No, after seeing his neighbor off, Insomnia felt that something was off, but he simply could not remember what it was. Everything around him seemed so normal.
"Fishing? Is fishing really that fun?" Before he could think any further, his red-haired wife twisted his ear. "Ever since you caught that voodoo-style inflatable monkey mummy doll last time, you seem to have become obsessed with it. Don't we need to talk about this?"
Scattered laughter and applause came from somewhere, but it seemed like nothing more than an illusion.
"Huh? I didn't, I'm not." Insomnia immediately denied it. For some reason, he felt terribly guilty and hurriedly hugged his wife. "I like humans, okay? I absolutely don't have any more-than-friends relationship with monkeys, I swear to God. Besides, it was an inflatable fake."
"All right, darling. I suppose that makes sense. I knew I was still more attractive than a chimpanzee."
The woman released his ear, clearly pleased with her victory. She turned and headed back into the kitchen to work on the vegetables on the cutting board, saying at the same time:
"Eldest daughter's homeroom teacher called me earlier. She did something major at school today. I think you, as her father, should talk to her."
"Oh? What major thing?"
Insomnia had just sat down in the living room. He set the construction hard hat tucked beneath his arm on the armrest of the sofa, then turned on the television with the remote.
"Did she discriminate against another transgender classmate again? Or did she spit in the school cafeteria food again? I don't think either is a big deal. They're just the growing pains of adolescence."
Mm, compared to worrying about his daughter, what he really needed after getting home from work was a bottle of ice-cold beer. That was