Klass of 99 - The Story

Written By Graham Goring



MONDAY

As with most eleven year olds, for Eric the school week began at about 9pm on Sunday night. His father would lower the paper and peer out at his pyjamad offspring with a look that suggested that he should make himself scarce. Thus would begin the bargaining and wheedling which would serve no other purpose than to put off the inevitable bed-time and ensure that when 7am came around and his mother awoke him with a warm cup of tea (not literally, you understand), Eric would feel doubly as awful about going to school.
So as Eric scuffed his way dejectedly along the well worn path to school he reflected on his endeavours of the previous night, which had seen his eventual incarceration in his bedroom fall at the ungodly hour of 10:13pm (a new record). A further hour of reading scary comics and drinking the best part of a litre of lemonade had put paid to anything approaching a restful night, meaning that this particular Monday morning was indeed as lame as any professional leper could hope to be.
Eric's thoughts were interrupted by familiar feeling as Boy Wander held a primed and loaded catapult to the back of his head.
"Do you feel lucky, punk?" inquired Boy Wander in a voice several octaves above that of Dirty Harry.
"Morning, Wander." said Eric.
Boy Wander noted the familiar tone in his friend's voice as he jumped forward to be alongside him. "Let me guess, you spent all last night reading scary comics and didn't get any sleep, right?"
"Yeah... Also had a nightmare," said Eric ruefully. "it didn't mix too well with all that lemonade I had inside me..."
"Gross!" exclaimed Boy Wander.
"Sure was." Eric's eyes narrowed and he looked sideways at his life-long friend. "You tell anyone about that and you're dead."
"Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye." said Boy Wander solemnly.
By now the twosome were nearing the school gates, arriving just in time to see a small child being borne out on a stretcher while Angleface leant against the hedge with a familiar blend of mock innocence and evil pride playing about his features. He swaggered over to them as they neared the gaping maw of St. Christopher's School For Boys, and motioned with his head to the retreating ambulance.
"That's a lesson for you girls." he said in his usual cocky voice. "Cross me and you'll be on the receiving end of this." and at this he proffered his fist to them, bearing the sort of slight indentation across the knuckles that might be caused by their coming into violent contact with a pair of NHS specs.
Boy Wander winked briefly at Eric, passing an unspoken signal of "get ready to run" to him as he moved his head forward to inspect the fist in detail. "Gosh, Angleface. I'm surprised that your fists are in such good shape." he said with a touch of sarcasm in his voice that sailed unnoticed over the brow of the school bully.
"What d'you mean?" inquired Angleface, taking the first tentative steps into Boy Wanders verbal trap.
"It's just that I'm really surprised that your fists are so free of abrasions and cuts and that."
"Well, I only hit him in the face." stated the bully.
"No, I meant what with them scraping along the ground all the time." smirked Boy Wander.
In the few short seconds that it took Angleface's brain to process this remark and file it under the 'insulting statements (punishable by death)' category, Boy Wander and Eric had accelerated across the playground towards the open door of the main building, causing an audible pop as they broke the sound barrier. As Angleface was of a somewhat bulkier stature than his contemporaries (due in part to his going through puberty at the age of eight) he took some time to lumber up to a decent pace, losing site of his quarries somewhere around the pupils' toilets.
Having no humanoid form to vent his anger on, he buried his foot in the unresisting door of a nearby cupboard and stalked off, resolving to smear his tormentor's faces across the playground later in the day.
A few minutes passed by and the damaged cupboards' door slid jerkily open to reveal one smiling Boy Wander and an ashen-faced Eric, replete with generous quantities of chipboard fragments in his hair.
"You are so dead, Wander." said Eric. He thought about this for a few moments. "Correction. WE are so dead."
"Yep, it'd sure seem that way." smiled his companion. It was a look that Eric was used to seeing on his friend, who would tempt fate on a daily basis, often involving Eric unwillingly.
They started trudging down the stairs in the direction of the assembly hall, where the regular presence of a marauding teacher would guarantee their safety.
"You could have at least have waited till tomorrow before dropping me in it." said Eric reproachfully.
His friend skipped around to face Eric while walking down the stairs backwards. "But where would be the fun in that? Where's the sport and exhilaration? Eh?"
"There isn't any," said Eric, as if stating the obvious. "that's the whole point."
"Oh shut up, you big girl." laughed Boy Wander.
And Eric did shut up. After all, what was the point? He and Boy Wander had the same conversation at least once every week, usually after baiting Angleface in some manner and narrowly escaping with their lives. He looked at his watch and grimaced. "It isn't even twelve minutes past nine yet." he complained.
"Never mind," said Boy Wander. "It'll all look far better after a Wham bar and a can of Top Deck."
And this last comment struck a cord somewhere inside Eric, forcing a smile to his face despite his feelings of foreboding.
"Yeah, you're probably right, Wander." said Eric as they meandered to the stage and sat down upon its wooden steps.

Mr Wacker was likewise not having a particularly good day. As he sat in his sparse office his cane slammed rhythmically into his hand and small particles of enamel showered down from his mouth as he ground his teeth together. His eyes were fixed on the clock that hung on the otherwise featureless wall. More precisely they were fixed on the second-hand as it described an orbital path around the clock's face, jerkily slicing the day into tiny slivers that Mr Wacker intended to fill with as much unpleasantness for the children in his guard as possible.
As the second-hand neared the top of its arc once more, Mr Wacker rose from his chair like some terrible monster bubbling up from the depths of the ocean and allowed his cane to smack once more into his callused palm. "Let's go teach those bastards a lesson, eh?" he addressed this rhetorical question to his beloved cane, which bore a small silver plaque bearing the name "Elizabeth".
Mr Wacker strode from his office as the bells that adorned the schools many corridors began ringing for the first time that day, signalling his usual descent to the main hall from where he would usually give the pupils a long speech about their unruliness before sentencing them to detention for the remainder of the week. As a general rule the children were blameless of any misdemeanours, but as the headmaster's father had always said "the best defence is offence."
As he walked, the regular slapping of his palm resumed, the sound echoing through the building and having a similar effect on the children tearing towards the assembly hall as a radar gun would have on their vehicle-owning parents. He stepped off the final stair and noted with some satisfaction the unblinking eyes of the children as they tracked his movements. He paced towards them, then turned smartly on his heel and mounted the creaking steps up to the largely unused stage and then turned again to face the sea of expectant faces.
He eyed them at length, noting those individuals who were not giving him their undivided attention and mentally placing them into a very special hell, a place which already contained those interfering government types who'd had the gall to pass a law disallowing him the use of his cane in punishing wayward children. 
"Right!" he barked. "You little..." he mentally checked himself and rethought out his speech, removing from it those words which were considered unacceptable by the prattling parents of the snot-nosed little buggers in front of him. "This morning, I was most displeased to see that Mr Blessed's car has yet again been daubed with Satanic images and pieces of what appears to be to one of Mr Rockitt's prized pickled homunculus'."
Here he paused to see if he could detect the telltale titters of proud pranksters or the subtle look of discomfort upon the face of a spineless conspirator wetting himself, but none made itself obvious.
"So I've decided that until the perpetrator of this most heinous breach of the school rules - and those rules that govern the behaviour of responsible human beings in society - comes forward you're all going to be in detention!"
A collective sigh of discontentment went up from the assembled pupils, and they turned amongst themselves and began questioning their neighbours as to whether they were the one to blame for their collective predicament. But none of the pupils would admit to the misdeed. And none of them were lying.
Up in Mr Wacker's office Rose, the school secretary, chuckled to herself and began typing up school reports. This looked like being a really good week...

