Ante Mortem Read Free Page B

story told, wanted people to know about Evergreen’s destruction of a historical site and the attempted cover up. He wanted somehow to tell the world about the impossibility of what happened to Anne, the nurse, and that little girl. No one would believe that story, but he could at least blow the whistle on Evergreen’s fraud. After packing the letter, Jarrod’s emails, and the pictures in a large envelope, Isaac walked to the post office and sent it all away.
    But he couldn’t send Anne away. She was out there, yanked down by those tiny fingers.
    Anne.
    Isaac sat at his computer and watched the video one last time before deleting the file. He leaned on his hands and cried until his body ached. Utterly spent, he floated to his bed like a ghost, collapsed, and fell asleep.
    He slept most of the afternoon. As the sun slipped beyond the horizon and his room darkened, Isaac rose, put on his shoes, and grabbed his jacket and the small jewelry box resting in a desk drawer. He left the apartment, not bothering to lock the door, and walked into the night.
     
    The playground looked the same as it had on other evenings: a wide, pale expanse washed with an odd orange light under the streetlamps. Isaac stood on the sidewalk for a minute, opened the little jewelry box, and pulled out the ring. He turned it over in his naked fingers, the cold air biting at his skin. Isaac walked out into the middle of the concrete slab, sat down approximately where he watched Anne slip under the surface, and waited for the tiny fingers to find him and pull him down.
     
     
     
    * * * *
     
     
    The Good Friend
    Natalie L. Sin
     
     
    Hyun tried sleeping on the couch but Joon’s rhythmic moaning, along with the Vietnamese woman’s more frantic pitches, made it impossible. Resigned to a late night, Hyun slipped into a pair of house shoes and padded out onto the deck. The resort Joon chose for their vacation, a graduation gift from his father, was the sort of place most traveler’s could only dream of enjoying. Set in a secluded patch of forest in Vietnam, the rooms consisted of twelve luxury cabins encircling a private lake. Each cabin had a sitting room and small kitchen, in addition to the bedroom, and a deck overlooking the water.
    Joon and Hyun’s cabin had two full beds, with the understanding that if either guy brought home a girl the other would take the couch. As Hyun sat down and dipped his feet into the lake, he reflected that Joon would likely not be spending any nights contorted on narrow cushions.
    “ Aren’t you afraid of a turtle biting your toes?”
    Hyun was startled to find he had company. In the cabin to his left, a woman regarded him from her hammock. He thought she must have just woken up: Her long, dark blond hair fell in all directions across her shoulders and face. She pushed the worst of it away from her eyes and warned him again about turtles.
    “ Seriously, your toes probably look like little fish to them.”
    Though not convinced his feet were in peril, Hyun stood up and waved shyly to the woman.
    “ That’s better. I’m Mai, by the way.”
    “ Hyun.”
    Back in the cabin, Joon began to roar dirty talk in Korean. Mai cocked her head.
    “ Wow. Your friend is having a good time.”
    Hyun felt himself turn red. “I’m sorry. He met a girl and…”
    “ Don’t worry about it.”
    Mai swung her legs over the edge of her hammock. Her first few steps were wobbly, and for the first time Hyun noticed the wine bottle in her hand.
    “ I had a roommate in college like that. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and hear her telling some frat boy she was a bad girl and needed a spanking. Traumatized me for life.”
    “ You are lucky you don’t speak Korean.”
    Mai smiled. “Want to come over here? We can have wine and wait for your friend to wear himself out.”
    Hyun hesitated. He didn’t want to disappear on Joon, assuming he ever emerged from the bedroom. Then again, he would probably fall asleep as soon as the