Charlotte

When I was a young child, I had a playroom filled with toys which had accumulated over the many holidays and birthdays. I remembered sitting in the middle of that room playing with my toys each day. My mother and I were reminiscing one morning as I was packing my things to move into my new apartment when she brought up that playroom. She said that she always thought it was odd that I would sit in that room for hours playing with one single toy telephone. She said that it was a toy I had gotten for my first birthday, and she was surprised that I hadn't lost interest by my sixth birthday. This brought back memories of my playroom and that telephone. I remembered exactly why I had begun playing with it and why I had stopped. I was four and it was the week after Christmas. We had just relocated all of my new toys from the living room up to the playroom, and I was eager to nestle into my usual spot in the center of the room. I had only just sat down and picked up a toy horse when I heard a strange sound. It was similar to the haunting sound of a music box that was nearing the end of its tune. I looked around me and saw nothing that should be making that sound, so I continued galloping my toy horse around the carpet. The noise grew louder and more persistent, so I began scooting toys away from the direction the sound originated. I finally traced the melody to a small plastic phone resting against the wall. It was a simple phone in appearance. It was white with a spinning dial, and a red plastic ear piece. The only thing that I had ever found unsettling about this particular toy was the set of eyes that flipped back and forth as you pulled the string attached to it. Being a somewhat lazy child, I didn't feel the need to stand up to retrieve the phone. I reached over, grabbed the string, and pulled the toy to me. As the eyes flicked back and forth, the haunting melody grew louder and faster. I assumed this was normal for this toy. I thought maybe it had batteries and they were beginning to die. I picked up the handset and held it to my ear. 'Hello? This is Charlotte.' I said, imitating my mother when she answered the telephone. Oddly, I heard static coming from the smooth plastic handset. 'Hello?' I said again slowly. There was a clicking sound and the phone's tune stopped. This routine went on for about a week until finally someone began talking to me through that phone. It said its name was Mordrid and that it was my imaginary friend. I remembered hearing the children at daycare talking about their imaginary friends and I was ecstatic to finally get mine. It felt almost like a rite of passage. Our conversations started out fairly normal. We would talk about daycare and the latest episodes of Powerpuff Girls and Spongebob. Mordrid's favorite characters were Him and Plankton. I always asked him why he liked the bad guys so much, and he told me that they were simply misunderstood good people. I believed him, and I began to like them too. As I got older, our conversations became more intense. My first day of school I got made fun of and I came home in tears. The first thing I did was run up to my playroom and talk to Mordrid. I asked him if the mean children were misunderstood good people, and he said no. He said that they were monsters and that I should stay away from other children lest I be corrupted also. I didn't understand, but I obeyed him. He would never teach me wrong because he understood everything. One day I came home and my mother told me that we were storing the toys that I wanted to keep, and having a yard sale for the ones that were collecting dust. I ran up the stairs into the playroom, grabbed the phone, and hid it in my room. That day, I didn't talk to Mordrid because I was so busy packing and getting things ready to sell. When I talked to him the next morning he was furious. He said that nothing should ever come between us and that we were best friends. 'How am I supposed to protect you if you don't talk to me every day?' He snapped in his overly deep, angry voice. His voice always got very deep when he was ang