Paradise Lost

Joan had lived in the cottage for as long as she could remember. 

Each morning she’d wake up to the pink sun streaming through her window, the soft curtains that framed it billowing in the sea breeze. She’d stand, stretch, grab coffee, and lounge on her porch for a majority of the morning until Evelyn woke up. Then Evelyn would join her, pressing her lips gently to the apple of Joan’s cheek, and smile softly in a way that caught the light of the sun just right. 

They’d walk hand in hand on the beach, pressing their toes firmly into the sand so as not to be taken away by the ocean’s waves. Evelyn would always screech if the cold water reached far enough up the beach to touch her, yelping at the frigid temperature of the water. She would try to dance away, but laughing, Joan would pull her in closer. 

Each evening, as the stars winked at them from the midnight sky, Joan would stoke the campfire outside while Evelyn cooked their dinner. Through the always-open windows, Joan could hear her humming. The melody was always familiar, yet Joan could never quite place her finger on it. She never bothered to ask. They would sit together under the stars, limbs tangled up in one another, getting drunk off of happiness. 

Joan couldn’t remember a ‘before,’ but that didn’t matter. Evelyn was all that she needed; she was the crisp smell of the ocean, the sustenance that quelled her hunger, the calm within a storm. It didn’t bother Joan that she couldn’t remember having a family; Evelyn had never asked. She understood what a bad past could look like. It didn’t bother Joan that she couldn’t remember where she went to school — if she went to school. Every time she looked troubled, her brow furrowed and her eyes foggy, Evelyn just smiled, asking, “Hey, where’d those dimples disappear to?” and Joan would forget what she was upset about. 

But for the past few mornings, something was wrong. 

Joan would wake up to the screeching of seagulls outside her window; where before the light streaming in was soft and pink, it now blinded her. The ocean’s briny scent now burned her nose. The dinners that Joan once cherished now soured on her tongue. When Evelyn would ask after her dimples, Joan would want nothing more than to shrug her away. As they laid down together in bed each night, once a puzzle that fit perfectly together, Joan would turn her back to Evelyn without a word. 

She blamed the man. Usually, Joan didn’t dream — at least, when she woke up she never remembered them. Recently, however, she kept seeing the same man’s face. He was handsome enough, she supposed. He had warm eyes, marked with smile lines. In her dreams, though, he wore an expression of concern. His brow furrowed in the same way Joan’s did, the frown beneath his beard mirrored the one she put on when deep in thought. He never spoke, just stared at her, but Joan felt like she was missing a message. A sign. 

She started spending her days away from Evelyn, choosing instead to linger in the cottage. There was something at the heart of it that was pulling to her. When she thought to repress the feeling, to go and join Evelyn on the shore, the man’s face from her dreams flooded her vision. 

Joan began to search the cottage. She realized, midway through picking up trinkets left cluttered on shelves and across tables, that she had never truly looked at where she lived. She had never deep cleaned behind doors and in crevices. The cottage simply remained pristine. 

She wasn’t sure exactly what she was looking for, or where to look. She started at the front of the cottage, by the kitchen. As she rattled through the mugs in the cabinet, her gaze drifted to Evelyn out by the beach. Even without Joan by her side, Evelyn still screeched at the chill of the ocean water, still danced away from its grasp. Joan tore her gaze from the window. 

By nightfall, Joan still didn’t have a clue as to what she was searching for, aside from the man’s face in her mind urging her to look for something, anything. She allowed Evelyn to hold her that night, and though her mind was far away, she still took comfort in the warmth and familiarity of Evelyn’s embrace. 

The days continued on like that — Evelyn would steal herself away to the outside, away from their home, while Joan, unrelenting, scoured the cottage for something of significance. Six days after her search began, she found what she was looking for. 

She had spent that sixth morning in the back of the cottage, down past the front hallway by their storage closets. After searching each room in the days before, Joan had resorted to checking door frames, baseboards, even cracks of paint on the walls. As she fumbled with the floor, hardwood planks that were only slightly warped after years of wet feet treading across them, one of the boards shifted. It was the faintest of movements, the tiniest of sounds, but Joan gasped nonetheless. She tugged harder at the edge of the board. It came loose from its frame without so much as a protest. 

Faster now, Joan dug at the surrounding boards, each one of them telling a similar story. She pulled and dragged each of the planks off of the floor, revealing, where there should be a subfloor, an empty space of darkness. 

