Sean E. Britten

I’ve always been inspired by music (I know, super original!) and music has always been a part of my writing. Way back in the days of burnt CDs, my mates and I used to put together CD mixtapes and I came up with the idea of a series of short stories based around pieces of music. Mixtape is all short stories sharing their titles with different songs and inspired, to various degrees, by their lyrics, artists, and vibe.

Currently Playing: Gayla Peevey – I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas (Hippo the Hero)

A crash wakes Joel in the early hours of Christmas morning. Santa has visited their house and left a gift that won’t fit under the tree. One that might be more than he and his family can handle.

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A bang and crash woke Joel from a heavy sleep. For a moment, caught between waking and dreaming, he was a child again, five-years-old, opening his eyes on Christmas morning.

“Santa?”

Joel blinked sleep from his eyes. He was thirty-seven-years-old. He was a husband and a father. He did not believe in Santa Claus. As his brain fully woke up, he snorted a laugh at his own confusion. It was Christmas Eve and he must have been dreaming about his childhood. Actually, it was probably Christmas Day by that point, the early hours of Christmas morning. It took him a few moments to remember the sound that had woken him and he wasn’t sure if it had been real or part of the dream.

Downstairs, something else smashed. He heard glass tinkling across their hardwood floor. Something banged and thudded, and grunted, a loud, wet grunt. And then, a thump, so loud, so heavy, he felt the house move. His eyes stretched open. Adrenaline coursed through his veins as he clawed his way upright.

“Vanessa! Ness!” Joel grabbed his wife by the shoulder.

Vanessa was always a deep sleeper. Even with Joel shaking her, it took several long moments to wake her up.

“What? What?” Vanessa jolted.

“There’s someone downstairs! Get your phone and call the police!” Joel said.

“What? Downstairs?”

“I heard someone!” Joel listened and heard more banging. “Someone’s in the living room, call the police!”

Fear crossed Vanessa’s face in the dim half-light peeping through their bedroom blinds. Clawing hair back from her face, she groped for her phone on the bedside table. Joel rolled over and reached under the bed. His fingers closed around the taped up handle of a wooden baseball bat that he’d tucked away in the darkness beneath the bedframe. The man who sleeps with a baseball bat under his bed is a fool every night except one, he’d told Vanessa once when she asked him about it. They lived in a nice neighbourhood, suburbia, lots of other families and lots of kids. He’d never even heard of a break-in or a mugging taking place within a mile of the place, but he felt a wave of relief to be holding some kind of weapon. As he stood up, he grabbed his phone as well. ‘3:23AM’ appeared briefly on the screen.

“What are you doing?” Vanessa hissed.

“I have to check it out!” Joel said. “What about Gabby?”

“Of course, of course, go!”

Bat held out in front of him, Joel started down the corridor. The house was dark and suddenly felt very alien to him. A sliver of light spilled out of their daughter’s room, Gabby’s nightlight. Vanessa crowded behind him.

“Daddy?” Gabby’s voice floated out of the room.

“Gabby, honey! Are you okay?” Joel asked.

“Is it Christmas? I heard something, is it Santa?”

“Stay in your room, honey! Just stay in your room!”

Barefoot, in boxers and an old t-shirt, Joel padded to the stairwell. There were no lights downstairs, not even the sweeping beam of a flashlight, but he could hear movement. It seemed to be travelling between the living room and the kitchen. Vanessa held her phone but hadn’t called anyone yet. Behind them, the door to Gabby’s room creaked and the five-year-old’s face peeked out at them.

“Daddy? Is it Christmas?”

“I said stay in your room!” Joel whisper-shouted.

Gabby was about as obedient as a five-year-old could be. Sweet-natured and sensitive and kind, Joel and Vanessa often reflected that they couldn’t have gotten much luckier with her. Especially when they thought about risking it with a second kid. But as parents they were also pretty permissive and she wasn’t used to her dad barking orders. Half-asleep, rubbing her eyes, she stumbled across the landing to join them.

“Is Santa here?”

