Without a Sound

The walls and carpet were green. In front of the cream-colored leather couches was a glass coffee table with nothing on it. Off to the side was a leather chair of the same color with a side table next to it. In front of all that, against the wall, was a big black… Well, it looked like a cross between a blackboard and a picture frame with a black picture in it.

On a dark wooded desk against the back wall, there was a smaller devise that looked about the same. Sitting in front of this one was a board with a whole bunch of… buttons on it.

I looked at Mikey, confused. This must’ve been some kind of technology beyond my time – whenever my time was. “It’s a TV,” he said simply, pointing to the bigger machine. “It’s a television.”

Television… I’d heard that somewhere before. I pictured in my mind a little wooden box with a black and white picture in it. I nodded slowly. This must be an advanced form of that. A TV.

“A movie is like a show on the TV. It’s taped with a camera,” he explained. He had a determined expression, like he was trying really hard to think of a way to describe it. “The cameras take pictures… but they’re not regular pictures. They’re moving pictures.”

I smiled. It sounded like magic, and I wasn’t sure I believed him.

“Come pick a movie!” he exclaimed excitedly, looking like a little kid. He grabbed my hand and led me over to a shelf of containers that looked sort of like books.

I read the titles of some of the movies, which were written on the sides of their cases. I, Robot. Were there robots in this time? I shivered. That was a little creepy. Jaws. That one also scared me a little. Star Wars. I didn’t like the sound of that. Wars were bad. Ironman, The Dark Knight, Indiana Jones.

When I moved down to the next row of movies, I saw a considerable change in the titles. They looked more… childlike. Finding Nemo, Brother Bear, The Fox and the Hound, Bambi, Sleeping Beauty, Charlotte’s Web, Winnie the Pooh, Cinderella… Wait. One of the titles caught my attention.

Charlotte’s Web. It just seemed so familiar, so right. I pulled the case off the shelf and looked at it closely. The “Web” part didn’t interest me that much. No, it was the “Charlotte’s.”

My hands felt cold, and my stomach dropped when I realized why that attracted me so much, why it caught my attention. It was my name! Charlotte was my name! It caused me pain that I hadn’t noticed it immediately. How had I forgotten my own name?

I felt tears spring to my eyes. My hands started shaking as I examined the title closely. Mikey, who was standing just behind me and reading over my shoulder asked, “Do you want to watch Charlotte’s Web?”

My name sounded perfect when he said it. It sounded as pretty as the moon, as vibrant as the lightning, as powerful as the thunder, and as melodious as the rain. I heard myself let out a little gasp.

Finally, he realized something was up. He gently turned me around to face him. Looking alarmed at my shaking hands and teary eyes, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

I caught his eyes for a second and then looked back at the movie cover. How could I tell him my name? Carefully, with my left hand, I covered up the apostrophe and the s in “Charlotte’s” and all of the “Webs.” With an unsteady finger, I pointed at “Charlotte.”

“Charlotte,” he read, and I savored the sound of my name again.

I just nodded at him, smiling slightly.

“Charlotte,” he repeated, understanding alight in his tone. “Is your name Charlotte?”

Smiling wider, I nodded again.

He grinned at me, saying, “That’s a pretty name. Not that many people are name Charlotte anymore. Want to watch the movie?”

Without waiting for me to answer, he took the case from my hands and opened it, removing what looked like a very small vinyl record. When he pressed a button on a box underneath the TV, the box stuck its tongue out. When he placed the movie on the tongue, it swallowed it.

This made me worried, but Mikey seemed to think it was normal, so I assumed it was. “This is a cartoon,” he told me. I remembered cartoons as a few drawings that told a story. “It’s made up of millions of drawing put together to make moving pictures.”

I can’t describe the awe I felt when he pushed a button and the TV came to life. I looked on in wonder as the screen was filled with light, colors, and pictures.

Laughing at me, Mikey led me and my gaping mouth to the couch and sat me down. He sat right next to me, and we started watching the amazing, unbelievable movie. It really was magic. All the characters had their own voices, and the animals talked!

I was delighted to learn that in this story, Charlotte was a spider. I still adored spiders, even if they ate other bugs and sometimes even other spiders. Come to think of it, spiders were a lot like vampires.

In the middle of the movie, Mikey paused it, freezing the picture. “Wait here,” he instructed. “I’ll go make popcorn.” I heard it popping in the kitchen down the stairs. When he returned, he held a huge bowl of popcorn and two glasses of water.

I was very sad when Charlotte died in the movie. I felt a strange attraction to her. We had more in common than our names.

Surprisingly, eating all that popcorn made me thirsty for water, not blood, although I still wanted blood. I drank the whole glass of water, but when Mikey offered me more, I declined. I didn’t want him to pause the movie again.

I remember struggling to stay awake for the ending. I was glad I did, but by the time peoples’ names started coming down the screen, I was barely awake at all. Seeing this, Mikey carried me back to the little girl’s bed. He tucked me in and all. When he turned off the light and switched on the lamp, he smiled at me. Just before closing the door behind me, he whispered, “Goodnight, Charlotte.”

I felt a warm feeling fill my chest when he said my name. Then I fell asleep.