I came to be on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. I’m not sure how, but I knew I was called ‘Mr. Spoons’ and that I was born to make tea and serve it, at least twelve times a day, to inanimate objects. My best friend in the whole house was Alice, and she was great. She was the best at playing and also talking. In fact, she talked enough for the both of us, and that was fine by me.

I came alive when she was around - and when she wasn’t, I’d sort of just perch on my stool and do nothing for a few hours. I had this ability to basically stop existing when I was alone, but I

thought everyone could do that too. I never wanted to worry her with any of that. She had so many things to worry about like running the dog-hospital, cooking for sixteen dinosaurs and raising a baby that peed a lot.

I remember our first conversation, it was so simple, but I knew we would be friends for life and it went something like this...

“Hi Mr. Spoons.”

“Hi Alice! How ya doing?”

“I’m okay, what do you wanna do today?”

“I dunno!”

“Okay...I’m gonna play with this truck, bye!”

After that talk I couldn’t stop smiling, but then I realised at some point I’d stopped having a mouth to smile with anyway. In fact, I had noticed when Alice would draw me with her crayons that she would make me look like a man wearing a suit...but with a spoon for a head. I wasn’t sure how I felt about being a walking-talking piece of cutlery, but before I could do too much feeling, Alice would be out of the room and heading downstairs for dinner.

One day she came back into the room, but forgot to say hi. Then that one day turned into two and then that two days turned into two years. I know you might think that’s a long time, but time flies when you cease to exist.

The door opened again, and this time Alice was with someone else, her friend Hannah. They played all the games we used to play together, but Hannah made the tea all wrong. Afterwards, I saw Hannah looking through some of Alice’s drawings of me and she asked who I was.

“That’s Mr. Spoony” she’d said, and I didn’t mind that she had forgotten my name, it had been two years and two days after all.

“Is he like King Fantastic?” Hannah had said, and I’d seen her eyes light up.

I didn’t know any ‘King Fantastic’, and I had been confused as to how Hannah knew royalty. I remember puzzling over this and almost not noticing that King Fantastic had entered the room in all his glory. He was a seven-foot tall man-tiger, wearing a magnificent purple cape and a bejewelled crown. He shot a devastatingly smooth smile-and-wink at me, said something in another language and bowed to me.

It wasn’t long before Alice and Hannah were getting King Fantastic involved in all the games, and I could’ve sworn he grew foot taller from how much attention they were giving him.

I watched them make tea, act out the latest episode of Alice’s soap opera ‘Sharks in Doll-town’ and fight with invisible swords. I sat on my stool and slowly, but surely, stopped being.