Joel hesitated. “Stay here, both of you. Get ready to call the police if I tell you to.”

Joel continued down the stairs, ducking and peering through the bannister toward the living room. It was too dark to see anything but more noises echoed from the lower floor. Something crunched and the walls quaked. It was like a team of construction workers were doing demolition down there. And he heard an even stranger noise along with it, a snuffling, grunting, animal sound that sent a chill down his spine. Maybe he wasn’t facing a regular home invader. Maybe he was facing something that was somehow unnatural. Some kind of monstrous krampus creature right out of a Christmas-themed horror movie. Holding the bat in one hand, he took his phone in the other and used it as a flashlight.

“What the fuck?” Joel said, punching out the last word.

“Daddy! Bad word!” Gabby, always listening, said at the top of the stairs.

The living room, from what Joel could see, was in ruins. There didn’t appear to be a single piece of furniture that hadn’t been overturned and bulldozed to the sides of the room. The television was shattered. A set of shelves had been knocked over and stomped to pieces. Pillows and knickknacks and photo frames were pulverised and scattered across the carpet.

“What is it?” Vanessa hissed.

Joel waved her off. “Just-, just stay up there.”

Joel reached the bottom of the stairs and circled through the entryway, phone raised. He saw a crater bashed into one of the walls. The corner where their Christmas tree had been set up was empty. The tree had been torn in half and tossed across the room. Their presents were flattened and strewn amongst bits of tinsel and broken baubles. He felt a stab of outrage. The destruction looked so mindless and pointless and cruel. He couldn’t imagine why somebody would do this. To ruin Christmas for him and his family.

Something clattered in the kitchen. Joel moved through the ravaged living room, watching his footing. Broken ornaments bristled across the carpet. The doorway to the kitchen looked like it had been widened with a sledgehammer. Both sides had been bashed and folded out as if to allow the passage of something much larger than a human being.

“Shit,” Joel said quietly, and he mentally rebuked himself in Gabby’s voice.

Within the reach of his phone’s flashlight, Joel could see the kitchen was in a similar state to the living room. Cupboards were bashed to pieces. Their kitchen island had been literally uprooted and shoved out of position. To do that must have required enormous force. A piglike snorting came from deeper in the darkness.

Suddenly, with a smash, there was light. The refrigerator door was hammered open, crashing against the nearest counter. Another blow and the whole door was ripped off its hinges. The refrigerator light spilled across its shelves and revealed a blubbery mass of grey flesh standing in front of it.

From Joel’s vantage, most of his view was blocked by the battered doorway. Creeping forward, however, he saw a huge, blunt head shove itself straight into the refrigerator. Shelves crunched and fell, heavy with the food they’d been planning to serve for Christmas lunch. Ham and turkey and tupperware containers of salad splattered. A carton of eggnog was caught between tremendous jaws and exploded. Joel got glimpses of tusklike teeth bristling from a bucket of a mouth. Tiny, piggy eyes and flitting ears. The animal would have stood almost shoulder to shoulder with him but was as long as a boat and built like a tank on four fat, treetrunk legs. Tied around the creature’s midsection was a red ribbon as wide as a bath towel and knotted on its back in a huge bow. An impossible animal, at least impossible in the context of being here, now, in his kitchen. A fully grown hippopotamus.

“What is this?” Joel said.

Sensing Joel, the hippo pulled itself around. The fridge got stuck momentarily on its muzzle. The hippo yanked the appliance away from the wall and smashed it against the nearest bench. Backing up, its rear end crunched against the sink. Something ripped free and water began to spray in an arc across the kitchen, smattering the hippo and the big red bow on its back. The animal fixed its attention on Joel and made a braying sound.

“Shit!” Joel wheeled backward.

“Joel?” Vanessa shouted from the other room.