After the morning's lesson of psychology was over, Eric and Boy Wander made their exit from the classroom at surprisingly leisurely pace, something which had been made possible by the fact that the still enraged Angelface had been called to stay behind by Mr Carter after he'd caught him forcing Einstein's head into one of the waste paper baskets upon entering the room.
They made their way to the tuck shop that operated out of the school kitchen, coming away about a quid lighter but laden with crisps and confectionery.
"You know, I've been doing some investigation into these recent attacks on Mr Blessed's personage." said Boy Wander as he pushed several Monster Munch into his mouth.
"Yeah, and?" asked Eric dutifully as he started on a sherbet fountain, offering the hated liquorice length to Boy Wander.
"Well, I reckon I've asked most of the kids in the school, and nobody knows who's responsible." another few chunks of the roast beef flavoured snack got crunched away.
"You think it's an outside job, then?"
"Well, it's got to be, ain't it?" said Boy Wander. "About the closest thing old Blessed has to an enemy at this place is that funny looking kid who doesn't attend his lessons because of his religion!"
"Which one's that?" inquired Eric.
Boy Wander thought for a moment and slowed his pace up the stairs to the top floor of the school. "Um... Jehovah's witness, I think."
"Not which religion, you pillock, which kid?"
"Oh you know, that kid with the red eyes and the stupid looking hair that has those funny spikes sticking out at the side." said Boy Wander.
"Oh him. Yeah, he's got stupid hair." said Eric, admiring his bowl-cut in the glass frontage of the trophy case. "He's a Jehovah's witness then?"
"Well, I dunno if that's it exactly, but he's got a note from his parents that means he gets out of R.E. because it's against his faith or something." Boy Wander crumpled the empty crisp-packet and began folding it in on itself.
"Cor. Lucky git. I wonder if my mum will lets me opt out of science on the basis of me being a luddite?" smiled Eric cheekily.
"Ha! You've been studying for that history test, I see." said Boy Wander. "Actually, I'm surprised you're even allowed in science any more after that stunt you pulled with Mr Rockitt's pet frog..."
"I was liberating it from a life of testing an inhuman treatment." said Eric in an innocent voice.
"Then how did it end up in Miss Take's cleavage?" asked Boy Wander, fully knowing what answer he'd get.
"Well, how would I know anything about that?" laughed Eric.
Boy Wander finished folding the crisp-packet up, forming a deadly sharp triangle of plastic, which he loaded into his catapult.
"Okay then, into the bin off of Mr Creak's head." he said, siting his target as he readied his catapult.
Eric squinted along the proposed flight-path and mentally weighed up his friend's chances.
"Nope. No chance at all. It's never gonna' ricochet back far enough."
Boy Wander looked sideways at him. "Have you no faith, Eric?" he asked, and without turning back let fly with the projectile. It struck Mr Creak a glancing blow to the top of his head, pinged off of the light fitting and came to rest in the bin by the side of the elderly teacher's desk.
From their new positions behind the door, which hid them from the gaze of the temporarily stunned history master, Eric blew a quiet but appreciative whistle. "Is there anything you can't hit with that thing?"
Boy Wander blew some imaginary smoke from the end of his finger, and pocketed his catapult. "No, I don't think there is."
Mr Creak finally realised what had just transpired and turned vengefully, if unsteadily, towards the open door. Seeing a few straggling pupils in the distance, he bellowed after them. "Oi! Come back here you little f-"
Fortunately the timely interjection of a nearby school bell stopped the duo hidden behind the door from increasing their lexicon of swear words that day...

Eric and Boy Wander were among the last to arrive for Mr Withit's geography lesson, and as such they barrelled through the door and skidded to a halt in front of the large map that dominated the side wall.
"Sorry we're late, Sir." Boy Wander saluted and stuck his tongue out, giving a passable likeness of Benny Hill.
"All right boys, just sit down." said the teacher wearily.
A few moments later Angelface sauntered in, having been up on the fire escape during the remainder of his break smoking a makeshift cigarette. He walked towards the back of the classroom and as he passed Eric's desk, he motioned to the two occupants by smacking his fist into his palm. Eric gulped. Boy Wander merely smiled.
Mr Withit pushed himself off of his desk and grabbed a pointer with which he indicated a large landmass on the map. "Okay class, who can tell me the name of the small line of volcanic islands far off of the west coast America?"
From the back of the class there was the familiar clicking sound as Einstein's hand shot up so fast that it momentarily dislocated at the shoulder. Mr Withit rolled his eyes. "Yes, Einstein?"
"Please sir!" said the annoyingly brainy youth. "I-"
"-cannot tell a lie!" chimed in the rest of the class. A ripple of laughter broke out at the well-worn joke.
Einstein made the odd pouting face that he used to express his disapproval of anything and continued. "I cannot tell a lie, they are the Hawaiian Islands."
"That is correct, Einstein. And it is these very islands that you'll be preparing a presentation for this Friday. That means at Wednesday's lesson I'll be wanting to hear what aspect of Hawaiian life you'll be talking on."
This time it was Boy Wander's hand that shot up.
"Yes, Wander?" said the teacher.
"I think I'll do my project on the flora of Hawaii if that's okay?"
"It depends. If it means that you'll be simply bringing in a coconut then I'd prefer that you chose another subject."
"Aw... sir!"
"I think that I learned my lesson about your somewhat simplistic view of school projects when your presentation upon Ireland consisted of a pound and a half of potatoes and a sexually explicit limerick."
"Okay sir..."
Eric nudged him in side and whispered in his ear. "I forget how that one went, again. Wasn't it about some woman from Cheshunt?"
His friend tried to keep a straight face while he repeated the offending limerick under his breath. When he finished, Eric looked somewhat nonplussed and seemed to think deeply for a few moments.
"S'funny, my mum keeps cucumbers in the fridge."
The reciter of crude rhymes shook his head in disbelief. "My God you're naive."
Eric looked at him quizzically. "I'm eleven years old, you dolt. Just because I don't have a stack of nudey magazines that rivals the leaning tower of Pizza in both height and instability in my cupboard it doesn't mean that I don't have an interest in the female form. I'm just enjoying the innocence of youth to it's full."
His friend raised an eyebrow. "This doesn't have anything to do with Hayley slapping you when you tried to undo her bra, does it?"
Before Eric could answer, he became acutely aware that the class seemed to be in utter silence. He looked up towards to the front, as did Boy Wander and noticed that Mr Withit was looking at him expectantly.
"Well?" asked his teacher.
"Um..." said Eric, catching on. "Could you repeat the question please? I'm not sure I heard all of it."
"No doubt." Mr Withit turned back to the map and used his pointer to circle some of the central states of north America. "I was asking you what name was given to area in which the states of Kansas and Illinois fall, which is related to the prevalence of a certain meteorological phenomena there."
"Oh. Um. Erm..." he began. This slight hesitation was all the excuse that Einstein needed for his hand to shoot up.
"Do you know the answer, Eric?" asked Mr Withit.
"Yeah... I think I actually do..." replied Eric. His lips started moving silently and his eyes darted back and forth as he rummaged around his brain for the correct response. Behind him Einstein started to strain as his hand went unnoticed.
Mr Withit looked at Eric and decided to ride out the pregnant pause and let the child try for an answer. At the front of the class Einstein's whining took on a slightly higher pitch as he vied for attention.
"Let me get this right, the states where this particular weather mostly occur are those of Kansas and Illinois. Right?" reiterated Eric.
"That's is correct."
"And would I be correct in saying that this weather is of a destructive nature?"
"Yes, you're almost there."
At this Einstein's pitch rose once again, triggering a low level sympathetic vibration in the window and most of the dogs in the immediate neighbourhood to prick up their ears. Beads of sweat started to form on his brow and inch their way downwards.
Eric had caught onto Einstein's apparent discomfort and decided to see how long he could spin the answer out for. "Is this the kind of weather that's caused when tropical maritime air from the Gulf of Mexico meets polar air that's become hot and dry over the desert and results in the formation of a storm cell?" Meteorology had long been a secret fascination of Eric's, so he was enjoying this opportunity to impress his classmates with his superior knowledge. Around the room, jaws fell open as they stared at Eric, while all the time Einstein strained more and more, he even began to shake slightly, causing his chair to make squeaking noises as it skittered on the floor.
"Yes... Care to put us out of our misery, Eric?"
"Would I be right in saying that the area to which you refer, which covers the states of Kansas and Illinois-" Eric glanced towards the front of the room, where Einstein had now turned from his normal anaemic shade to a bright pink while his shaking grew ever more pronounced "-is known as tornado alley?"
"That's correct, Eric. Well done... Though a little less of the stalling tactics would be nice next time, thankyou."
Einstein exhaled explosively and his skin colour faded to it's normal white within seconds, though his hand remained in the air.
"It's alright, Einstein. Eric got the right answer."
"I know, sir."
"Well what is it, then?"
"I need to be excused." said the now miserable swot.
All that could be heard for the next few seconds was the scraping of chair legs as the pupils moved as one away from Einstein's position at the front right of the class.
Days don't get much better than this, thought Eric.
 
