The greasy hippo
As a child my best friend was a hippo. There were two in my house, a mother and her son, who always stayed by the living-room’s door and held it open for us. They pretended to be statues to please my mother, but, as soon as she left the house to buy groceries or run errands, I would let them free. More precisely I would only release the son, since I was terrified the mother – huge and clumpsy – would break something.
I loved watching her son play, however. He would transform instantly after I untangled him from his steel dock. His metallic body, which I could hold in one hand, grew to the size of a dog; and his skin went from a shiny silver to a greasy and viscous purple. And then he would run; all around the house, like a madman, smelling everything on his way. He smelled carpets and chairs, coats, shoes, the whole lot.
I would let him go berserk for a bit, but after a while, afraid of my mother’s return, I would use a dirty sock – a stinky one preferably – to guide him back to his prison. And he would just go back to being a statue. A statue and nothing more.