Hippopotamuses might look like big, cuddly pigs but Joel knew they were aggressive and deadly. Aside from the mosquito, they were the deadliest animals in Africa, far more so than the lion or leopard or rhino or crocodile. Actually, he knew a lot of facts about hippos. He knew they were the second largest land animal and could weigh as much as three small cars. This one wasn’t quite that big, maybe weighing as much as a single sedan. He knew they were nocturnal, he knew they were herbivores and could eat more than thirty kilos of vegetation in a single sitting. What he didn’t know was what this one was doing in his kitchen. As it charged though, he had no choice but to backpedal through the ruined living room.

The hippo rebounded off the doorway. The blow further distorted the frame and rocked the house to its foundations. Joel’s foot came down on a broken bauble flung off of their Christmas tree. The shard slipped into his foot like a piece of broken glass. He barely felt it but the jolt made him stumble. He flailed across the entryway and back to the stairs. Vanessa had crept about halfway down the staircase with Gabby beside her.

“Joel! What is it?” Vanessa squealed.

“Hippo!”

“What?”

“Fucking hippo!”

“Daddy, bad word!” Gabby interrupted.

Joel staggered up the stairs to join his family. His injured foot left bloody prints behind him. They should be high enough to be safe, he thought. Unless the hippo could climb.

The hippopotamus barrelled out of the dark living room. Filling the entryway, it slammed against the staircase. Vanessa screamed. The hippo’s enormous mouth yawned open and bit down on the rails of the bannister. They splintered like matchsticks between the animal’s jaws. Tusklike teeth struck out in seemingly random directions. A slab of a tongue rolled before a sucking gullet.

“What is that?” Vanessa shrieked.

“It’s a hippo!” Joel said.

“Where did it come from?”

“Santa came!” Gabby said.

“I don’t know!” Joel said in the same moment.

The hippo threw its head sideways, shattering more of the railing. Grunting, it tried to make its way up the stairs toward them. Joel and Vanessa scrambled higher, dragging Gabby with them. The hippo’s massive feet failed to find purchase. Steps collapsed under its weight.

“How?” Vanessa said.

Pain caused Joel’s foot to throb. He looked at it in the light of his phone. The gilded edge of a broken bauble jutted from the sole. He pulled it loose along with a welter of blood then tossed it aside.

The hippo surged. Gaining momentum, it pulled itself up the collapsing staircase. The animal brayed and the stench of rotting vegetation poured out of its pit of a mouth. Joel felt like he was on the deck of a sinking ship, slipping into dangerous jungle waters. Crying out, he lanced with his baseball bat. The hippo’s jaws closed on the bat’s bulbous head and tore it out of his hand. The weapon snapped in two like a stalk of celery. Momentum spent, the hippo tumbled back to the base of the stairs. Vanessa kept screaming but Gabby laughed. She tried to reach past Joel toward the animal. He grabbed her and pushed her backward.

Of course, Gabby would be loving this. She was obsessed with hippos. She’d seen one in a nature documentary and since then she wouldn’t stop talking about their fat, overstuffed sausage bodies and their big heads and tiny ears. Any time Joel and Vanessa gave her iPad time, all she wanted to do was watch videos about them. It was why Joel knew so many hippopotamus facts. She thought they were the cutest things in the world and apparently having one of them rampaging through the house right in front of her hadn’t changed her opinion.

“Wait, Gabby, what did you say before?” Joel asked.

“Wha?”

“What did you say before about Santa? That Santa came?”

“Santa came!” Gabby beamed.

“Why did you say that, honey?”

“Because, Santa?” Gabby pointed at the hippo as if it were obvious.

“Did you ask Santa for a hippopotamus?” Joel asked.

“Hippomopoptomus!” Gabby agreed.

“You did?”

“Yes, daddy, I asked Santa for a hip-, a hippypottymussy. I said I wanted a hippypotomo and it was the only thing I wanted!”

Joel looked at Vanessa. “Did you know?”

“We got her the toy hippo, remember?” Vanessa said, in shock. “And the game, the Hungry Hungry Hippos!”

The hungry, or angry, hippo surged again. It failed to find purchase on the staircase and cratered the wall beside it instead.

