Talking To Toys

• Bridgette Longson, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2018

Ruby was asleep in her warm, cosy bed. She was dreaming of what a great day she had, when she was awoken by a soft, chattering sound. Ruby looked around and saw nothing. She felt a little scared that she was hearing noises and decided to grab one of her toys to make her feel better. As Ruby reached into her toy bucket she couldn’t find any of her toys. She looked around her room and saw that her toys were sitting on a bench. Ruby thought this was a little weird, but what was even weirder, was that they were talking.
“You can talk?” Ruby said. At this moment Ruby was feeling afraid and surprised at the same time. The first toy, named Marmalade spoke first. “Yes, all toys can talk but no person is meant to know and our toy laws state that if a toy talks to a person they will be taken to another universe.” The next toy named Katy spoke next, “which means you are not allowed to tell anyone that you can speak to us, including our toy counsellor. If he finds out, we’ll all be taken away.”
“Wow, this has always been my dream to talk to toys and now it’s finally come true!” Ruby said as cheerful as ever. “Yes but just remember, don’t tell any…” Marmalade got interrupted by the toy counsellor. “Tell anyone about what?” Marmalade gave a giant gulp. “That you’ve broken the toy law by talking to a person?”
“Well,” Marmalade was feeling sick in the stomach, “we were just doing our normal thing, giving Ruby good dreams, when she woke up to go get one of us from her toy box, but she found us on the shelf whispering about what dream we would give her next.”
“I’ve got a dream for you, well more of a nightmare!” The toy counsellor was going to vanish the toys! Ruby started mouthing something to the toys. The toys understood what Ruby was saying and waited for the right time to do the trick.
The toy counsellor spoke again. “Any last words?”
“Well, actually,” Marmalade said “you’ve always telling us what to do and how to do it and if we get it wrong you punish us, but now it's time for you to be punished.” The toys stood up and started running.
The toy counsellor turned around to see Ruby standing in front of him. The toys were pointing to a poster with cats on it when they yelled, “it’s a portal throw him through it!” Ruby picked up the toy counsellor and threw him through the poster. His screams got fainter and fainter until he couldn’t be heard anymore. “Yes, we got rid of him! We are all freed!” The toys were so happy, and so was Ruby. She promised never to tell anyone about her secret with her new friends.