Blink Instead of Crying

        Babysitting twins can be one of the most excruciating experiences life has to offer. But it can also be one of the most fulfilling, if you play your cards right.

For example, if the parents ask you to go pick up the twins at a local daycare, you will inevitably get the question, “Oh, they’re twins, right?” with a bright, cheerful smile from anyone who’s handing them off to you.

Such a great opportunity can be found in that single question based on your response:

“Not really. I found one while I was out walking and figured why not make a matching set?”

“You wouldn’t believe the things you can find on the Internet these days.”

“Triplets actually. Where’d the third one go?”

So much joy has come to my life through making people suffer with me over the tiny devils known as children. Maybe that’s why I’ve got such a good reputation as a babysitter in this neighborhood – everyone thinks I love my job.

It helps me out in the long run, since I can charge more for my services, and I always get good reviews for having such a positive attitude. Why correct them? No one needs to know that I use it as an excuse to satisfy my mild sadistic tendencies while I still can. Besides, if I’m gonna be going gray early and losing several years of my life to these screaming catastrophes, I might as well get a few laughs out of the ordeal.

That was the mindset I tended to approach babysitting with, anyway. It was hard, but it could be fun if you tried. That was all there was to it.

Before I took this job.

And then my babysitting career became so much more complicated.

The job offer had seemed like a normal one when I initially pulled it from the stack of college admission guides and brochures in the sanctity of my bedroom. Just a casual job description for a babysitting gig, mailed to me as they usually were in this tiny town that had yet to adapt to phone calls and texts.

It gave an address, a short blurb about the children involved and the circumstances requiring me to watch them, and the amount I’d be paid for the hours I worked. There was nothing that tipped me off in the entire letter that something strange was going on. Heck, even the hours were pretty normal, just a few here and there on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and a slightly heavier time slot on Saturday.

I was coming up on high school graduation, and after that I’d be off to college, so this was probably the last babysitting gig I could add to my current load to make some extra cash before reality hit me in the face. It sounded like a good deal.

I sent a letter back to the requestor later that day agreeing to the terms of the job.

I really, really wish I hadn’t.

I wish I’d run back home that fateful Saturday when I’d gone to my first babysitting shift in that horrible place. I wish I hadn’t greeted the “parent” at the door, smiling and shaking his hand as I assured him the extra job was no trouble at all. I wish I had listened to the strange feeling in my gut when he told me the kids were upstairs and that I would have to go up to meet them since they were shy. I wish I hadn’t watched him walk away with a bright smile on my face, thinking about the nice padding my next paycheck would get as my doom slowly crept closer.

Yeah, I wish I had done a lot of things. But wishing doesn’t really get you anywhere, does it? It certainly didn’t do anything for me because I still met them.

Shelly and Clay.

And to this very day, I’m convinced that those two little brats are the worst things that ever happened to me.

“Zaaaaack!” Shelly’s whining voice cut into my thoughts like a woman’s scream in a horror film. “You stopped brushing my hair. It’s not done yet!”

“It could be if you decided you to go one day without brushing out every single tangle.” I replied instantly, shooting the little girl a bright grin in the mirror as I dragged the brush roughly down her scalp.

“Hey!” She yelped, trying to lift her stiff arms to grab at the brush. “That hurt! Zack’s hurting meeee!”

“Oh, please don’t start that again.” I groaned, relenting my rougher stroke and lifting the brush to the top of her head again, this time passing it down through the raven locks a little more gently. “See? All better. It just got caught on a knot so I was…pulling a little harder.”

“Well, I’m delicate.” Shelly sniffed haughtily, turning to look at herself in the mirror again as I continued to brush her raven hair. “So don’t pull hard. Just work at the knot until it’s gone!”

“Yes, your highness.” I rolled my eyes at Shelly’s usual high-and-mighty attitude, nevertheless allowing my hand to settle into the dull, repetitive motion of brushing.

I felt a light tap on my side and peered down, my eyes meeting the imploring gaze of another small child and his newest pet.