But there was no such thing as Santa Claus. No, they must have bought the hippopotamus as well. Threads of memory began creeping through Joel’s mind. Gabby had been so very, very good, they’d decided the toy hippo just wasn’t enough. She was a perfect kid. And maybe taking care of an animal would be good for her? So he’d gone online and found a live hippopotamus for sale. He collected it today from the post office and tied that big red bow around its belly, and snuck it downstairs while Gabby was-

“No!” Joel gripped the sides of his head. “No, no, that didn’t happen!”

“Joel, what is it?” Vanessa said.

“Do you remember buying a hippopotamus?”

Vanessa thought about it and spoke slowly, carefully. “That’s right, we talked about whether Gabby was ready for a pet, and then you found that deal online-,”

“No, that never happened! You can’t just buy a hippo over the internet!”

“But, how?”

“Santa brought it!” Gabby said.

“I think she’s right, I think Santa brought it for her,” Joel said. “Santa is real!”

“Then why do we remember it?”

“I don’t know, but it’s impossible! We couldn’t have bought it and then forgotten about it until just now!” Joel felt the false memories fading as he denied them purchase.

The hippo backed across the entryway. Its rear end brushed the front door, buckling it. The glazed window next to the door cracked with the impact. The animal snorted in annoyance.

“Why a hippopotamus?” Vanessa asked.

“I wanted a hippamattamus!” Gabby said.

Joel shrugged helplessly. “She’s been good, right? She’s been very nice, and not naughty at all. She learned to potty by herself. Ever since we started giving her chores, making her bed, picking up her toys, she does them every time!”

“You are a very good girl,” Vanessa told Gabby before turning back to her husband. “What do we do?”

“Call the police,” Joel said. “Animal control! They’ll come out here and shoot it!”

“No!” Gabby said, horrified. “Not my hippo!”

“Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry, honey,” Joel said. “I didn’t mean that.”

“It’s my present! My hippo!”

With wiry, five-year-old strength, Gabby wriggled free from her mother’s grip. Joel grabbed at her but she slipped past him as well. She tottered, nearly falling, but jumped from step to step with hands outstretched.

“Gabby, no!” Vanessa said.

“Gabby!” Joel shouted.

Gabby made her way toward the broken lower steps. Looking from her to the hippo, Joel thought the big animal actually looked calmer. Its tiny ears flicked and its jaws parted. Its mouth was so big that it could swallow Gabby whole but for a moment it actually looked like the hippo was trying to smile.

Just before Gabby could reach out and touch the hippopotamus on the snout, Joel pounced and snatched her around the midsection. Backpedaling, he scrambled back up the steps. Gabby writhed in his arms, crying out in a rare show of defiance. He hugged her to his chest to stop her breaking free again.

The hippo’s face contorted. Its piggy eyes narrowed in the dim light cast by Joel and Vanessa’s phones. With a bellow of rage it tried to mount the stairs again. Steps and pieces of the staircase’s frame snapped underfoot with noises like gunshots. The hippo shouldered the wall, stoving a hole into it. Joel felt a horrible shudder run the length of the staircase, like an earthquake. The whole structure peeled away from the wall. Stairs and bits of framing collapsed under the hippo’s weight and power.

“We’re falling!” Joel yelled.

Joel, holding Gabby, and Vanessa both tried to claw their way to the top of the stairs. On the upper landing, they would be safe. The top step ripped free of its anchor point. The lower half of the staircase collapsed entirely under the hippo. Joel, Gabby, and Vanessa were all tossed sideways as the rest of the structure tottered.

Like a house of cards, the upper half of the staircase folded in on itself. Some of it crashed down on top of the hippopotamus. The rest, with Joel, Gabby, and Vanessa on top of it, fell straight down. Shattered wood filled the entryway. As best as he could, Joel twisted his body to protect his daughter. The edges of several stairs jammed him in the back and shoulder. Gabby squealed hard enough to hurt his ears. As they landed, Vanessa fell on top of them as well. Broken bits and pieces bounced and fell. A thick haze of dust filled the air.