The advent of the end of the lesson, and the subsequent lunchtime detention, which had slipped his mind until then, forced Eric to rethink his evaluation of the day.
Virtually all the pupils where present, with the usual exception of Einstein who had slunk off into the school library with the intention of breaking the school boy's unwritten rule and learning something voluntarily and without the presence of a teacher.
Eric and his best friend sat at back of the hall, talking quietly while Mr Wacker outlined in detail why all children were evil and how detention would help them to see the error of their ways.
"It's not fair though, is it? I mean we're all suspects in the whole car thing and yet Einstein still gets off scott free." complained Eric.
"Well give the guy a break," said Boy Wander, who was inclined to be more magnanimous. "I'd be happy to bet my entire collection of Star Wars figures that Einstein isn't behind it. Besides, I think it'd be unfair on all of us to have him sitting in here on a hot day like this, if you catch my drift..."
Eric wrinkled his nose. "Yeah, that's true... D'you reckon he's ever had to go to detention at all?"
"Well, there was that one time that Mr Wacker threatened him with detention after he put that dent in his bonnet." mused Boy Wander.
"That was when Mr Wacker accidentally ran him over, right?"
"Yeah... I've still no idea why he was even driving on the playing field in the first place, though."
After what seemed like ages Mr Wacker finally stopped browbeating them, leaving the children in the charge of Mr Rockitt with the instruction that they should all stare at the clock and think about what they'd all done.
Eric resumed complaining. "That's not on, is it? Blaming all of us for what happened to the car. It's not like this is the murder on the orient express..."
"Well, it's very true that minimal use of 'ze tiny grey cellz' would be needed to narrow the guilty party down to a few members of this schools regular rogues gallery."
And that seemed to be that. The rest of the detention went by in relative silence, ending some quarter of an hour before lunch did to allow the children a frenzied fifteen minutes in which to shovel food into their mouths while quaffing from cartons of Ribena and those remaining TipTops which hadn't been gainfully employed as fruit flavoured water bombs during the morning break.
As Eric munched on his carefully prepared packed lunch he paused between mouth-fulls to alternately chat with his friend and shower him with tiny chunks of sandwich and pie.
"D'you reckon anyone's ever actually walked out of a detention and got away with it?" he asked, his mind having wandered onto the subject of The Great Escape during the latter half of the detention.
Boy Wander looked distastefully at his lapels and Eric took the visual cue to brush off the crumbs of Mr Kipling's finest. "I don't think anyone would be that stupid, Mr Wacker would be on them in a second if he saw them leaving."
"But what if he didn't see them leave, eh? What if they were really sneaky about it and managed to get out without being seen?" posed Eric.
His friend rubbed his chin and gave the matter some serious thought. "It'd require a massive amount of planning, but I suppose that it would be just about possible... But why risk it?"
"Oh, I dunno... Because of the sport and exhilaration?"
"I knew that'd come back and bite me in the bum."
"Look, do you really want to spend the rest of the week in detention?" asked Eric.
"Well, no... But like I said, this'd require a load of planning. It's not like we could simply go ahead and do it tomorrow."
"Then how about this Friday?"
Boy Wander hesitated for a moment, it was all very well teasing Angelface and some of the other kids but sneaking out of one of Mr Wacker's detentions was in the big league...
"Well I guess we could look into the feasibility of such a plan..."
"Feasibility be damned!" stated Eric. "Come this Friday lunch time, while the rest of the class are languishing in hell down here, me and you, buddy, will be sat in the comfiest chairs in the staff room eating bourbon biscuits, drinking Coke and reading copies of The Eagle."
"You know you're quite mad, don't you, Eric? You know that we'll be caught and sentenced to some horrid punishment, don't you? You know that this is a far more stupid plan than any of those that I've hatched, don't you?"
"It's certainly a daring one, I'll give you that. And I can see why you might think that it's doomed to failure from the beginning and also why you might want to detach yourself from both it and I." said Eric. "But I've just one thing to say to you, my old chum."
"Yes...?"
"It'll all look far better after a Wham bar and a can of Top Deck."
And with that Eric strode away towards their next lesson, with Boy Wander in hot pursuit.
"Will you stop turning everything I say against me?"
"Not until you sign on the dotted line and commit to the plan." reasoned Eric.
Boy Wander sighed and finally conceded. "Alright... I'm in. When do we start organising things?"
"How about at my house, tonight? I've just got a new set of felt tip pens and it's burgers and chips for tea." said Eric, smiling.
"Hot damn!" said his friend, who despite the stupidity of the plan, was already warming to it. Hell, he'd warm to anything if it got him some burgers.




TUESDAY

After a night which resulted in detailed plans of the school being drawn up and half of Eric's felt-tip pens running out (meaning that Mr Wacker's caricature had to be drawn in an odd shade of green), Eric once again found himself in the loathsome situation of being far too tired but with a mere forty-five minutes before he was due at school. After rolling out of bed and stumbling down the stairs he breakfasted upon a bowl of soggy Coco Pops that his mother had lovingly prepared some time earlier before trudging out of the house and blinking the crud from his eyes as the sun shone at him from afar. As he closed the garden gate a familiar site drove by in the shape of a Citroen 2CV which still bore the scars of the previous days blasphemy.
Mr Blessed's week was going from bad to worse. After having his car daubed with a substance that he didn't care to think about he discovered that same tormentor had seen fit to wedge a rolled up copy of the Necronomnicon into his exhaust pipe, a fact which had made itself clear when he'd tried to drive away from school the previous evening causing his rusted expansion chamber to give way with a thunderous bang. He was also further vexed by Mr Wacker's insistence that he shouldn't clean the sacrilegious scrawlings from his car, in part because the local constabulary had yet to take any finger prints from it and also because the head teacher felt that the continued presence of the unholy mess would hopefully shame one of the pupils into admitting to the deed. Or at least pointing the finger at another pupil with whom the vengeful head already had some truck.
As he turned into the car park that adjoined the playground he drew into his allocated space, noticing for the first time the inverted cross that hung from the otherwise cheery little sign that displayed his name. Pulling it off, he pocketed it and made his way around to the front of the building where he almost bumped into the local vet who was exiting with his arm around Mr Rockitt, who was inexplicably sobbing into the animal doctor's shoulder. He turned to look at them retreating across the playground as he backed through the doors, turning to face the interior of the building he spied Rose, who was making her customary way towards the stairs that led up to Mr Wacker's office. He jogged over to her and fixed her with a quizzical stare.
"Um, Rose. Er. Do you know what all that was about with Mr Rockitt?"
Her sweet maternal face looked up into his and her expression took on that of all old ladies who have some scandalous news to impart. "Well, it would appear that poor Mr Rockitt's lab rabbit died of a heart attack last night."
Mr Blessed's face fell. "Oh no. Not poor Bouncy.", his eyes narrowed. "You don't think it could have been that same little hooligan who scrawled all over my car?"
"Oh, I hope not." cooed Rose. "The vet did mention something about a fright induced coronary though..."
The Religious Education teacher's thoughts darted back to the shock he'd got the previous evening upon the explosive demise of his car's exhaust and his features drained of colour.
"Well, um," he fumbled for words. "I expect it was something to do with his age as well, after all Mr Rockitt must have had that rabbit for, ooh-"
"Three years." offered Rose, helpfully.
"Well yes, and they can't live much past-"
"About fifteen, usually."
"Oh God!" Mr Blessed's colour paled even further as he collapsed onto the stairs. He sat and stared blindly into space. "What have I done?"
Rose resumed her passage up the stairs, when she reached the landing she did a little jump in the air and clicked her heels together. Things were coming up rosy.

Meanwhile Mr Rockitt was blowing his nose noisily into a hanky as he waved goodbye to the vet. He walked slowly back across the playground as footballs and paper aeroplanes zipped by mere inches from his head, but a million miles away from his thoughts. He was well into the main building and heading towards his lab when he finally came out of his reverie (which to someone with telepathic abilities would have appeared as a series of soft-focus shots of a rabbit gambolling through lush fields) and tucked his snot-soaked rag into his top pocket. A steely resolve took up position on his face and he strode into the science room, gathered several arcane implements from the various cupboards that lined the room and the bin liner which contained the mortal remains of a certain Bouncey T. Rabbit, Esquire.
Clearing a space at the rear of the room Mr Rockitt laid out his equipment before pausing a moment to think about his course of action. Realising that his experiment could be misconstrued by a errant pupil as common necromancy instead of the furtherment of science he carefully snuck a peek out of the classroom door before shutting it quietly and jamming a chair into place underneath the handle as a measure to prevent him being disturbed.
Picking up a vicious looking blade he let it glint in the light which streamed in through the open windows, the reflected shard of light playing about his eyes unsteadily.
"Right," he said. "If Herbert West can do it, then so can I..."