I winced a little when I saw this one, clutched tenderly between his eternally cupped fingers, and almost asked him how he managed to catch it. I thought better of this before the words left my lips, thankfully, and instead just asked, “Clay, are you going to let the cockroach go?”

I could tell from the slump of his shoulders that Clay was crushed by my response.

He blinked three times, something he often did in lieu of crying, and held his captured creepy-crawler up closer to me, as if it would change my mind.

I stared in disgust at the slightly-furred insect legs twitching against Clay’s pale fingers, almost throwing up when the cockroach wriggled enough in his grasp to get its tiny head poking out of a gap between his first and second finger.

“No.” I said firmly, scooting my chair a little bit away from the hopeful Clay and continuing to brush Shelly’s hair. “Let it go, Clay. You can’t keep it.”

“But she walked up to me. She likes me.” Clay finally said in his soft voice, staring sadly at the insect skittering in his frozen hands.

“Clay, they carry diseases.” I sighed, flinching a bit as the cockroach moved again, its rustling sounds too close for my liking and way too loud against the unyielding fingers trapping it. “I know that doesn’t matter all that much to you, but I’m pretty concerned about them. Let it go. Preferably outside.”

“Why can’t he kill it?” Shelly asked loudly, turning her head slightly to give a look of disdain to the captured insect. From Shelly, a look of disdain usually meant tilting her head up slightly to emphasize her superiority over whatever she was looking at. “It’s too ugly to live in my presence.”

Classic Shelly.

Now, I agreed that the cockroach should die. I was all for pest extermination. But Clay already looked so heartbroken over being told to abandon another pet, and I certainly didn’t want to touch it myself.

“Shelly, when he lets it go, it’s going to return to its family.” I decided to hope the emotional route would get the girl’s mind off murder, turning Shelly’s head to face the mirror again so she wouldn’t be looking at the bug. “And we don’t want to keep its family waiting, do we? We want it to get back safe and sound to all its brothers and sisters.”

Shelly’s eyes flicked up in the mirror to stare at my reflection, the unreadable gaze trying to seek out any kind of lie in my own.

I steeled my expression expertly against the dark-brown orbs, smiling encouragingly at her and continuing to brush her hair. I think my cheeks might have flushed a bit like they usually did when I lied, but Shelly had never been good at catching those sorts of things.

She eventually lowered her eyes and gave a single nod, lifting one stiff arm to gesture her brother away. “Release it, Clay.” She commanded, authority ringing in her childish voice. “And find something cuter.”

“Dear God, please don’t.” I thought to myself as Clay sighed and turned to leave the room, still holding the cockroach carefully in his tiny hands. My eyes followed him nervously as he bent low and stepped through the dog door, one of the many dog doors installed throughout the house for his and Shelly’s convenience. I heard his little footsteps clinking away down the tile hallway just outside, and then the barest dull thumps as he began his descent to the first floor.

God only knew what tiny creature that boy would catch next.

I blew a stressed sigh out of my lips, turning my eyes critically on the shining raven locks in front of me to see if there were any more tangles.

I was pretty sure I’d gotten them all. I ran a finger experimentally through the strands of hair, feeling them glide silkily over my skin as my finger passed through them without catching. Honestly, I wish my hair would stay tangle-free like Shelly’s did. Sometimes, I wondered if her hair was made of some special tangle-free material, or if there was a hair spray her father used that made it so easy to brush out.

But of course, I could never bring that up. If Shelly ever heard me say her hair was easy to brush, she’d never let me stop brushing it.

“All done!” I said brightly, setting the hairbrush down carefully on the desk before us. “Does it meet your standards, princess?”

Shelly examined her reflection critically, climbing stiffly to her feet and turning her tiny body this way and that.

I sighed as she stood on the desk before me, glancing around the rest of Shelly’s room to see if there was anything I needed to clean up before her father came home later.

Shelly’s tiny clothes were all folded up neatly like usual, placed in the wooden chest at the foot of her bed. The bed itself wasn’t made yet, but it really didn’t take that long to fix the tiny three-by-three sheets she used. I could push that off a little longer. I could see her make-up kit was still out by the closet, the glaze and paint resting precariously on the floor from our make-over earlier. That I’d have to pick up soon. But all the window curtains were drawn like they needed to be, closing off the room from the outside world, so everything was in order besides those few things.

