Abi Suzuki was losing her mind.

She had unplugged the television. She knew that she had unplugged it. She was holding the cord in her hand. It was there. She squeezed it, the progs dug into the palm of her hand. She didn't know what she was supposed to do with it. She didn't know if she was supposed to plug it back in or not. The television…it had been expensive, as Yoshio loved to take the time to remind her, and if he came home and found it unplugged then he was, of course, going to complain.

That was insane…and not just because Yoshio hadn't come home before midnight in weeks.

She held the cord in her hand…but the television was still on. She could see it. She could hear it. Some ad for ramen…huh, they made spicy flavor now. She could see it. One of those commercials where the people were always way too happy for cheap, dehydrated, noodles…though it was convenient…and she was tired of slicing fish…Yoshio had the car but she could walk…

She needed to get out of the house.

She needed to leave. The television was on but it was unplugged. She'd seen this before, with a radio. That movie…she didn't even know the title. Some late night movie…a radio was maybe more frightening than a television. Hearing voices and not knowing where they were coming from…was that the next step? She had clearly lost her mind. She was clearly going to end up in some kind of asylum…she was going to raise Touichirou in a padded room…

That baby was going to put her in a padded room.

He was crying. He liked the ads…anything with music. He banged both of his hands against the glass…he was just crying…why? What, did he think she knew what was going on? She didn't…she should have known what was going on. She was his mother and she needed to…to…she was not a bad mother! Just because she didn't know what was going on didn't mean that she was a bad mother!

How dare he think that about her!

"I am doing my best, Touichirou! You're just going to have to wait!" said Abigail. She ran a hand through her hair…great. Now curls were ruined on top of everything else…and he was still crying. He had to cry…he was a baby and he had to cry…but he didn't have to cry so much! He should have been fine. She'd just fed him and changed him. She had just been trying…she had just wanted to listen to the radio. That was all. She had just wanted to listen to her stories and unwind for a minute before she had to put him down for his nap. All she had asked of him, the one thing that she had asked him to do, was to play on the floor with his toys. That was all.

He was old enough to understand her.

He should have been. He was crawling, now, and he came when he was called. So he knew what she was saying. So he knew when she needed him to just…just sit on the floor and play with his toys. She had even gotten him a new rocket ship. This one was made of plastic. Maybe he was going to be less likely to poke himself with this one…she had asked him to play carefully too…she had asked so much of him…and he never listened to her.

Or maybe she was just going crazy.

"I'm sorry, Touichirou, Mommy's just…she's just losing her mind." Said Abigail. She couldn't think. Between Touichirou's crying and the blaring television she just…she couldn't think! She needed….she turned the TV off. She turned the knob…and it came off. It came right off. It just…she couldn't deal with this right now!

She threw the knob.

It her wedding picture. She had no idea how she would have explained it to Yoshio if it broke…she had no idea how she was going to explain a broken television to him. A twenty four inch color television…she had no idea how she was supposed to explain that. She had no idea how she was supposed to explain…to explain why she had…why…

Why the TV turned back on.

Touichirou slapped the screen again…and on it went. Some cartoon thing with a giant robot. Touichirou immediately stopped crying and sat down. He watched TV. She had no idea how much of the plot he could follow. She was lost. There was a cat and a bird and a robot and now a giant robot and a Godzilla bird…Touichirou was eating it up. He was sitting right in front of the set…she needed to…to move him away from the set before he went blind.

That was what a good mother did.

"Come on…come on, Touichirou." Said Abigail. She said it in English…she couldn't remember her Japanese right now…she hardly used it. Who did she speak to during the day? Her husband? He left the house at five and came home, if she was lucky, at ten. If she wasn't it was midnight or later…if at all. He had the car. He could have left whenever he wanted to…he didn't have to take his men out drinking every single night…and he had no right to get angry if she spoke to the baby in English…it wasn't like she had anyone to speak to…

Isolation drove people insane.

That was why it was considered cruel and unusual. Everyone knew that. How could…how could she have not lost her mind at this point? She was isolated from the world in this house. Only her and the baby…her work, if it could even have been called that, bearing no fruit. No one to talk to and nothing to do…nothing to do but deal with Touichirou and his crying….his constant crying…just her and the baby. Nobody to visit…nobody even called.