“Gabby, are you okay?” Joel groaned. “Vanessa?”

Sitting up, Joel found himself sore but uninjured. He checked Gabby and found she didn’t look bruised or bleeding. Vanessa sat up as well. The staircase was destroyed, debris filling the space it had previously occupied as well as the rest of the entryway. Joel’s phone had landed close at hand, its light pointed at the ceiling and capturing columns of swirling dust. Joel grabbed it automatically.

The ruins of the staircase heaved. A monstrous grey bulk pushed up from underneath it. Joel saw blood on its gleaming flanks but the hippo looked mostly unharmed.

“Happapottamo!” Gabby said.

Joel scrambled to his feet with Vanessa beside him. Gabby tried to reach for the hippo once more as it lumbered upright, snorting, rumbling, but Joel snatched her off her feet. Broken wood and bristling nails carpeted the space, and Joel and Vanessa were both barefoot. Using his phone to find a path, he navigated to the front door.

“Watch out!” Joel said. “Step where I step!”

“Daddy, the hippo!” Gabby fought against his arms.

“Stop it, honey, we’ve got to go! We’ve got to leave the hippo alone!”

Joel unlocked the door and wrestled with the handle but the doorframe seemed to be off kilter after the hippo knocked it. The door jammed. Hugging Gabby to his chest, he only had one hand to fight to get it open. Behind them, debris tumbled off the hippo’s back and sides. It began to swing around awkwardly, grunting. Its jaws opened and clapped closed.

With a heave of effort, Joel tore the door open. He kicked aside some bits of debris and staggered outside with Vanessa following. Gabby kicked and squealed, upset to be leaving her gift from Santa behind. The three of them stumbled down the path in their bedclothes and kept going until they were standing in the middle of the street. At that time of night the street was empty and the asphalt felt almost freezing underfoot.

“What do we do now?” Vanessa asked.

“Take my phone.” Joel awkwardly passed the phone to her. “Call the police, animal control, anyone!”

“What do we tell them?”

“I don’t know, tell them anything! Just get them here!”

“Daddy, I want to see the hippo!” Gabby said. “It’s my hippo! Please!”

Joel had left the front door to their home ajar. Suddenly, it exploded outward. The door was bashed off its hinges and the frame blown apart as the hippo forced its way out. It brought some of the front wall with it as it barrelled into the yard.

“Shit!” Joel looked around and realised how exposed they were.

“Daddy, bad word!” Gabby chimed.

The hippo galloped down the front path. Its feet put craters in the path and lawn. Joel skipped backward, knocking into Vanessa. There was nowhere to hide. The animal picked up speed. They couldn’t outrun it either, hippos could run at speeds up to thirty kilometres per hour, another hippo fact courtesy of Gabby’s YouTube videos. Blood shone wetly with the light of the nearest streetlamps. He wasn’t sure if the animal would harm Gabby but it looked angry enough to trample him and Vanessa into the road.

The ground shook. Joel had a split-second to realise the vibrations were coming from the wrong direction before a dark, leviathan shape loomed behind the three of them. It circled wide then closed in on the hippo. Another animal, reptilian, almost birdlike and yet so big it dwarfed even the hippopotamus, taller than an elephant but walking on only two legs. Its giant upper body was balanced by an equally heavy tail.

The tyrannosaurus rex slammed into the hippo with open jaws. Fangs as long and sharp as hunting knives ripped through grey flesh. The huge ribbon tied around the hippo’s midsection tore and fluttered free. The rex’s bulk drove the hippo backward, back into their front yard, and knocked it onto its side. The impact tore a furrow out of the grass.

In the face of such an overwhelmingly bizarre scene, Joel’s brain reverted to basics. Cupping the side of Gabby’s face, he turned her eyes away.

“Don’t look, baby,” Joel said. “Don’t look.”