There wasn’t much else you really needed in a possessed doll’s bedroom.

I sighed again and turned to look at Shelly, the little two-foot menace still examining herself in the mirror. It was just a normal mirror, set on top of a normal desk, but for Shelly, it might as well have been a full-body mirror practically begging her to check over every inch of herself.

She peered at the lilac ruffled dress she’d selected this morning for me to put on her, and the white bow I’d tied around her waist. She observed the tiny black buckle shoes I’d slipped on over her white stockings, humming at their shine. She lifted porcelain arms before herself to make sure their rich, brown color matched the rest of her outfit well enough. She even walked up to the mirror, footsteps clinking on the wooden desk, to take a closer look at the make-up on her face, judging the blush we’d applied earlier and the dark tint we’d added to her eyelids.

The tiny girl was the most thorough self-critic I’d ever met.

“Are you done?” I asked impatiently, grabbing the brush off the desk and slipping it into a drawer. “Because I want to make sure Clay isn’t trying to track down a mouse or something.”

“He’ll be fine.” Shelly huffed in response, lifting her stiff arms to reach for her black hair, fluffing it slightly. “He’s caught them before.”

“Yeah, and last time he caught one, it tried to bite him.” I responded, giving Shelly a stern glare as I stood from the chair at the desk – one of the only human-sized things in Shelly’s room. “Mouse teeth can punch holes in porcelain. You know that, right?”

“He’s bisque. I’m porcelain.” Shelly sniffed, giving me her patented head-tilt of disdain…even though I towered over her now that I was actually standing up.

I rolled my eyes at the doll’s correction, seriously not caring about the difference between the two materials. One of them had a glaze, one didn’t. That was all I knew.

“Whatever. I’m still worried, so can we go find your brother?” I reached out my hands to her, ready to carry her downstairs like usual.

Shelly’s eyes blinked at me, the dark-brown orbs lifeless and critical as she walked slowly across the desk towards me.

“Fine.” She said aloud, stepping daintily into my grasp and lifting her cold hands to rest against my neck. “But put me down at the foot of the stairs so I can go do something else while you look for him.”

“Deal. I can only handle one of you at a time, anyway.” I said immediately, carefully cradling the doll in my arms and walking briskly towards the door to her room. I kept one arm looped around the porcelain princess while I gripped the doorknob and flung her door open, marching straight towards the stairs with my ears peeled for any telltale clinking sounds that would alert me to Clay’s position.

When Clay was out and about, in search of grand new adventures and pets, I could usually hear several dozen clinks a minute as he ran as fast as he could around the tile-floored house. But right now, the first floor was eerily quiet, which set my stomach flopping around uneasily as I stepped off the final stair and bent over to place Shelly on the floor.

“Clay?” I called, letting my voice echo through the house as I walked towards the living room. The gray tile was cool beneath my bare feet as I padded around, eyes scanning the floor for the miniature boy. The scattered wooden furniture made my job a little harder as I peered under tables and behind strange frescoes, scooting out chairs and glancing under sofas in my search for the doll.

The ceiling fans whirred above me as I searched, sending a cool breeze that did little to calm me as I moved towards the dining room, still having found no sign of Clay.

“Clay! Answer me, please!” I called, hoping the adventurous boy would give a shout of his position. He was usually pretty responsive to “please” and “thank you”, the infinitely more polite child out of the two.

But I didn’t hear a peep. Not a clink, not a shout, not even a whisper of his response to me.

Where was Clay? 

As I walked into the dining room, pacing around the bright room and trying to see if there was a tiny body beneath the dark wood legs of the chairs, I honestly had no idea.

Then a thought hit me as I straightened up from my crouching position below the table and turned to leave the room.

Why was it so bright?

My eyes flickered up to the chandelier above the table, its various lightbulbs dim and unlit. Where was all the light filling the dining room coming from?

When my eyes settled on the wide-open curtains, revealing the busy street outside as natural light flooded in, dread compounded in my stomach.