How was she even supposed to hear the phone?

The volume on the television got louder…Touichirou was banging his little hands against the glass. She knob was turning on it's own. She…she was losing her mind and…and she just…she had to go. She had to leave. She had to…she didn't know where she could even go. Downtown? To see Yoshio…he would have hated that…and Touichirou hated riding the bus. She wasn't going to be able to walk all the way downtown from the Saffron district. Even if she wore her walking shoes…Touichirou would have hated it…he was getting himself all worked up again…Yoshio didn't even want to see her in the first place…

Where else could she go?

She didn't know anyone else. All of her classmates had gone back home by now…and she hadn't had many friends anyway…and the ones she'd had were selfish anyway. She didn't have anyone else. The only other person she knew was Yoshio's father and that would have gone over about as well as a led balloon.

Or her checking herself into an insane asylum.

She didn't know anyone and she had nowhere to go. Who could she even tell? That she thought that the house was haunted. Ghosts…she was not seeing ghosts again…and she had never seen any ghosts in the first place. She'd just stayed up to watch the late show one too many times and ideas had gotten stuck in her head. There was no such thing as ghosts.

She wasn't crazy.

'They'll send you upstate.'

' They'll put you in an electroshock machine.'

'They'll lock you in a padded room for the rest of your life'

She could hear her parents' voices in her head. She wasn't crazy. She was normal and…and the TV was just broken or…or maybe she had broken it worse than she had thought or…or maybe…or maybe she was just tired. That…that was it. She was tired and the isolation was messing with her head. She laid down. Touichirou was fine.

She just needed a nap.

She closed her eyes. She didn't know how long she'd had them closed for before she was forced to open them again. Touichirou was crying again…the shadows had gotten longer. Cartoons were over. It was some live action thing where everyone acted like they were more excited to be there than any human being had ever been excited for anything before. She stretched. She had to get up now. He needed to sleep. He'd missed his nap…she leaned down and picked him up. He needed a change. He needed her.

He needed his mother.

She got up. She couldn't just stop…she'd laid down for long enough. Touichirou needed her. He was always so needy…but he was a baby. She stood up and held him close. He grabbed a handful of her hair. She pulled it out of his little hands. Her curls were beyond ruined…and she'd just gotten them right, too. Not that there was a point. It wasn't like she had anywhere to go. Maybe that was the first sign of insanity, doing her hair for nobody.

For the baby to pull on.

"Stop it." Said Abigail as she pulled her hair out of Touichirou's hands. She nearly lost her balance there….she had been laying down for too long. She caught herself…but her hair got caught on something. She reached behind her head. Something was definitely tugging on her hair. She pulled her hair lose and turned around.

Nothing was there.

She walked up the stairs. There was nothing in this hallway. There was nobody in this hallway…she clutched Touichirou close. She had just been imagining that. There were no ghosts…she couldn't feel any. They'd had a feel, when she'd been a kid, like someone dropping an ice cube down her dress. She couldn't feel that now…and she hadn't been able to feel ghosts back then, either. She had just been a kid with an overly active imagination.

Touichirou was not going to be raised in a padded room.

He was going to be raised in a house with his mother who loved him. She was the one who had wanted him. She was the one who had given up everything for him. She was the one who had moved halfway across the world to be here, in this room, with him. She was his mother and she was always going to be there for him…even if he did ask a lot of her. Even if he did look at her, sometimes, like she couldn't have meant anything at all to him. Even if sometimes amazing, terrifying, things happened when he was around.

Not that he had anything to do with any of this.

The first thing she did when she entered his room was put him down on his changing table…and then she turned the TV on. Before it could turn on by it's self…before Touichirou got upset. He'd stopped crying when she'd picked him up. He wasn't crying now. She was going to keep it this way…she couldn't handle any more of his crying. The TV was on now, one of those ads he liked. One of those ads with a lot of singing…this time with people who were inhumanly happy about soda pop of all the things. What she wouldn't have given for a nice, cool, Pepsi right about now….she didn't feel like going to the store. It was too late, anyway. She had to get started on a dinner that she knew Yoshio wouldn't be home to eat. He could have left work at whatever time he'd wanted to, he was the boss, but no. He had to stay until his bosses left and if his bosses wanted to go out for drinks then he would end up going with them…and if he wanted to go out for drinks then his men would have to come out with him…it was a never ending chain of men getting drinks.