It was about this time that Eric had finally dragged himself onto the school grounds. Seeing his arrival, Boy Wander detached himself from a crowd of smaller children and sauntered over to his yawning friend.
"It was a pretty late night for a Monday, wasn't it?" he stated.
Eric regarded his bright-eyed and bushy-tailed friend with tired eyes. "I see that your normal resolve has shielded you from the ill effects, though."
"Yep. Guess that's what happens when you spend your formative years living on a farm..."
At that moment the school bell rung, necessitating that they carry on their conversation whilst on the move.
"You never lived on a farm!" objected Eric.
"Nope. But I'd imagine that spending your early years living on one would give you the edge when it concerned getting very little sleep." reasoned his friend.
"Pillock."
They moved with the ebb and flow of the pupils as they trundled on towards the assembly hall, where most of the children milled about aimlessly until the teachers started arriving and instructing them to sit down. Mr Rockitt was noticeably absent, but that was nothing unusual as he often spent the time to set up retort stands and Bunsen burners so that his morning class could get down to the business of formulating the chemical weapons of tomorrow without too much of a wait.
After a short delay a hush descending on the room, signalling the arrival of Mr Wacker, who took the stage in his normal manner and launched into one of his customary rants.
"I'm disappointed to see that as yet there has still been no volunteering of information concerning yesterdays despicable incident. I give you fair warning that if no-one has been brought to book for this terrible act by Friday, that I will be calling in the police to assist me. Furthermore, as from today I shall be pursuing the matter myself and conducting random locker and satchel searches!"
At this Boy Wander clutched his bag to his side and turned an ashen shade.
Eric whispered out of the side of his mouth, while keeping both eyes firmly upon mortarboarded tyrant on the stage. "Am I to guess from your guilty reflex that you've something that's not entirely in keeping with the school rules about your person?"
"Oh God, yes. My brother just got back from his foreign exchange trip last night." said Boy Wander. "He's been in France for the last fortnight and he was successful in bringing back some of those items we were discussing last Guy Fawkes night."
Eric's eyes widened as he began to fully comprehend the situation his friend had placed himself in. "You mean you've got a packet of illegal bangers in your bag?"
"Something like that, yeah." he slowly undid the strap on his satchel, and opened it up. Pushing aside his exercise books he showed Eric a sight that had more in common with an arms cache than a box of fireworks. "They're the most powerful ones he could find."
Eric furtively plucked one of the dull grey spheres from the foam plastic casing they sat in and rolled it between his fingers. He tapped it with a free finger.
"I wouldn't do that." advised Boy Wander. "They're a bit sensitive."
Eric's expression froze and he gingerly placed the miniature explosive back into its padded holder. He gave it a little pat. "Good banger, nice banger..." he said in calming voice, then addressing his friend once more. "Why in hell did you bring them to school, then?"
"I couldn't keep them at home, could I? My parents would go bananas if they found them!" hissed Boy Wander.
"Oh right, but Mr Wacker's going to welcome you with open arms and try and adopt you, right?"
"Hardy-har-har," whispered Boy Wander sarcastically. "I was planning on stashing them in my locker until a few moments ago... Now I've got to find somewhere else to hide them in the school because I'm going to be top of Wacker's list for interviewees."
As if to confirm this Mr Wacker ended his lengthy speech with a request that several people, among whom Boy Wander was numbered, should stay behind after the assembly. The rest were excused early and Eric found himself leaving with an extra satchel and the instructions to hide it somewhere that the teachers would never find it. He wandered towards the rear of the school and was at once presented with a gift from the gods in the shape of the gaping doorway to Albert's storage room and general retreat.
"Hmm... Doubt they'll be looking in here," mused Eric to himself as he moved closer to the open portal. Peeking round the door jam he quickly surveyed the darkness for any grumpy caretakers that might be lurking inside. None presenting themselves he flitted into the normally locked room and after a few seconds his eyes adjusted to the relative gloom.
Along one of the walls were many shelves stacked with half-empty tins of paint, carpentry tools, mops, buckets and all the other paraphernalia that goes with the job of handy-man. Beside those was a coal fired boiler which while it ensured that the room was never less than toasty, struggled to supply the many oversized radiators in the school with water that was anything more than luke-warm. 
The sound of approaching feet forced Eric into a split second decision. Quickly reaching into his friend's satchel he withdrew the packet of miniature bombs and buried them in the pile of coal that took up most of the side wall. He stood up, dusted off his knees and surveyed his handy work briefly before darting back out into the cloak room where he sat on one of the benches and whistled nonchalantly as Albert passed by into his room and locked the door securely behind him.

Once Boy Wander's grilling was finished, he walked over to Eric who greeted him with a smug smile before handing him back his satchel.
"So where d'you put them then?" enquired Boy Wander.
"Ah, well I took the opportunity to stash them in Albert's shed. Considering the amount of actual work he does around here, it's unlikely they'll ever be found. We can pop in and grab them while he's chatting with Rose in Mr Wacker's office."
"Brill, I'll grab 'em on Friday after school so we can try them out on the weekend."
"Sounds good to me, we can even hike over to the old haunted factory."
Further planning of the perfect weekend was temporarily interrupted by the second bell of the day that signalled that it was time for a history lesson with the ancient Mr Creak. Eric and Boy Wander trotted towards the top floor of the school chatting animatedly as they went, soon arriving in the musty lair of the senile half of the humanities department and taking up their station at the back of the classroom.
As was customary with Freaky Creaky's lessons it was a typically surreal forty-five minutes that began with the mundane discussions as to who started which war and why before rapidly gravitating off into cloud cuckoo land as the octogenarian history master's mind wandered and he started to relate the crucial roles he had played in many of the worlds most fierce battles.
He was just explaining about how he shot King Harold in the eye on that fateful day in October when the bemused pupils were granted a merciful release by the timely ringing of the school bell once again. Most of the smaller children had darted from the room before Mr Creak had time to notice the bell himself, leaving him with just Einstein, Angleface, Boy Wander and Eric as they packed their bags and made ready for the morning break.
"So," he said in a typically wobbly voice. "I hope that explains exactly why fruit was rationed in the Second World War."
The pupils had long since learned that it paid to simply nod and accept the bizarre twists and turns in their conversations with Mr Creak. And so after thanking him for his enlightening lesson they bade him farewell and resolved to study the subjects covered in that days lesson at home, wisely choosing not to accept that the major battle decisions of the twentieth century were decided by a board of three wise men who played Risk all day.
As the foursome descended the stairs towards the ground floor they noted that the first-years were already coalescing into the deadly crowd which practised British Bulldogs most breaks. Opting to avoid the possibility of broken limbs they wisely pressed themselves against the wall as thirty or so of the four foot tall terrors stormed past onwards and upwards towards the library. Figuring that they only had a matter of half a minute before they came storming down again the four uneasy acquaintances hastily made their way down to the tuck shop, where they purchased various items of confectionery and proceeded to stuff it into their collective mouths.
Seating themselves at one of the tables they chomped it relative silence for a while before Boy Wander broached the subject of the detentions.
"It's a pain in the bum, that's what it is." said Angleface plaintively.
"I agree," said Einstein. The others turned their shocked and chocolate stained faces towards him. The swot's eyes darted to and fro at his three classmates. "Mr Wacker said that in the interests of showing that no-one was above the law I'd have to take part in the detentions from now onwards."
"What as? Some kind of monitor?" Eric poured a sachet of popping candy into his mouth and took an unwisely timed swig of Panda Cola before having to temporarily leave the conversation while his nostrils foamed painfully.
"Nope," said Einstein, addressing those that weren't gagging furiously under the table. "I've got to sit it out with the rest of you. Though he said I could choose a book from his personal library to read while I was there."
"Oh, I've seen that shelf of his, loads of books like 'Better Education Through Corporal Punishment' and 'Spanking As A Teaching Aid'." volunteered Boy Wander.
"Yeah, that was the gist of most of them." sighed Einstein. "Mind you there's still a chance that the villain behind this act will come forward... Or at least a witness."
Angleface stretched his legs out under the table and put his arms behind his head. "I don't think they'll be finding out who it is any time soon." his tone thick with knowing superiority.
"Oh, d'you know something then?" quizzed Boy Wander.
"Only that anyone who knows anything is keeping well quiet. I've heard whispers that there are several kids who saw it happen, but they've all clammed up tight." Angleface pulled one arm out from behind him and regarded his fist with some interest. "I even employed my own particular brand of interrogation and they still refused to crack."
"Unlike their noses." noted Einstein, who had seen several bloodied children leaving school with their parents that morning.
Angleface gave no answer, save for a Cheshire cat grin.
Having finally snorted all the maddeningly popping candy out of his olfactory system, Eric resurfaced from below the table, his eyes still streaming. "So it looks like we'll be going all the way to Friday, eh?" he gave his best friend a knowing look.
"Yeah. Looks like Thunderbirds are still go alright." said Boy Wander. "Well anyway, gentlemen, it's been real nice talking to you but Eric and myself are required on more urgent business elsewhere."
The two excused themselves and started ambling towards their next lesson while Eric rubbed the tears from his face and blinked repeatedly.
"That's a turn up for the books then, isn't it?" observed Eric. "I can't think of anything that's more persuasive than the threat of a pounding from Angleface. Yet they still didn't admit to anything..."
"Well, it could simply be that they were innocent and that the fat git is feeding us a load of crap to cover up his everyday brutalising of our fellow pupils..." replied his friend.
"I'll admit that I take most of what Angleface says with a pinch of salt, but I can't believe that anyone wouldn't have seen the perpetrator in action. There's still the question of how they even got their hands on one of Mr Rockitt's pickled oddities."
"Y'know, I hadn't even thought about that. I thought Mr Rockitt was the only person with the keys to any of his secret cupboards."
"So did I." said Eric. "So did I."
It was then that the bell announced that their presence was required for one of the duo's favourite lessons, computer studies.
"D'you have them on you, then?" inquired Boy Wander as his eyes lit up.
Eric produced two floppy discs from the recesses of his blazer and proffered one to his friend. "Indeed I do, matey. I even put a copy of Pac Man onto them."
"Excellent! The old ones are the best, aren't they?"
"Indeed they are..."