The curtains were open.

That was rule number one of babysitting these two possessed dolls. The curtains could not be open if they were walking around by themselves. Someone could peek in and see them, and freak out about the living dolls, telling everyone in town that demon dolls were living next door. Or…someone could take them.

“Clay!” I shouted, rushing to the curtains and pulling them shut as fast as I could. How had the curtains been opened? Hadn’t I shut them earlier before going upstairs with Shelly for her make-over? Had Clay opened them without telling me to let some light in? He’d done that before, but never when he was done here by himself. He knew the rules.

“Shelly, don’t move near any windows! The curtains are open!” I shouted as I dashed through the rest of the house, heart pounding as I found more and more windows streaming in light. “Clay! Where are you?”

I yanked the curtains harshly shut over each window, mind racing about what could’ve happened to Clay as darkness began to blanket the house.

“Seriously, Clay. Answer me!”

“Zack?” Shelly’s scared voice didn’t ease my nerves at all as I stopped dead in the dark, my head whipping around to spot the tiny doll standing in the hallway behind me. Her eyes were wide, reflecting the tiniest bit of light spilling from the upstairs hallway. I could’ve easily mistaken her short figure for a cat or some other animal in the dark, the diminutive human’s shape eclipsed in the shadows.

But the way she was trembling now, and the fear I could somehow glean from her emotionless face was more human than any random animal could’ve ever been.

“Where’s Clay?” She asked softly, her porcelain mouth opening and closing with the words. She lifted her arms towards me, clearly meaning to look for her brother with me, but I was too scared of what we would find.

Or what we wouldn’t.

“I’m sure he’s fine.” I said as calmly as possible, bending down to pat the doll on the head. “Go find the floor switch to turn on the lights inside the house for me, okay? I’m going to close the last window in the mudroom.”

I could still see it streaming light into the house a few feet away, the last mark of what had gone so horribly wrong somehow. Once I closed that window, and everything was closed off from the outside world again, I would keep looking for Clay.

He still had to be in the house. He just had to be. None of the doors were even open! And me and Shelly would’ve heard a break-in from upstairs, wouldn’t we? Clay was fine. Hiding from us and being very silent for some reason, but fine.

Shelly slowly lowered her stiff arms and gave me a single nod, turning on her heel to go find the light switch designed specially for her and her brother.

  I turned the other way in the meantime, making straight for the mudroom by the door way as I called Clay’s name one more time.

“Cla-” The call died in my throat as I turned into the mudroom and stopped short, my hand frozen in the air where it was grabbing for the open curtain.

Clay was sitting on the floor of the mudroom, his tiny black shoes wedged firmly onto his pale legs. The blue button shirt and brown trousers he’d picked out this morning were resting impeccably on his body, none the worse for wear than they’d been earlier after his bug-catching adventure. His brown hair was brushed neatly on his tiny head and the little brown cap he liked to wear over it was still cocked on the side of his head, in danger of slipping off yet somehow never falling. He looked perfectly fine.

“Clay?” I asked aloud, the doll not even twitching at my voice. “What are you doing in here? Did you open all those curtains?”

Clay shifted a tiny bit, his head directed downwards and refusing to look up at me.

“I opened them.” He said quietly, and I noticed that there was a pile of papers resting on his lap. Letters that had come in through the mail slot in the mudroom. He was looking at the mail?

“Why did you open them by yourself, Clay? You know that’s not allowed.” I said firmly, glancing nervously out the still-open mudroom window. Thankfully, the mudroom was tucked away beside a large plum tree growing just outside, so short of the mailman peeking around the corner of the house and moving past the leafy branches, no one should have seen Clay.

That didn’t change how dangerous it was to open all the others.

“I wanted to get your attention. Make you come find me.” Clay murmured next, pulling my gaze back to the small boy.

“What? Why?” I asked in bafflement, my eyes dropping to the letters he was still looking at so intently. I noticed that he was clutching one of them in particular, one which had my address and name scrawled on it as the return address. He had opened that one and was holding its contents in his cold, stiff hands, gazing at my handwriting silently.

