Free Ghosts of Infinity: and Nine More Stories of the Supernatural by Lara Saguisag, April Yap Page A

didn’t want him to think that his wife was baduy because she really wasn’t. Leah and her friends only saw it for kicks. She and her friends did a lot of stupid things which he didn’t bother to understand.
    After saying good night, Dante walked to the elevator.
    He pressed the button and waited for a few seconds. Upon hearing the chime, Dante went inside as the doors opened.
    As he went up, he thought once more about what Jimmy had told him. He was the first one on the floor. Dante looked at his watch—it was an old Omega he bought nine years ago from one of their clients who owned a watch store—and learned that it was already quarter to ten.
    “What’s with these damn people, staying up all night and refusing to come home early?” he asked himself, remembering the break-in a couple of months ago on the third floor. He recalled that it was Jimmy who was on duty at that time. He looked up at the panel of indicator lights and felt uneasy about the prospect of staying alone on a whole floor. It was simply not a good idea, especially since this was his first time to be so.
    What if something happened? A fire, for instance? Or a murderer waiting in the dark for his next victim? Or something less criminal: what if, for example, he choked on his food and barely had the time, much less the strength, to reach the intercom to call up reception? Or what if there was a ghost which roamed their halls?
    But he never believed in ghosts anyway.
    With his fingers, Dante pinched the loose flesh just above his Adam’s apple and swallowed nervously; his fingertips feeling the smooth ripple in his larynx. He didn’t want to choke to death. It was one of the worst ways to die, much like having a fatal heart attack after seeing a ghost. Although he didn’t believe in anything even vaguely supernatural, he was nonetheless disturbed by the thought of spending the whole time waiting for his wife alone in their unit, let alone the whole floor. He was mildly irritated at Jimmy for telling him that piece of utterly irrelevant information. He was the only one on the floor for the night, and so what? He could handle himself; he was a man; that was the whole point of spending a couple of hours every week in the gym.
    Usually, when he arrived, Dante would exchange courtesies with Jimmy and nothing else.
    But tonight was different.
    Tonight, they actually chewed the fat, exchanging bits of useless information about each other. It was, to him, the height of sheer irrationality. Next time Jimmy tells him something utterly insignificant, whether it was about the weather, about him being alone, about residents having illicit affairs, about his wife not coming home with him, Dante promised himself that he would tell him off. “The problem with these people is they can’t keep their mouths shut,” he said to himself, as he looked at the panel of indicator lights above, thinking once more about that break-in.
    Although there was no one hurt, he remembered that the robbers got away with everything, including the 40” TV.
    When the doors opened, he was greeted by a cold wind, almost the same kind of wind that would be entering the unit that night, through their wide-open living room window, as he was sitting alone, watching a boring tennis match on cable, waiting for his wife who would be coming from a late-night movie.
    Although the hall was well-lit, Dante didn’t slip out immediately for reasons he himself could not understand. This was the first time he was ever alone on the seventh floor, and on any floor for that matter, and therefore, he said to himself that he had to take some precautions.
    He remained in the elevator, pressed the “Door Open” button, and held it for a moment. He peered to his right, where he saw what he expected to see: a potted plant that looked like it was in dire need of watering, its leaves frayed and brown at the edges since it played the convenient ashtray for smokers like him.
    He then looked to his left and