And the rest of the day slid by... The pair played games during computer studies, told jokes during the detention and spent the last two lessons perfecting the design of several paper aeroplanes that Boy Wander maintained could glide for miles if they were thrown correctly.
After the final bell had rung they joyfully streamed out of the front gates with the rest of the children, all the while launching various prototype aircraft, of which most came thundering down to earth after disappointingly short flights. Gathering the crumpled failures they dumped them into one of the bins by the school entrance and focussed their attention upon the few planes that had shown some kind of ability in the air. Soon enough though their interest in these too, waned, all that remained of the craft being a trail of discarded litter as they strolled onwards. Eventually they made ready to part ways for the day, each reminding the other to remember that The A Team would be on television that night before waving goodbye.
And it was a great episode, too. Mr T called Murdock a "crazy damn fool" on no less than five occasions before going on to construct a device which somehow caused jeeps to explode while leaving their occupants totally unharmed. Life was good.




WEDNESDAY

It was seven o'clock in the morning and Albert was just waking up. Contrary to popular belief he wasn't the last person to leave the school at night and the first person to arrive each morning because of the simple fact that he rarely left the school grounds at all. The privacy that his own little caretaking room afforded him coupled with the formidable amount of cupboard space therein meant that he had managed to move all of his worldly possessions into the school one weekend, shortly afterwards selling off his cottage and thereby giving him a nice little nest-egg that he had wisely invested against his eventual retirement.
The tinny sounding teasmaid that had served him well for the best part of a quarter of a century was even now brewing up a hot strong cup of PG Tips, having awoken him from his peaceful slumber in the reclining chair a few minutes earlier. Stretching his arms he clambered to his feet and started folding away the blanket that had been draped over him during the night. Opening a cupboard he deposited the blanket before pulling out a pair of slippers from the compartment just above.
Popping them onto his feet he shuffled over to various other cupboards, extracting from them all the necessary prerequisites to make his breakfast and ready himself for the day ahead. Having sated his appetite he washed himself thoroughly using a cunningly disguised fold-out basin and slipped into a fresh shirt and trousers, finally donning his apron on top of the other apparel and adjusting it until he was satisfied.
His gaze then fell on the boiler and the coals in its belly that still glowed a dull orange light. Grabbing the shovel from beside his stockpile of solid fuel he tipped a good few lumps into the open maw of the heater and then slammed the grating shut with a resounding clang. As he replaced the shovel in its normal position the now exposed fireworks went unnoticed in the early morning gloom...