My heart dropped into my stomach as I realized which letter that was.

“Clay…” I said softly, walking slowly over to the mudroom curtain and pulling it shut. My hand found the light switch next to the curtains and I flicked it on, my eyes instantly finding the still-silent doll sitting by my feet.

I bent down with a sigh, trying not to look guilty as I gently pulled the letter from Clay’s hands. He clearly tried to hold onto it, but it slipped from between the hard, cupped fingers without much resistance, right into my hands where I folded it up and put it back in the envelope it had come from.

“You shouldn’t read other people’s mail.” I told the doll, gathering up the rest of the letters and setting it on a counter out of his reach. “That letter was for your father. Not you.”

“You’re leaving.” Clay said dully, tilting his head to look up at me with lifeless blue eyes. “To some college in Indiana.”

I pursed my lips, but there wasn’t much I could say to that. It was the truth, after all.

“I got a good scholarship, Clay.” I muttered quietly, the two of us alone in the mudroom. “It’s better than staying here and paying more.”

“We can just pay you more to stay here, though.” Clay said firmly, climbing to his feet with a clink and grabbing at my pants with cold, inhuman fingers. “That’s easier, right? Stay here.”

“You’re leaving?”

I winced as Shelly’s voice joined the chorus, turning my head to spot the second doll staring at me with wide eyes from the entrance to the mudroom.

“Yeah.” I responded softly, watching as Shelly’s eyes began to blink furiously. At first, I wondered if something had gotten into them, like a dust particle that was irritating her.

Then I realized I’d just never seen Shelly cry before.

“Aww, come on. Don’t do that.” I winced and walked over to her, picking up the porcelain princess gingerly at the waist and carrying her over to her brother. “Shelly, you never cry. What’s wrong? Shouldn’t you be happy I’m leaving you alone now?”

I was trying to lighten the mood, but I could tell it wasn’t working. As I sat on the ground beside Clay so I’d be closer to his height, I could see his little blue eyes were furiously opening and closing, the tiny fluttering sounds of his eyelashes filling the air.

“Both of you?” I sighed and set Shelly down beside her brother, resting my arms on my knees as I peered at the crying, possessed dolls.

“You can’t leave.” Shelly ordered me, but the haughty tone in her voice was shakier than usual. “You’re…the only babysitter we have.”

“The only friend we have.” Clay clarified for her, his tiny white hand clunking dully against her darker one as they held hands and looked at me.

I could feel my heart squeezing as the two dolls stared me down, their batting eyelashes hurting me worse than any toddler wail ever had.

I turned my head away, squeezing my eyes shut in an effort to keep myself together. Why was it so hard to leave these two behind? I’d babysat plenty of kids before, for way longer than the few months I’d been watching the dolls. Heck, I’d even tried to leave as soon as I realized that they were dolls instead of kids, and if it hadn’t been for the increased paycheck and their father swearing that they wouldn’t try to kill me, I would’ve been gone on day one.

But…thinking a little longer about it, maybe it was because I’d been so close to leaving that I knew why it was so hard to leave now.

No one else would have stayed to babysit the dolls. Anyone else (any sane person) would’ve probably called an exorcist on them, children or not. Their father had only reached out to me because he’d decided to take a chance and believe that I wouldn’t.

Once again, my reputation of loving children was really taken too far.

But that was beside the point. The point was that I could walk away from any other child and know their parents could find a new babysitter. I could chat about any other set of siblings with my friends and convince them to take over for me. I could sleep easy at night after saying a tearful goodbye or two to the tiny menaces I babysat, because literally anyone else could be watching them besides me until they grew up.

Shelly and Clay were different.

No one else would watch them. Wouldn’t be afraid of them. Would take care of them and learn all their unique quirks, like blinking instead of crying or putting glaze on instead of taking a bath. It was just me, and they knew that.

I knew that.

…But I still had to leave. I had a life of my own to live.

“Guys,” I finally said, turning to look back at the blinking dolls. They were still holding hands, still watching me like they were hoping their stares could change my mind. I almost wished they could.

