There will probably be errors in this story, due to the fact that I don't have time to proof read it. I apologise.
It wasn’t until the day her father died she thought about heritage. Never had the thought even crossed her mind. She was dazed and confused as the phone called that afternoon. It was from the hospital, and her father was dead. She never had a close relationship to her father, so it didn’t really bother her, put it definitely made her think. She thought about those things she’d never thought about before. Like where she came from. Melody’s mind was filling up with all these questions. Questions she had never even thought existed. She got out of her fluffy, pink dress and got into the bathtub. She overweighed whether she would call her mom or not. She’d probably heard the news and she couldn’t be too thrilled. Melody’s mother didn’t care much about her ex-husband but his demise would hurt her. She wasn’t a very strong person. That much Melody had known ever since her play date with Eric. She had found her mother in bed with Eric’s dad. That quickly put an end to the play dates, which made Mel very sad. She had always been fond of Eric, and now that they couldn’t hang out anymore, she felt like she would cry.
When Mel got out of the hot tub she quickly got on her computer. It was pink like everything else in her house. Mel liked pastel colours, even though they gave her migraines. Or at least she pretended she got migraines. Her kind didn't really get those. On the table there were cupcakes and cookies. She had baked all night and was quite tired.
She sat down and started typing in her name and password. Melody closed all her tabs and opened a new one. In this one she typed Samuel Halley. Her father’s name was a glorious one.
She opened the first site and read it up and down. It was a simple site about Samuel's company. She didn't know exactly what he worked with, but according to this, he worked for some archaeologists on different dig-sites. The last time Mel saw him, he was traveling overseas, to France.
Mel took a bite of the cupcake and closed her computer. She sat like that for quite some time. The wheels in her head were slowly rotating. She was thinking. As she thought, she ate the rest of the cupcake, and even some chocolates. She didn't want to leave the wrappers on the desk, so she walked to the kitchen to throw them in the bin. There she found all the invitations to her birthday party. She was going to post them tomorrow. She was going to invite a whole of twenty people. Eric was the first one she was going to invite. Then Trevor, Ivy and Elsie. Those were the four most important. The other ones were mostly friends of Ivy's. She was the most sociable person Mel knew. It wasn't like Mel was best friends with Eric, Trevor, Ivy and Elsie. They had know each other for years, but as of late they had lost contact. But this was a big birthday. She was hitting the big eighteen! There was no way they wouldn't show up.
She would have to drive all the way up to the hospital where her father was. First she'd call her mom, and make sure everything was all right with her. Even though she had her doubts, she had decided to make the call. Mel found her telephone and started dialling the number. Her mom answered on the second ring, making Mel suspect that she was waiting for the call.
“Oh Mel! I don’t know what I’m going to do!” her mother whined into the phone.
"You didn't even have contact with him," Mel said in her mousy voice. Mel stuffed her face with more cupcakes as she spoke, making sure to eat everything she had baked for the party. How Mel survived on her sugary diet didn't anyone know. A normal person would have gotten cardiac arrest or diabetes by now, but Mel kept going. Then again, Mel wasn't really a normal person.
"He was such a great husband! I'll never get the chance to tell him how much I loved him!" she continued being dramatic. Mel just listened while she ate. Her mother didn't exactly leave her much room to talk. In between the cries for attention and the legitimate mourning, she didn't feel like she could say anything.
"Are you even listening?"
"Yes mother."
"Aren't you going to express your condolences? I'm crying my eyes out here," she complained.
"My condolences. He was my father too," Mel tried.
"Pfht. You'd have to look long and hard to find a father worse than him," her voice grew stern. "He never bought you anything, for goodness sake!."
"It's not just about what a person buys for you," Mel continued trying to get through to her mother, but it was futile. Soon, her mother would go on yet another rampage, tearing down wallpaper and throwing cutlery around. Then Mel would have to fly to the apartment and fix everything.
Her hovercar was almost out of milk. She would have to fill the tank soon. The problem with milk as petrol was that Mel ended up drinking up half of the tank. She wasn't the only one, she'd seen people drink directly from the pups at the milk station. Sometimes she'd go on road trips and bring cookies. Then she'd dip the cookies into the tank and eat them.
“You aren’t listening! I knew it!” Mel could hear something break in the background.
“Stop mother, you can’t break everything.”
“It’s my house and I do as I damn well please!” she was shouting. It was hurting poor Mel’s ears. She wanted to cry. She felt her eyes swell.
“Stop mother,” she repeated.
“Oh, don’t tell me you’re going to cry… Crybaby!” Mel was full on crying now. The tears were running down her cheeks, leaving watery marks on her face.
Throughout her whole childhood she had been called crybaby. At one point she even believed it was her real name. It wasn’t until she was in kindergarten she realised she was called Melody. To this day, she got sad when people called her by her old nickname. Her mother knew exactly what buttons to push. She knew that calling her crybaby would push her over the edge.
“You don’t care about me Mel. If I killed myself right this instant, you wouldn’t care.”
“Of course I would care, mother,” Mel cried. “I love you.”