It was another half an hour or so before any of the other staff began to arrive, waving to Albert as they passed him in the main hallway and going to their various classrooms to set up whatever demonstrations or exercises they would be foisting upon the pupils that day. As with the previous morning Mr Rockitt went straight to his lab and barred the door to prevent any incursions upon his work, the only evidence of which was the occasional dimming of the lights in the rest of the school as vast amounts of electrical energy were expended in his quest to reanimate his rabbit.
After a time the teachers, barring the science master and Mr Wacker, met up in the staff room and began chatting idly while they sipped tea and coffee. Minutes passed with the quiet murmuring only punctuated by the occasional shout as some of the teachers spotted pupils hobbling by at an unhealthy speed. Then as if some telepathic bond existed between the staff they all began getting up and putting away cups. Seconds later the bell announced that it was time for the day to begin in earnest and those present filed out of the room towards the assembly hall, readying themselves for the tirade that the headmaster would no doubt spew vengefully at the children during the following fifteen minutes.
However as they meandered towards the hall they allowed one of their number to get ahead of them. Once they judged that Mr Blessed was out of earshot they formed a small huddle by the door to the kitchens and exchanged a few snippets of conversation.
"So, have you got the cake for tomorrow?" enquired one of the group.
"Yep. It's on order from the bakery and I've arranged for it to be picked up in the morning." confirmed another in hushed tones.
"Great. That poor bugger has been through quite a lot of late, I hope this puts a smile back on his face..." said the first person again.
"Yeah, he sure has been through the wars."
And with that they resumed their passage and took up their normal stations around the side of the hall, unaware that two particular sets of eyes were taking note of their every movement and making hurried notes in the back of a purloined exercise book.
The owner of two of the aforementioned eyes turned to his friend and handed him the notebook.
"Just as I thought," said Boy Wander. "They always stay in the exact same places during assemblies and detentions."
"Except when there's a detention, then there are always two of them away at any time having their meal in the dining room."
"So we've got to hope against hope that the two who go for lunch first are the two who're nearest the stage." Boy Wander tapped the names of Mr Jackson and Mr Withit on his diagram of the hall.
"Well... I'm sure it'd be possible to swing things in our favour." said Eric, cryptically. Pulling a smaller notebook from his pocket he studied it briefly and nodded to himself.
Boy Wander arched his eyebrow and craned to see what Eric had got written down. "Oh yeah?" he said as he attempted to make sense of the odd table Eric was tracing his finger along.
"Well, I did a bit of investigation and I found out from a certain pupil who keeps his eyes open that during morning break all the teachers gather in the staff room for tea, coffee and biscuits."
"So what?"
"Well, he's also noted among other facts that both Mr Jackson and Mr Withit are the only two teachers who drink coffee. The rest have tea. And there's also the fact that they're also the only teachers who eat the custard cream biscuits from the biscuit barrel."
"Ugh! Custard creams are gross!"
"I agree entirely. But my source has never seen them eat anything else, so it's my contention that they only like the custard cream biscuits..."
"I think I see where you're going with this, Eric."
Eric beamed a smile at his friend and clicked the final parts of the plan firmly into place. "So if we manage to get hold of both the coffee and the custard cream biscuits, it'll mean that they have nothing to eat or drink during morning break."
"And that'll make them good and hungry so they'll be bound to go for the earliest lunch opportunity they get!" completed Boy Wander. He looked at Eric with a sense of amazement that wasn't lost on him.
Eric pulled a biro from his blazer pocket and jammed it into the corner of his mouth. "I love it when a plan comes together."
In the due course of time Mr Wacker arrived and lectured the pupils at some length about how terrible they all were and how he was still disappointed in them at the lack of progress in the singular case of the vandalised Citroen. Secretly he was actually quite pleased with himself, as his locker searches of the previous day had struck gold when he finally got to that of Angleface. Although the contents hadn't in any way linked the school bully with the daubing of Mr Blessed's car, it had turned up a treasure trove of items which had ensured that St Christopher's most violent pupil was even now being questioned by the local police about his part in no less than fifteen unsolved cases.
It was at this point that something unexpected happened. From towards the front of the school came a cacophony of screaming and the noise of furniture being knocked over. All eyes swung towards the distant stairwell, and as the sound became clearer Mr Rockitt ran into view. His normal white lab coat had been shredded in several places and he seemed to be struggling with what appeared to be a rather manky fur stole which had him about the neck.
Still screaming he ran towards the assembled staff and pupils, who parted like the Red Sea as the madly spinning and gesticulating teacher shot past them. Swerving sharply he dodged into one of the rooms which adjoined with the rear stairs and another bout of crashing and clanging erupted. Again he came into view, this time without the furry accompaniment which seemed to have been giving him grief.
"Did you see where it went?" he demanded of the transfixed crowd. "Did you see where the evil little sod went?!" he repeated.
Mr Wacker was the first to regain his composure. "Where what went, man?"
"Bouncy, of course!"
A look of acute puzzlement swept the staring faces.
"I was given to understanding that the mangy thing died two days ago." pointed out Mr Wacker.
"Oh he did! He did..." said Mr Rockitt as he leant against the wall and panted exhaustedly. "But I brought him back! I succeeded in bringing life to him once more... But he's different now... He's turned bad!"
"Stop being stupid! Once you're dead, you're dead. There's no coming back!" Mr Wacker was rapidly losing his patience with these shenanigans.
Mr Rockitt sunk to the floor and took off his glasses. One of the lenses was badly cracked and he poked it out of its setting before looking back at the bemused audience.
"Well, I've always believed that death wasn't the end... And when Bouncy died I was determined to put some of my theories to the test." he explained. "Only it didn't quite work how I expected. What came back and now inhabits that rabbit's body isn't what I knew as Bouncy. It's evil! And it's loose in this school!"
Now, the pupils of St Christopher's School For Boys didn't normally need much of an excuse to run screaming from the building, and the probability that there was some devil-possessed rodent loose about the premises was to prove ample reason for them. As one gestalt entity they rose and began tearing towards the entrance of the school, screaming incoherently as they went and having a thoroughly good time to boot. Once they'd spilled out into the playground a few of the more adventurous of them walked straight back in, eager to catch a glimpse Satan's vegetarian offspring.
Among those who had re-entered the school were Eric and Boy Wander. "Blimey! It's not every day that this happens, is it?" said Boy Wander.
"You're not wrong there." agreed Eric.
Peering into the distance they noted that the teachers seemed to have already grouped together to begin hunting whatever it was that they had seen attacking Mr Rockitt. Deciding that they could probably do with an extra bit of help they jogged over to them.
"Um, do you want a hand trying to find Bouncy, sirs?" inquired Boy Wander.
Noticing the new arrivals for the first time, Mr Jackson turned around and hunkered down to their level. "No, it's okay boys. It's very important you don't attempt to catch the animal. You can wait up on the stage out of the way and just shout if you see it, okay?"
Glad to be playing a minor role in the tracking down of the rogue rabbit, Eric and his friend pulled themselves up onto the stage and sat on its edge with their feet dangling off as they listened to the teachers planning.
"Well, obviously it's not come back from the dead!" snorted Mr Wacker. "I expect the damn thing just got rabies and went into a coma or something."
"Well, he seems pretty sure..." said the ever considerate religious education teacher pointing to Mr Rockitt, who was shakily sipping from a hip flask that Mr Carter had produced.
At this Mr Wacker's voice rose several octaves. "Oh, so you think that he's somehow summoned an evil presence from beyond the veil which has turned his former pet into a homicidal maniac, then?" he said sarcastically.
"Stranger things have happened..." volunteered Mr Carter as he returned to the main group.
"Not in my bloody school, they haven't!" said Mr Wacker angrily. "Now I suggest that we catch the damn creature and get it terminated post haste!"
With this last command the teachers separated, with the majority heading towards the rabbit's last known location near the cloakroom. It wasn't long however, before it was sighted hiding behind a bank of lockers opposite the entrance to the geography room. Using a broom handle which Albert had generously supplied and an animal transport cage from one of the science lab cupboards the creature was eventually coerced into the wiry trap where it thrashed around for a short time before settling down to glare at the teachers as best it could.
"Why has it only got one eye?" asked Mr Withit.
"I dunno." said Mr Carter as he peered closer. "Cripes! It doesn't half stink!"
The other teachers sniffed the air and grimaced in unison.
"God! It's disgusting!" said Mr Withit, a lump rising in his throat. "It smells like death!"
"Smells like Mr Creak, more like." said Mr Carter, looking around to check that the elderly teacher wasn't present.
This raised a brief chuckle from those present, which was silenced as the object of the joke rose into view from the stairs, followed by Mr Wacker who was cradling something metallic in his hands.
"Oh good. You've managed to get the damn thing out at last." he extended his arm to reveal that he had hold of a standard world war one issue service revolver. "I guess we won't be needing this thing, then."
The other teachers instinctively stepped back as Mr Wacker approached the cage while casually waving the gun about as he talked. "You know, looking at the thing I'm forced to admit that it does look as if it's half dead already."
"I guess the humane thing to do is call the vet out again and have it put down." said Mr Blessed.
"How much is that likely to run to?" asked the ever budget conscious headmaster.
Rose, who had magically appeared behind Mr Wacker stepped into view and efficiently handed him the relevant paperwork, which he looked over. Reaching the bottom line he turned a distinct shade of crimson.
"Thirty pounds! Thirty pounds just to come out here and tell us the bloody thing is dead when any idiot could plainly see it's still moving!" he shouted. Throwing the invoice to one side he brought the gun up to eye level and studied it. "I'm damned if I'm spending any more of this school's budget just to have the thing put to sleep... Block your ears, everyone!"
While the rest of the staff gaped in disbelief Mr Wacker stuck one digit into his ear while simultaneously cocking the hammer of the ancient weapon and taking aim. In the split second that followed a dozen fingers plugged up half dozen sets of ears while Mr Blessed unwisely used his moment of time to raise his hand in a gesture of dispute in the hope it would stop the wholesale rabbit slaughter that Mr Wacker had in mind.
However Mr Wacker was having none of it as his whole concentration was being used to make sure that his aim was true, and being satisfied that it was he pulled the trigger.

All those children who hadn't elected to scarper off home early heard the blast as it rung out from every orifice of the school. Conkers were dropped, yo-yo's stopped yo-yoing and decks of top-trump cards went undealt as a stunned silence descended on the school grounds and surrounding area.
Long seconds passed by until a voice - every bit as loud as the gunshot that preceded it - issued forth from the building:
"You shot my sodding foot!"
For those children within earshot this revelation was doubly surprising, firstly because it wasn't every day that somebody got shot in the foot at St Christopher's and secondly because it was the first time they'd actually heard Mr Blessed swear.
As Eric and Boy Wander were closer than the other pupils they arrived on the scene of the accident sooner than most, finding that it was a tangle of limbs as the religious education teacher attempted to prove the existence of the afterlife by forcibly sending Mr Wacker there. Keeping him from accomplishing this act were the other teachers, some of whom were holding him back while the others attempted to gauge the depth of his injuries.
"Well why in hell did you kick the cage out of the way, man?" demanded the outraged Mr Wacker.
"You can't just shoot it in cold blood!" shouted Mr Blessed as he hopped unsteadily about. The other teachers had removed his shoe now and were starting on his sock.
"I don't see why not! If it was good enough for my old dog, it's good enough for some bloody rabbit that I couldn't care less about."
This last comment caused much dropping of jaws as the staff turned as one towards the head teacher. Even the struggling Mr Blessed ceased his squirming as his estimation of Mr Wacker dropped to a new low.
"What?" asked Mr Wacker, genuinely confused by their reaction. "It was while the wife and I were on holiday in Spain last summer, he was foaming at the mouth and tried to attack me!"
Slowly the jaws began to shut as the teachers began to piece together what had happened.
"Oh well, you didn't mention he had rabies." reasoned one of the teachers.
With an unusual presence of mind Mr Wacker decided that it was probably best not to mention that rabies played no part in his pet's downfall, rather that he had simply left the poor thing locked in the car with all the windows shut while he was off sun bathing. "Well, you shouldn't jump to conclusions..." he said.
"So, what are we going to do with the rabbit, then?" asked Mr Carter. "Short of blowing its head off, that is." he added while eyeing Mr Wacker suspiciously.
"Um... Won't Mr Rockitt have some anaesthetic in his lab? For knocking out locusts and the like in the biology classes?" piped up Mr Blessed.
"So we give the rabbit an over-dose, right?" clarified Mr Jackson.
"Actually I was thinking about my foot." as he looked down at his shell-shocked appendage the gaze of his fellow staff members followed suit. Due to the odd spacing of his toes (a side effect of his early years as a sandal-wearing hippie) he had luckily avoid any real injuries, however the bullet had still removed the skin between his biggest two toes leading to profuse bleeding. This spectacle which was not lost on the crowd of children bulging from the stairway behind the teachers, several of the skinnier and pale-looking types taking the sight as a visual cue to faint dramatically.
And so as Mr Blessed was helped through the throng of children and onto Mr Wacker's office where first aid could be administered, it fell to Mr Jackson to pick up the lupine Linda Blair and transport it to Mr Rockitt's room, where he found the latter day Doctor Frankenstein busying himself over a large grimoire.
"Oh do come in," he welcomed. The alcohol had seemingly benefited him no-end and snapped him out of his earlier state. "I've just been up to Mr Creak's room and grabbed this book. It's all about the chemical process of exorcising evil spirits from undead beings." he beamed at them.
"Oh, okay..." said Mr Jackson in a measured tone. He placed the cage on a nearby desk and walked over to join the science teacher. "Are you sure that he can't just use some anaesthetic or something more conventional?"
"Well, I've already tried that. When I realised what I'd created I administered enough Ketamine to kill an elephant, and it looked like it had worked at first..." Mr Rockitt's voice lowered as he recalled the recent events. "But the little bastard was just lulling me into a false sense of security. When I opened the cage to check its pulse it jumped out and attacked me! It had the strength of ten rabbits!"
"Ten rabbits?" asked the stunned computer studies teacher.
"Maybe even eleven..." Mr Rockitt let the words hang in the air for second before spinning around to point at the caged beast. "And that's why it must be exorcised. Now if you'll help me, we've got a lot of alchemical compositions to try and formulate..."
And they set to work.