Dinner still had to be made.

She still had to eat. She had to change the baby, put him down for his nap, and then she had to make herself dinner. She unsnapped Touichirou's body suit. He kicked her. He kicked her and reached out for her hair. She pulled it behind her back…something tugged on it…she imagined something tugging on her hair. There was nothing pulling her hair, nothing at all. There was nothing…Touichirou kicked his sock off.

She picked it up.

Touichirou sent the other sock down as she crouched. It landed on her head. It landed right there…he could have just kept them on. He knew that his feet were going to get cold. He was going to cry. He was going to cry because he was a baby and that was all that he could do…but he could have had some consideration for his mother. He could have…she got up. She was going to put him down in his crib and then she was going to make dinner and she was going to have to turn that mobile off. She couldn't stand that song. She knew that she should have gone with Lullaby and Goodnight instead of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, even though it did go with the space theme bett-

-she hadn't turned the mobile on.

But there it was. It went around and around and around. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star….the planets. The sun. The little space ship. It went round and round and round…the baby was looking at it. Touichirou was trying to look past her…she didn't let him. She changed him. She changed him as quickly as she could. Then she put him down in his crib. He could sleep when he got tried. She just…she couldn't…she had to get dinner on the table. She had to get out of here.

So that was what she did.

She closed Touichirou's door and went back downstairs. She didn't know what else she could do. She could feel…she couldn't feel anything. She was just hungry. It might have been low blood sugar. It was important to keep your sugar levels up. She'd make herself some Tang…they were probably out of Tang by now. it was so hard to find here but she needed it. She needed the sugar and the vitamin C, too, that was important. Maybe it was just low vitamins.

They had tried that already.

She could almost taste them again. Big, chalky, things. Not like the little flavored things that they had now. No. They had been the size of horse pills and she'd had to take one every single day. That was what the doctor had said. She just needed more vitamins. They had stopped, the ghosts, after she'd started taking her vitamins…not that she was seeing ghosts again. She was just overly tired and…and not well.

She was fine.

She stopped off in the living room on her way to the kitchen. She picked the knob up and managed to get it back on the television. Good. One less thing to explain to Yoshio. He would have had so many questions…he would have been so pissed off. He had just gotten her this…of course she always could have cried. With her luck he would have run out and gotten her a new television right there on the spot. If the store was closed he would have just kept on shoving money through the door until they opened…he would have moved heaven and earth for her, he had said once…

He used to be so romantic.

He used to be so…there. She didn't even know if he was still romantic. She barely even knew him these days…not that she had known him that well before. Before Touichirou, before this house, before leaving home and school…she was just lonely. That was all. She was just making up things to entertain her mind because of the isolation. It wasn't like she could just go out and make a friend. Just her, here,, all day with the baby.

It was maddening.

There. The TV was fixed…she plugged it back in. She made sure that it was plugged in and she turned it on. There. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just more noise…so much noise. The noise never really stopped, did it? If she turned off the TV then the baby would start crying. If she turned it on then she had to listen to…to this. Another show, this one with constant and excessive screaming…she missed her shows. She missed Carson. She missed Lucy. She even missed Mr. Ed. She missed being able to understand what people said without having to think about it for a while. She missed being able to walk outside her door and just…just be able to say 'hi' to people. Just to be able to go to a place where she could have talked to people if she had wanted to.

She missed a lot of things.

It wasn't fair. She had done so much for him and he just…she could hear him crying again. She wished the kitchen had a door. She would have slammed it. She turned on the kitchen radio. NHK 1. Not in English but they spoke slowly enough that she could understand…and they talked about international news. Maybe something from home…she turned the tuner. Nothing that she could listen to…she went back to NHK 1. That was good enough. She had to get back to work.

Dinner for two.

One portion for her and one for the fridge…and nothing for the crying baby. He was still too little to actually eat food. He had bottles in the fridge. She didn't want to nurse him tonight. She didn't want to try. He'd asked enough from her already…all he ever did was take, take, take. She knew that he was just a baby but he could have at least been grateful. She had given everything up for him. She had stayed here for him. She had given him everything and still he asked for more…and she was always giving in….always…..

It was enough to make her lose her mind.