dollface | melanie martinez

𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭

"lucy's gone," clara hissed across the room to crybaby.

she was stood on her bed, leaning precariously out of the window as she watched her governess's long, shiny black car crawl slowly along the gravel driveway and into the distance.

"where's your papa?" replied crybaby, putting down the teddy bear she had been fiddling with.

"i don't know. not at home."

"and your mama?"
crybaby stood up.

"locked herself in the bathroom again," replied clara, hopping off her bed to join crybaby.

crybaby nodded before dropping onto her knees to clara's height; her dark eyes met the little girl's identical orbs, shining brightly.
"alright, are you ready for this?" she asked gently. "if we find anything out, there's no going back. be prepared."

"i'll be fine," clara replied firmly. "my mama is lying to me, and i wanna find out why."

crybaby nodded, then wiped a speck of dirt from clara's face and kissed her forehead before standing up and taking her hand.
"come on, baby, let's go."

the two of them crept down the dimly lit hall, pausing at the bathroom door: as expected, locked. light spilled out from the crack at the bottom of the floor onto the landing, and the muffled sound of a loud radio playing classical music could be heard.

"it's okay, she's busy," crybaby murmured to clara, sensing the child's rising anxiety.

clara nodded, and the two continued slowly down the hall to the last door, past the spiral staircase leading upstairs;

papa's office.

"is it locked?" asked crybaby quietly, as clara reached out to test the door.
the child nodded, her eyes disappointed for a moment before lighting up again excitedly.

"he keeps a spare key in the bathroom cupboard!" she informed crybaby, hurrying down the hall to the bathroom in her stockinged feet and returning a few moments later with a key triumphantly held in her little hands.

"perfect," replied crybaby, making clara's chest puff out in pride.
the woman slipped the key into the lock, twisting it as gently as she could until it clicked.

"we're in," muttered clara, nudging the door open with her small hands.

papa's office was, to say the least, well-equipped.
the walls were coated in maps of places that clara could only ever dream of. in the middle of the room was a large mahogany desk with a plush leather chair, piled high with paperwork. the floor was smooth wooden floorboards, like the majority of the rooms in their house, but the wallpaper was different to most of the other rooms.

"what exactly does your papa do for a living, clara?" crybaby asked as the door clicked shut.

clara knew her papa travelled a lot to do business in the places all over his walls, but he had never been too specific about his job. all she knew was that he was very rich;

rich enough for them to live in their big beautiful country house, and for him to have a lot of special lady friends who very interested in his money.

explaining this to crybaby was easier said than done for the little girl.
"uhm. he does money things in lots of places?"

"is that all you know?"

clara nodded.

"mmm."
crybaby provided no insight on her thoughts to clara as she approached the desk. "if i look through the papers on the desk, can you check those cabinets there?" she asked, pointing to the row of dark wooden cabinets on the opposite of the room.

"mhm."
clara began to rummage through the drawers.

as she had expected, there were a lot of important-looking documents with watermarks and swirly signatures and words too long for her to understand.

they didn't look very interesting, so clara ignored them, picking another drawer at random instead.

inside were two large files, although one was significantly bigger than the other; each had a label- the bigger one was labelled angel, and the smaller one clara.

as clara began to rummage through them, it became clear to her why angel's file was bigger than hers;
it was full of medical documents, birth certificates and photos of them, ranging from when they were newborns to their current ages.

angel was more than double the age of clara, which explained why one file was much bigger than the other.

clara sat down on the floor with both files in hand and began to leaf through them idly. they looked important, so maybe there was something important in them.

then she saw something which made her freeze.

a photo of all the family together, out on what seemed to be a picnic.
it must have been a while ago- everyone was significantly younger; papa's hair was less grey, mama's face was less lined, angel's hair was shorter and clara just looked...
smaller.

but there was something about the photo which made clara feel sick;

stood next to her, looking unsettlingly similar to herself and angel,

was a little boy

who looked

just

like

robin.

clara stared at the photo for a few moments, feeling too many emotions to possibly describe. unaware of crybaby watching her uncertainly, the little girl stood up and looked inside the drawer in which she had found the first two files.

the bottom didn't look right.

she dug her fingernails underneath it and pulled, and pulled-
until it popped off into her hands.

a false bottom.

she placed it down on the floor and felt about in the drawer.
when her hand closed around something, she lifted it out and sat back down on the floor to examine it in the moonlight.

it was a file

labelled

robin.

her brown eyes wide, clara begin to flip through the file, so engrossed in what she was discovering that she didn't feel crybaby join her on the floor. again, clara wasn't sure what all of the big words meant, but she recognised birth certificates, medical records and photos, just like in the other two files.

"clara, baby," crybaby murmured gently into the little girl's ear, snaking a comforting arm around her trembling shoulders.

"it would appear that robin is your...

brother."