“I’m going to kill myself just to prove my point.”
"Please don't," Mel begged. She was running to the hovercar now. It was hovering in the garage. Mel always forgot to turn the hover mode off. This made it use an extreme amount of milk.
“Mother, are you there?”
“Mel, I’m dying,” her voice was weak, which made Mel believe that she was actually dying. This couldn’t be good. First her father, now her mother’s attempted suicide.
“I’m hanging up to call paramedics, please don’t move.”
“I knew you wouldn’t let me kill myself. Ungrateful child.” Mel was crying even harder when she hung up and called the paramedics. She knew some paramedics personally, so she called them. This wasn’t the first time her mother had pulled something like this.
“Hi, Nicolai? It’s Melody. Melody Halley. My mother, Paula Halley, do you remember her?”941Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwqhpxwJQhP
"Oh, hi Melody, yeah of course I remember her. What's up?" Nicolai sounded playful even though Mel was crying. He was always like this. Unless something really serious was going on. Not that her mother's attempted suicide wasn't serious, but she knew Nicolai dealt with this sort of thing on a regular basis.
“She might be trying to kill herself.”
"What?" Nicolai went into serious mode. His tone was stern, dead almost. "What's your ID-number?" Mel had problems remembering her ID-number, so she had to check with the panel that was implanted in her wrist.
“County One, Sector Forty-five, Number seven six-hundred,” she answered.
“I don’t remember you mother’s address but I can find it with your number. I’ll send paramedics to your mother’s location.”
“Thank you, Nicolai.”
“No problem.” His playfulness was back, but Mel suspected it was just to make her feel better.
After she had hung up, she tried calling her mother over and over. She didn’t pick up. This only made Mel more worried. She sped along the lightways, reaching the speed of sound. Mel technically wasn’t allowed to drive a hovercraft yet, but she was feeling a bit rebellious as of late. And normal ground-cars were awfully dull. She’d take her hovercar out for late night drives along the desolate lightways out of the city. Mel hadn’t ever gotten into trouble because of it, and soon she could legally drive a hovercraft, so it didn’t really matter.
She got to her mother’s house in three minutes. The paramedics showed up shortly after.
Inside the house, the wallpapers were ripped and different sets of cutlery were spread all over the floor. Just like Mel had foreseen. Nicolai was one of the paramedics examining the house. The two walked through the rooms together. They ended up in her mother's bedroom. She was lying there. Pills were spread all over the nightstand. Her eyes were closed and it didn't look like she was breathing. Nicolai took one look at Paula and then looked at Mel.
"I didn't remember her being a human...," he trailed off. There was some disgust in his voice. Mel got worried that Nicolai would treat a simple human. Or a superior human, depending on who you asked.
“Didn’t you help her once before?”
“We only talked on the phone,” he said.
“And you thought because I’m a doll, she’s one as well?” Nicolai shrugged. He showed his true self. A cold, unfeeling doll. Dolls could mimic human emotion, but could never really feel it. This is what made Mel the most malfunctioning doll ever. She’d been brought to many mechanics around town. They all tried figuring out why she could feel. Feel like a human. Was it nature or nurture? She’d been brought up by humans. Was that the source of her problem? There were many theories going around.
“Should we call a human doctor?” Mel asked.
Nicolai shrugged again. He sat down besides Mel’s mother and looked at the panel in his wrist.
“You are supposed to check human’s pulse.” He pressed his cold fingertips to her neck.
“There is something moving in there, and she’s warm.”
“That means she’s still alive,” Mel excitedly exclaimed. Nicolai looked at her with that empty but playful expression. He looked amused that she felt so strongly.
“Fuck you, dolls, I can take care of myself,” Mel’s mother coughed. Her face had gone slightly blue and her eyes were bloodshot.
“Mother,” Mel hugged her, feeling Nicolai’s eyes on her the whole time.
“You almost let me die!” she complained.
Nicolai had called a human doctor, and he showed up after a quarter of an hour. It took longer for humans to arrive since they weren’t capable of driving hovercrafts. Well, some humans were, but most weren’t. It had something to do with their fragile bodies and minds.
“Mrs. Halley held her breath, these pills are vitamin D. She was never in any danger,” the dry doctor said. If he pretended to be a doll, he could probably fool her, Mel thought.
“So I have wasted your time?” Mel asked, feeling her eyes swell up again. She hated to be of bother.
“You are a remarkable doll, aren’t you,” the doctor said. “You mimic human emotions so well.”941Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDFiMNuH4KI
Nicolai sent her a look that said “don’t explain”, but Mel felt like she had to.
“I’m actually not a proper doll…,” she started. “I have a malfunction… That’s why I’m not fit for labour.” She showed the Doctor her panel. It said Malfunctioning. The panel was red.
The doctor stroked his beard and looked Mel dead in the eye. “You’re Samuel Halley’s daughter, aren’t you?”
Mel nodded.
With that he left.
It wasn’t until the day Mel’s father died she thought about her heritage. Mel had never thought about where she’d come from. Was she just from another doll factory. How could someone like her get through the controls?
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