Meanwhile, one floor up and a little over to the left, Mr Blessed had just finished having his wound tended to by Rose. She patted her immaculate bandaging and dislodged her patient's foot from the chair where it had been resting.
"Ow!" cried out Mr Blessed as his heel hit the floor with a dull thud. "Did you really need put all that iodine on the cuts?" he asked reproachfully.
Rose put away the now half-empty bottle into one of the many filing cabinet drawers and looked over to the teacher. "Well, I'd hate for any nasty little infections to get into your poor little toes." she said soothingly.
"And was the salt strictly necessary, too?"
"Absolutely."
Mr Blessed stood up painfully and fetched his shoe from under the secretary's desk where it been dropped. "I suppose I won't be needed this for the next few days, then." he surmised. Noticing that something seemed amiss he looked at the shoe more carefully.
"Is something the matter?" ventured the elderly lady.
"Yeah... My lace has gone missing from this shoe."
"Oh well, never mind. I'm sure you can buy a new one from the local newsagent." suggested Rose.
"I suppose so... But I've had that set of laces for ages now. They've outlasted every pair of shoes I've ever had."
"Oh deary me! So you've grown quite attached to them, have you? Are they your very special laces, then? Are they your personal favourite precious laces?" her eyes fixed Mr Blessed with a curiously hungry stare.
"Not really. Just some good quality laces. Oh well."
Rose seemed a little deflated at this. "Well. That's nice for you. Now if you'll excuse me..." her voice faded as she began to busy herself about her desk.
Taking this as a subtle sign that he was done, Mr Blessed hobbled from the office and down towards the staff room.
Once he was out of sight, Rose pressed a hidden button under her desk and a little draw slid out which was filled with odd looking nik-naks. From amongst these she withdrew a tiny little doll, which had been fashioned, into the likeness of the recently injured teacher, right down to the cardigan that he always wore. Around its waist was a loosely tied shoelace.
"Shan't be needed you, will I?" she said with a disappointed expression on her face. "And I was so looking forward to the possibilities."
Giving the doll one last look, she tossed it into the waste bin in the corner of the room, its head thudding against the metal interior before it came to rest in the crumpled paper at the bottom.
Coincidentally at that exact same moment Mr Blessed gave his head a generous thwack upon the top of the door frame as he entered the staff room. Rubbing his new wound he wandered further into the room and turned to face the doorway with a vengeful stare. It was only later that he thought to ponder exactly how a five foot seven person could hit his forehead on a six foot six door jam.

Mr Wacker was once again stalking the halls of the school. As it was the pupils should have been in class at this time, but seeing as the teachers currently seemed as inclined to teach as the children were to learn he decided to let it slip and begin the school day proper with the second lesson. He also made a mental note to advise all the teachers to be thorough in their taking of registration during that day's lessons, so that he might compile a list of those scallywags who had used the whole rabbit episode as an excuse to leave school early.
He was nearing the reception at the front of the school when the alarmingly familiar wail of the local constabulary's Fiat Panda impressed itself upon his consciousness. Having wisely secreted the gun back in his office he felt no qualms about striding out to meet the approaching officer, whose corpulent frame comprised one half of the tiny towns entire police force. He frowned as he noted that the policeman was accompanied by Angleface, whom he would rather have seen breaking up rocks in some far away penitentiary.
"Morning, Mr Wacker." greeted the amiable Sergeant Shanklin. "I was just popping over to drop off young Angleface here when I received a report of a gun shot being fired at the school."
"Yes, nothing to worry about. Slight misunderstanding with that old starting pistol of mine."
"Oh..." said the Sergeant, his voice belying the fact that he didn't entirely believe Mr Wacker's explanation. Releasing Angleface from his grip, he cuffed the boy about the ear before sending him on his way and turning back to the headmaster. "Well, as long as no-one was hurt I'll be on my way again."
"Well, my thanks for returning our pupil. Although if you could drive the extra few miles and drop him off at the borstal next time, I'd be indebted to you." said Mr Wacker without a trace of humour in his voice.
As the rotund policeman walked back to his car he shouted back to Mr Wacker. "Sorry we couldn't pin anything on him. The crafty little rascal had wiped the prints off of the stolen articles. Still, I'm sure we'll have ample opportunities in the future to send him down for something."
"Hopefully for a long time." murmured Mr Wacker under his breath as he walked purposefully away into the building.

And the day rolled on...
Although the science and computer lessons were cancelled to allow their respective teachers to continue with their experiments the rest of the timetable stayed pretty much the same, save for the second period history lesson being interrupted as Mr Rockitt entered the room to borrow further volumes of Mr Creak's ancient tomes.
During the afternoon's geography lessons Mr Withit presided over the pupils reports as to how their various projects about Hawaii where getting on. Dishearteningly most of the children had opted for the easy course of making grass skirts, although at least this explained why the football enclosure at the side of the school was currently missing fourteen square meters of Astroturf.
Once the school day was over, the children spilled gleefully from the school gates before splitting up and going their own way. After some quarter of an hour passed most of the staff drifted into the car park and said their goodbyes before driving off, leaving two cars remaining. As Albert did the rounds and made to shut the school gates for the night he took note of the cars and surmised that the pair of teachers must still be hard at work in the science lab. Leaving one of the gates unlocked and slightly ajar, he sidled through the remaining gap and headed off to the village stores, where he fully intended to stock up on chocolate biscuits, his supply of which had been running perilously low in recent days.
Back in the school building, Mr Rockitt and Mr Jackson were indeed busying themselves with the mixing of bubbling and smoking chemicals while poring over the great thick leather-bound books of the occult that they had temporarily pilfered from the history room. After much combining, refluxing, diluting, pipetting, catalysing and measuring, a large demijohn of liquid was produced and set atop a gauze covered tripod under which a Bunsen burner ejected a lazily licking flame. Within the depths of the massive glass jar colours writhed and coiled like a tub-full of psychedelic snakes.
Mr Rockitt went back to the book that had led to this latest concoction and traced his finger along a cracked and yellowing page while reading aloud to his co-worker:
"The potion being complete, it should be boiled over a high flame until such time as it is all steamed out. That which is left shall be a mass of rainbow crystals, in which all that is good and holy has been concentrated. Sprinkle these over the affected individual to cause the demon that dwells within great pain, hopefully exorcising him and casting him into the nether planes of hell." his brow furrowed as he noticed some hitherto hidden detail. "And there's a little asterisk here..." his finger moved further down the page. "If symptoms persist, consult a doctor."
Mr Jackson raised his eyebrow as he heard this. Sensing his disbelief Mr Rockitt pointed to the page. "No really, it says it right here." he maintained. "Anyway, it's irrelevent as I doubt the local GP is versed in the white arts, so this stuff had better work."
"It couldn't be much worse than the other things we've tried." The computer teacher looked over to Bouncey's hutch, where the previous attempts to lay the creature to rest had left the rabbit in a less than complete state. The various acid-baths and other caustic treatments that they had subjected it to over the course of the afternoon had stripped the formerly cuddly bunny of all of his flesh, leaving a skeletal form that clicked and clacked up and down the length of its reinforced prison. It looked for all the world like a bizarre animal version of Jason And The Argonauts.
Heaving himself off of his chair, Mr Jackson walked over to inspect the demijohn, and with a twist of the Bunsen burners air intake valve the fluttering yellow flame became a hardened blue spike of fury that made the gauze beneath the bottle glow bright orange. Pulling his sleeve back he glanced at his watch and breathed in sharply as he realised how far past the schools usual closing time they had toiled. "Blimey, it's ten-thirty!"
"I can quite believe it." said Mr Rockitt as he pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes. "Well, there's precisely four point five gallons in there, and the book says this liquid has an abnormally high boiling point, so I think it'll be safe to leave it overnight on full whack."
Pulling his glasses back down into position he plucked his coat from the peg where it hung by the blackboard and put it on. "You got your coat?" he asked as he walked towards the classroom door.
Mr Jackson straightened his jacket and patted his pockets to make sure his pens and other gubbins were in situ. "Didn't bring one." he said as he joined his fellow teacher by the door.
"Well, thanks very much for staying behind and helping me with this." said Mr Rockitt graciously.
"S'okay. It's not every day I get to try and drive an evil presence from the reanimated corpse of a rabbit." smiled Mr Jackson. "I'll pop in when I get back in the morning and see how you're doing, okay?"
Mr Rockitt opened the door and reached over to switch off the lights in the room. "Yes, that would be appreciated. Thankyou." he said. And with a tiny click he plunged the room into relative darkness, where it stayed contentedly all the way through to the next morning.