The hippo brayed and its head whipped around. It tried to fight back using its tusks but the dinosaur was completely unthreatened. Its head alone was almost as big and heavy as the hippo’s entire body. The tyrannosaurus withdrew, snapped, and then closed its jaws over the top of the hippo’s head. Rows of curved fangs crushed the animal’s skull and its fat spare tyre of a neck. The noise, the wet crunch, was horrific enough. Gabby started to cry against Joel’s chest.

A thin cheer drew Joel’s attention to the t. rex’s back. There, nestled among the dark, downy feathers covering the rex’s spine, was a young boy. After a moment, Joel recognised him as Andy Gleeson from down the street. He was the same age as Gabby. He rode the dinosaur like a giant pony, still in his pyjamas, with his little fists pumping at the air. Any time Joel and Vanessa talked to Andy’s mother, she always said what a good boy he was. The sweetest, kindest, nicest boy. It looked like she was telling the truth. She’d also told them he was utterly obsessed with dinosaurs.

The tyrannosaurus rex dropped the dead hippo on their driveway. Bending, it got its jaws around the hippo’s midsection and then picked it up like a cat holding a dead mouse. Tail wagging, it set off down the street with the little boy riding on its back.

When dawn came, it found Joel and Vanessa sitting in their ruined living room. Gabby slept fitfully in Joel’s lap. A cool breeze whispered through the entryway. Their tree and presents were scattered around the room and the remains of Christmas lunch painted the kitchen.

“Why us? Why did this happen?” Vanessa asked.

“Gabby was just too good, too high up on the nice list, and the hippo was the only thing she wanted,” Joel said. “Maybe Santa didn’t have a choice?”

“Why do I still kind of remember you buying a hippopotamus online when I know that couldn’t possibly be true? It’s like I have two sets of memories in my head.”

“Maybe that’s how it works? Santa brings all the good boys and girls their presents, and then plants a memory in their parents’ heads to make them think they bought them? I don’t know, how else could he be real but go unnoticed?”

“What are we going to do? Christmas is ruined.”

Gabby stirred and began to wake up. As soon as she looked around, she started crying again. Vanessa knelt down and recovered a present that still looked mostly intact.

Here, honey, don’t cry,” Vanessa said. “Look, it’s Christmas morning, do you want to open a present?”

“I want my hippalapottalmus!” Gabby said between sobs.

“I’m sorry, honey, I don’t think we can get you another hippopotamus.”

“But I want it!”

Joel and Vanessa let Gabby cry it out for a while, trying to soothe her as best they could. Eventually, with the resilience of a five-year-old, she calmed down. Once she seemed okay, Joel felt safe to broach the subject with her again.

“Why a hippo, honey? Why did you want a hippo?” Joel asked.

“Actually, I really wanted a puppy, but mom said we couldn’t get a puppy cause it would wreck the house. But she didn’t say no to a hippopotopomos!”

Joel looked around at the ruins of their Christmas morning and couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, maybe once things are cleaned up, maybe we could talk about getting a puppy again.”

“Really?” Gabby perked up. “You mean it?”

“Yes, really,” Vanessa laughed as well.

“Wow!” Gabby sat up and hugged the two of them. “Best Christmas ever!”

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Sean: That’s a wrap for Mixtape in 2025! The last couple of months have been a bit of a blur, for obvious reasons, but I’m pleased with myself for keeping up with the stories. Feel like I’ve found a bit of a balance over the last couple of weeks but I think I’ll do a wrap sometime soon to get into that a bit deeper. Rest assured, I’ve got a heap more in store for 2026!

I’ve tried to get a Christmas story out there in previous years, Do They Know It’s Christmas? was one of the last stories for the original run of All There in the (Monster) Manual and then it was You’d Better Watch Out so if you feel the need for more Christmas stuff, it’s there! I think You’d Better Watch Out had a similar inspiration, in the sense it was also somehow justifying some explanation for Santa’s existence which had also gone badly wrong.

Have a very Merry Christmas or happy holidays or just, don’t, I guess, if that’s what you’re into, and a happy new year! Keep your eyes on the site and I’ll see you again soon. Thanks for reading!