Joan sat back on her heels and looked at the mess in front of her. Strips of wood lay scattered around, surrounding a hole in the floor big enough for Joan to stand in. She sat staring at the darkness for what felt like several hours, contemplating her next move. Then, resolutely, she ran to the kitchen, its contents still dispersed throughout the room, grabbed a flashlight she had misplaced many years ago, and returned to the opening. 

She shined the light down into the hole. About six feet down, maybe a little further, was the concrete subfloor. The room below the floor appeared to be quite small; in the corner, the light reflected off a shiny black box. Joan could practically see the man’s face in her mind now, nodding eagerly. Her search was over. 

Flashlight in her mouth, Joan began to slowly lower herself down into the opening. She kicked her legs and pointed her toes, trying to make contact with the ground, but she couldn’t reach. With only her elbows supporting her body weight, Joan took a deep breath before freefalling.

The drop was less severe than her mind had anticipated, but she still took a moment to steady herself. After catching her breath, she took the light from her mouth and located the black box she had seen earlier.

“Joan? Honey? Where’d you go?” Evelyn called from what sounded like the entrance to the house. 

Joan didn’t answer. 

She bent down to the black box — a safe. Unlike most safes, though, this one had no keypad or combination lock. It was bare on the outside aside from a handle, already poised to open. 

“Joan? I’m making tacos tonight! Are you here?” Evelyn’s voice seemed more distant to Joan now, her focus devoted to this safe. It seemed eerily familiar in the way that Evelyn did sometimes. Cautiously, she reached out to turn the handle.

Nothing jumped out from the safe to attack her, no poisonous gas released into the air to suffocate her. The safe was empty, save two objects: a small, wooden placard and a metallic square no larger than Joan’s thumbnail. 

She picked up the placard first. Burnt into the wood was the image of two figures standing with a tree in between them. Their hands were intertwined, and between them, coiled around the tree, was a snake. The back of the placard read “the forbidden fruit.”

The metallic square, on the other hand, had no notable markings, yet as Joan picked it up, she felt an internal buzzing begin. She held it up before her flashlight, rotated it, let the light attack it from all sides, but nothing stood out. The sound of Evelyn’s voice still calling for her echoed briefly in Joan’s mind, but she wiped her concern away without a second thought. Evelyn’s voice died out as Joan’s vision flooded with images of the man’s face again — with memories. 

Her hands moving seemingly of their own accord, she reached up towards her face with the square pinched firmly between two fingers. She delicately swept her long brown hair away from the back of her neck. Without knowing why, Joan placed the square at the top of her spine. 

Joan shot away from the safe, pain racing throughout her body. She screamed as her vision went white, and clawed at the square, which was now firmly stuck to her skin. 

The pain did not fade as Joan’s memories returned to her. She relived the moment she and Derrick, her husband, the man that had been haunting her dreams, had presented their idea for a memory chip to the Board of Ethics — she relived their approval of her chip that would store memories in a physical place within one’s subconscious, a place one could visit at any moment. She relived the production of memory chips, the initial endless rounds of experiments and laboratory tests. She relived the product’s debut, relived the presentation of her and Derrick’s database to the anticipatory crowd. She relived the backlash, the questions about what could go wrong, the doubts about what would go wrong. She relived the arguments she and Derrick had, the decision to experiment on herself, to find out what would happen if a memory chip was forcibly removed. 

More than anything else, she relived the gentle touch of Evelyn’s hands, the loving sweep of her fingers across Joan’s skin on the nights where neither of them could sleep. The endless years spent together. The way Evelyn said her name, kissed her shoulders, knew just what to say when Joan was feeling down. The way she smiled. The way her eyes lit up when she saw Joan. 

When Joan regained consciousness, she was still screaming. Her vision was still a blinding white, her eyes trained on the hot glare of the hospital lights above her bed. Before she could react, she felt a heavy pressure pushing down on her, smelled the warm scent of cloves and orange leaves — Derrick. His dark beard scratched against her face, his tears spilled into her mouth, tasting of the ocean she had left behind. 

“Joan,” he cried, “my Joan, oh my Joan, you came back to me.”

He pulled Joan up in her hospital bed, still holding tight in his embrace. When he finally pulled away, Joan saw just how the tears spilled down his cheeks, how puffy his eyes were too. 

She offered a weak smile. Thinking of Evelyn, she let her own tears fall.