Jeff picked up the square box. It was tightly wrapped and had a silver sticker on the top that said ‘Merry Xmas to Jeff, with love from Aunty Zoe’. He scraped at the folded edges with uncoordinated fingers and eyed his sister who was holding an identical package in her hands. Mandy was picking delicately at the sellotape seal so Jeff tried picking too. He tried and he picked, he picked and he tried. Then he gave up and tore into the paper with the frenzy of a cartoon monster. Ta da!

But, liberated from its glitzy paper shell, the small box had another puzzle to test his patience. On display inside the box was a mug, strapped and clipped into place with tight little bands of card and wire. Jeff pulled at them, ripping bits off and casting them aside. Some of the bits came to rest next to the intact container out of which Mandy had extracted a similar mug. Jeff observed her for a moment as she read instructions about how to make the mug do milkshakes and smoothies, hot bedtime drinks, and whatever. The picture on the front suggested that chocolate would be a fine candidate.

Jeff had stopped watching Mandy long before she set about finding batteries, opening up the recess into which they would slot, installing them and whirring the mug into action. He was looking back at his own mug, it was a prisoner, trapped by alien bonds in outer space! Jeff used both hands at once to tear off the cardboard and wire restraints and free the intergalactic life-pod! He whizzed an orbit around his head, falling backwards into the coffee table and causing his mother to squeal ‘Watch what you’re doing Jeffrey, please!’ Such a racket! She would wake the sleeping monsters of Zglaar Six if she wasn’t careful! Then he turned the spaceship upside down, poked the engine compartment with his thumb, and squinted at the TV through the arch of the laser array curving down the side. He landed the capsule on his head, stuck his foot in it, and then balanced it on his elbow to clear it of Krypton Rays. He put the batteries in the hold then shook the container ship so it rattled like maracas. That would knock them all out, bastard invaders! Finally, he tipped the Martian Storm Troopers out onto the floor and trapped them under the upturned force field with a WHOOP of triumph! Those evil alien crawlers wouldn’t be able to attack him now! But what if they could spit acid and eat through plastic? Jeff lay full length on the floor behind the Hyperspatial Bug Trap and slowly inched it across the carpet towards his sister.

Suzanne Conboy-Hill, 2010