“I have to move away for college.” I heard myself saying. “I want to move away for college. And I’m sorry, but that means I have to leave you.”

The blinking increased. Shelly hit my leg with one arm then went running away, clinking off into the rest of the house.

Clay placed his cold hands on my leg and watched me with expressionless eyes, his slumped shoulders somehow making him look even sadder than earlier when he’d been told to let the cockroach go.

I rested my hand on his head, squashing his cap down onto his brown hair and pressing gently against his porcelain head.

Or bisque. Whatever.

“Do you understand, Clay?” I asked quietly, trying to ignore the squeezing in my heart as he continued to blink at me.

Clay looked down for a few seconds, as though he was composing himself. Then he looked back up at me and gave a single, slow nod.

I…didn’t know how to feel about that nod.

It was always Shelly who gave me “permission” to do things in the house. Shelly who decided when it was okay to do something and when it wasn’t. Shelly who ordered everyone else around according to her whims and wishes. Clay usually just went along with whatever.

But now it was Clay giving me that slow nod of approval. Clay giving me permission to leave. Clay being way more grown-up than a two-foot toddler doll had the right to be.

Somehow, it hurt. Like I wasn’t ready to leave him any more than he was to watch me go. But I was also strangely proud of him for doing it. In a weird way, it was like watching him grow up.

I smiled at him, raising my hand from his tiny head and laying it across my knees again. “Thank you.” I said genuinely, our eyes meeting in the mudroom.

Clay blinked a few more times, but I noticed the blinking was slower now. His shoulders were still slumped, of course, but he was pulling himself together. I could only hope he’d help Shelly do the same later.

I glanced at the entrance to the mudroom, beyond which I could hear Shelly moving around the house, doubtless trying to come up with some way she could keep me locked up here. I definitely wouldn’t be able to come back after today. It was Thursday, and the girl was plenty smart enough to have a foolproof kidnapping plan thought up by my next shift on Saturday.

I may have cared about the high-and-mighty doll (just the teensiest bit, mind you), but I wasn’t going on a missing persons list for her.

“This’ll be my last day here, Clay.” I said aloud, my voice ringing in the mudroom. “I’ll come visit you guys on my breaks, but this is pretty much it.”

I turned back to the small boy with another smile, arms still resting on my pulled-up knees. “So how about you find all the pets you want and come bring them to me? We can name them together and you can have something nice to remember me by.”

The tiny shoulders raised just the tiniest bit. Blue eyes met mine, and if I didn’t know better, I would’ve said I saw some light shining in them.

“I’ll tell Shelly I convinced you to stay.” He said softly, running eagerly out of the mudroom after that.

The smile stayed on my face as I listened to him and Shelly talking down the hallway, the two of them instantly beginning a search together for as many “pets” as they could find. I could hear Shelly insisting that they would only keep the cute ones, and that she wasn’t going to catch any herself. Clay just sounded happy to have a hunting partner for once.

I stayed in the mudroom, listening to the dolls clink around the house, hearing their giggles or screeches every now and then as the search carried on. Later on, their father would come home and I’d give him the mail with a meaningful look. I’d say goodbye to Clay and Shelly at the door, giving them hugs that were just slightly tighter than usual before slipping out. I’d try to ignore the lump in my throat as I wandered back to my house and into my room, glancing at all of the boxes I had packed up for the inevitable trip to college.

Then I’d stare at the mirror on the wall in my room, peering at my watery, shiny eyes.

Then I would blink, over and over again. Every time a tear would well up, I’d blink it away as fast as I could. And I’d do that for several minutes, until my mom called me downstairs for dinner. I’d just blink instead of crying.

Like those two tiny dolls who ruined babysitting for me forever.

About the Author

Jazmin Collins has done many crazy things in her lifetime - flying an airplane, sticking her hand inside a living cow's stomach, using the men's restroom in every foreign country she's visited, and more - while remaining unable to ride a bike. She's hoping to do even crazier things in the future, such as publish her first original novel while double-majoring in English and Computer Science at Arcadia University. When she's not making conversation-starting memories, she can be found curled up with a good sci-fi or fantasy novel, or working on one of her own.