She placed her hands on top of the counter, her thumbs below the seam to where the marble met the wooden frame. She pressed and the wooden frame hummed. A sudden click and Annalise stepped back. The bottom opened up like a large drawer. It pushed out of the island and once it extruded at least two feet out, a second drawer a foot up followed suit. It only expanded to a foot. Inside were various meats, cheeses, and maybe a dozen drinks. The lights inside weren’t on, but the cold had still remained. I could feel it bleed out into the room.

  Annalise pulled out a large chuck of something wrapped in clear, viscous sheeting. She shook it a bit, and set it into the bag. Her hand hovered over the second drawer before she picked out two more packets – these were no larger than my fist – and tossed them in as well. After claiming a couple bottles of water, she pushed the top drawer closed and, before she returned to the bottom, caught me staring. She opened her eyes wide and motioned her bag at me, and nudged towards the cupboard. “It’s not like we have all day, Leon.”

  Inside the cupboard, I found what could only have been described as Annalise’s stash of sweets. Everything was loaded with processed sweetener, as Sondranos didn’t seem to have very much room in the way of sugarcane fields. Most of the sugar on the colony came from the fruit industry. I pulled out pack of chocolate and cream cookies, two boxes of lightly salted crackers, a bag of half-eaten pretzels, and three small packets of something I couldn’t recognize by the symbol on the front. Just before I grabbed a tin of nuts, I stopped. Each item weighed down my stomach as a sort of passive aggressive way of reminding myself that I was incredibly hungry.

  I tried to shake off the feeling, and found it replaced by another concer - I couldn’t resist it anymore, and casual information wasn’t cutting in.

  Those three letters she’d had me read vanished for only a second, but they came back with a kind of power I hadn’t felt in a long time. I dropped the bag and walked up to Annalise. I took her bag – politely, I’d like to think – and set it on the ground.

  She furrowed her brow and took a deep breath. “It’s that time, isn’t it?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Things have been chugging along – we’re still alive, and right now we aren’t in the best of situations. It would only make sense that now is the time you ask me why I was incarcerated.”

  “It seems like all the time is a bad time,” I said.

  “Unless you’re drunk or high,” she smiled. “I told the neighbours I was in for assault and battery. Which is true. That’s what they would have seen if they looked me up. However, the truth remains that I was in prison because I didn’t want to play in the traditional rape-survivor story. I’m not that kind of woman.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About three days after my nineteenth birthday, I was walking home from a friend’s house. I was alone, and the sun had just gone past the crater. I assumed, since it wasn’t second sunset yet, that it would be fine. Three guys came up behind me while I was passing through the Meadows.”

  “Meadows? We have something like that where I’m from,” I interrupted.

  “And do you also have grass, and roads, and air? Do you want me to tell you this or not?” She put her hand on her hip and feigned a placating, patronizing expression – her eyes were wide and she puckered her lips ever-so slightly. I could see she wanted to tell the story, only she also wanted to seem like it was nothing. I nodded, and motioned for her to continue. “Anyway, guy number one grabs at my pants; I turn around and kick him in the crotch. Guys number two and three grab my arms, so I pull loose and beat the shit out of them. One already had his dick out. Just flapping there in the wind. It was pretty obvious what they were trying to do – they were also drunk enough to give me a contact buzz. One even yelled out that I was asking for it and should just open my legs instead of playing coy. That was the guy with the flopping thing going on. So, I grabbed it, yanked – which, you have to admit is what he was looking for – and continued to beat the tar out of the rest when they tried attacking me. The whole thing was caught on security camera.”

  “Then why did you go to jail?”

  “Technicality. They never raped me. Their defense lawyers played up that they were drunk hooligans, and that I was a danger to society. Way the world works for women, who do you think got the blame? Case should have been thrown out then and there. But you know how I yanked on that guy’s dick? I kind of broke it. Doctors said I severed the muscle mass. They would have let me get off – no pun intended – if that hadn’t happened. As it stands, they successfully claimed self-defence after that move. Judge gave me a choice. Apologize and pay the medical bills for that potential rapist, or go to jail for three counts of assault with bodily injury.”

  “And you took the jail time,” I concluded.

  “Damn straight,” she said. “Nobody in their right mind asks to be raped, and nobody in their right mind would ever assume that rape is something you should just slag off.”

  Annalise then picked up the bag I’d taken from her hand and closed the bottom drawer of her refrigerator. She smiled at me. Wetness circled around the corners of her eyes, and she looked at me without a smile. “You know, I was joking about this being an appropriate time. You’re actually the only person to ask me what I did in a couple years. Nobody in this neighbourhood even knows. I’m not ashamed for standing up for myself – nobody should be that afraid of life. I just don’t much care for people who judge before they know the whole story.”

  “You’d tell them if they asked?”

  “The stupidest people I’ve ever had the misfortune of knowing once thought that
my body had a way of shutting down rape, and they tried to testify against me – even after they had all the evidence. They’ve never been in that kind of situation, so their comments were rightly ignored. But some people shouldn’t be allowed to talk in public. So, yeah, I’d tell them if they asked - that doesn’t mean they’re smart enough to get it.”

  “Never ignore the uninformed, only ignore the ones who refuse to learn.”

  “Damn straight.”

  The Belovores advanced just after four in the afternoon. I couldn’t remember when I’d landed, and yet the day was already starting to burn off. The horizon, where the clouds of Sondranos didn’t yet reach, had been a sudden blue, charged with pencil-lines of green on the distance. The neighbourhood – from an aerial view – looked like the number eight splayed out on a digital interface. The northernmost line – heading west – connected to a longer highway strip with more gridlocked suburbs, strip malls, and highway-signs leading towards Sondranos. Annalise’s home was on the centre of the bottom line, and the Belovores had landed their pods just outside the north-eastern segment. When they started their advance, they went south, where eight homes lined the outside, and two were laid within the centre of each block. There were five on the lower end, Annalise’s included, and three on the inside.

  Each home could house at least four people inside, some as many as eight. Fifteen houses, and somewhere between fifty five people, would stand in our way before the Belovores would reach Annalise’s home. We would see far less than that in the coming moments.