On rare occasions it bribes me with food, letting me have a small bite of its meal, a bit that I wish I could savor for eternity. 

Most of my days are filled with silence, with the the exception of the deafening sound of the mouth’s chewing. I never get visitors, but I’m thankful for that. It means that the mouth doesn’t even get a chance to harm anyone but me. 

It take me a minute to truly comprehend what I’m hearing. There’s a voice, squeaky and loud, struggling to get my attention. “Fujiko-san3!” The voice hollers from somewhere outside my home.“My mom wanted me to check in on you. She’s worried about you because you haven’t bough rice from us in a while. Are you feeling alright? Are you ill?” 

I bite my lip until it bleeds, a scarlet droplet splatters across the floor as I resist the urge to respond. Perhaps if I don’t respond the child will go away... To my horror, the other mouth mimics my voice, “I’m fine, I’ve just been tired lately. Would you like to come in and have some tea? Perhaps we can even enjoy a snack together...” 

My mind spins wildly and my heart beats rapidly as I come to a shocking realization. There is no food left, the mouth ate the last of it earlier this morning. The mouth must be planning to eat the child... I must stop it! But how? It would be a lot less powerful if it couldn’t use my hair to make me into a puppet...

In one swift motion, I grab the samurai sword that I have kept for decorative purposes and wildly cut random chunks of my hair off. The mouth twitches, trying to refrain from screeching in outrange and scaring the child away. 

The footsteps from earlier come to an abrupt halt. The child must be able to see me now, to see me for the monster that I am. “They were right,” the child wails, and I don’t have the courage to meet the child’s gaze. “You are a futakuchi-onna, a monster.” A mixture of hair and tears is scattered across the floor, covering it like a strange carpet. Despite the fact that at least half of my hair has been cut off, the mouth lashes out, having a thick strand coil around my left arm, the arm in which I’m holding the old, but sharp samurai sword. 

“Run, I beg of you!” I plead, my faint cry now turning into a full blown sob. “Run and never come back!” The child flees in a flurry of rapid footsteps, footsteps that sound like receding thunder. Unable to contain its rage any longer, the mouth emits one ear piercing scream as I try to free my left arm of its unrelenting grasp. Frustrated and desperate, I use my free arm to rip out my remaining hair, emitting my own ear piercing scream. My head throbs, and feels cold with only short chunks covering it. “You are powerless now!” I yell gleefully, before falling to my knees. “The day we first talked,” I add, reducing my voice to a whisper. “When I woke to see blood both on the floor and on myself, you killed someone, didn’t you? You were hungry, and there was no food, so you...” such solemn talk would make me visibly upset, but I’m too tired to cry anymore. 

The mouth snickers, amused by the fact that it took me so long to realize what really happened. “If you want to visit him, or what’s left of him, I buried him under the cherry tree in your garden,” the mouth sneers. “You should’ve seen the look on his face... His eyes wide with shock, brightly glowing with the the grime realization that he was going to die..” 

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3 in this case, think of -san as Ms. or Mrs.                                                                              page 2