THURSDAY

Mr Wacker awoke to the piercing beeping of his alarm clock as it vibrated along his sideboard. Levering himself up onto his elbows he availed himself of his cane from the bedside table and whacked the timepiece, scoring a direct hit on the snooze button. After this he popped his beloved mortarboard onto his rapidly balding head and swung his legs out of bed.
Most mornings for Mr Wacker were identical; he would wake up at the same time, wash at the same time, dress, breakfast and mark homework at the same time. However this morning was a bit different, as he had resolved to get up early so that he could start preparing a speech. A very special speech. A speech which he intended fill with all the wisdom that he had accumulated over his many years, so that some of it might rub off on his pupils when he read said speech to them during that Fridays detention.
Picking up the pen and pad of paper that he had stowed in the room the previous night, he began to tap the biro against his upper teeth while he thought of a suitable way in which to begin his speech. He always thought best in the morning and it was for that very reason he marked homework while he breakfasted, his alert mind being able to find the tiniest flaw in an otherwise perfect essay and use it to knock an 'B' exercise down to a 'C-' (he never awarded anything an 'A' on the grounds that all children were evil and undeserving of such an accolade). As his mind settled on a favourable way to commence his speech he smiled a cold smile and put pen to paper to begin writing his opus.



Mr Rockitt had likewise got up early, though not because he wanted to but simply because he had been unable to sleep that night. Visions of his once cute and fluffy pet rabbit had danced in front of his eyes, imploring him not to go through with the exorcism. But Mr Rockitt was made of stronger stuff and upon getting out of bed he sought out his old bible and a bottle of holy water that had been given to him by his Aunt Winnie after her holiday to Vatican City the previous year. With these in hand he got ready for work and jumped into his car in readiness for the off.
Realising that it was only five-thirty in the morning he got out of his car, chided himself and walked back into his house to make himself a cup of tea. While the kettle was boiling he made sure to chuck his copy of H P Lovecraft's 'Reanimator' into the bin, hoping that it would stop him getting any more daft ideas about starting his own undead pet shop.
After some more consideration he decided to play it safe and the seminal horror book was joined by his copy of 'A Brief History Of Time'. He'd dismantle the worm-hole generator after work, he thought.

Going strictly against Mr Wacker's wishes Mr Blessed beamed a smile as his vehicle emerged once more from the twenty-four hour car wash he had driven it to under cover of night. So far it had been through five times and at last the dried-on stains were beginning to shift. Looking down at the pile of fifty-pence-pieces in his hand he estimated that after another few times around it would be completely free of blemishes, leaving him with enough money to pop into the Happy Chef on the outskirts of town to enjoy a portion of black cherry pie with ice-cream.
Jangling the coins he pocketed all but one of them and prepared to drive his car back around to the entrance of the fully automated establishment for another pass. He was going to catch hell for this if Mr Wacker noticed, but for once in his life he didn't give a damn. Life had got just about as bad for him as it could, so from here on in, he reasoned that the only way was up.
And in a way, he was right. After two more washes his car was spick and span. It started up flawlessly and the engine purred like a sack of contented cats. He had excellent and unusually hygienic repast at his favourite road side restaurant and drove to school at a leisurely pace with a smile fixed firmly to his face. Things had indeed got better.
And now they were going to get worse again.

As the first teacher to arrive at school, Mr Carter made a bee-line for the secretary's office where he found Rose sitting in her chair, diligently typing away. Clearing his throat to announce his presence he nodded towards the large white box which sat on the corner of her desk.
"Is that the cake?" he asked.
Feigning surprise at his entrance, Rose swivelled to face him. "Oh my! You did give me a bit of a shock there, Mr Carter." She smiled sweetly. "And yes indeed, that is Mr Blessed's cake. I picked it up from the bakery this morning but I'm afraid that there has a slight mix-up though."
"Oh?" queried the English teacher, wearing an expression of concern.
"Yes, the chocolate cake you had on order was given to the wrong person, but it doesn't matter as Mr Bun was kind enough to give us a free upgrade to one of his premier line of cakes by way of compensation."
Mr Carter breathed in deeply. "The premier line, you say?" he said incredulously.
Rose nodded. Mr Bun (the baker) was a very highly regarded exponent of the art of cake-making. His delicious confections had graced the tables of the very highest members of society, and outside of his bakery the only place that his cakes could be obtained was Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly Circus. They were the stuff of legend, their sponge being light and melting in the mouth, the icing thick, smooth and luxurious and the decorations being exquisitely hand crafted works of art, fit for display in the worlds most choosy galleries.
Reaching down Mr Carter reverently picked up the box and walked carefully from the room, planning to hide the cake in one of the staff rooms many cupboards. Remembering something he did a U-turn and popped his head back around Rose's door.
"You will be there when we give him his cake, won't you?" he asked.
"Oh, I wouldn't miss it for the world." smiled Rose, sweetly.

Pretty soon the rest of the staff and then the pupils filtered into the school and took up their regular beats. Eric and Boy Wander dawdled into the grounds just as the bell went for assembly and so had to curtail their fascinating discussion about the previous night's television so they wouldn't be late. Skidding to a halt as they entered the hall they took up their normal seating positions and noted with some satisfaction that the teachers were all occupying their normal positions.
"Well, it's looking good for Friday, ain't it?" said Eric.
"Yeah. I'm almost confident that this won't result in my immediate expulsion." replied his friend sarcastically.
In response to this Eric elbowed Boy Wander in the ribs.
"Ow!" he exclaimed. Fortunately Mr Wacker was not yet present and so his discomfort went unnoticed amidst the chattering crowd. "Alright, alright. I'll admit that as long as all of the teachers carry on standing where they have been during detention this week then we may well get away with it. But we've still got to get out before Mr Wacker arrives because once he's here, no-ones leaving."
"It'll require tight timing, but I think it's manageable. He always likes to make an entrance, so he'll probably wait until we're all good and settled before coming down from his office."
"So how do we avoid running into him on the way up? And how do we avoid being seen by our hungry duo who will no doubt be sitting at the teachers table in the dinner hall?"
"Simple, while the kids are still milling around waiting for Mr Wacker to arrive we'll sneak out of the unprotected front end of the hall and hide under the display case by the fire exit until Mr Wacker has passed us by."
"Okay, with you so far..." said Boy Wander, mentally storing the information.
"Then to avoid passing the lunching teachers, we go through the double doors that lead to the storage room and from there via the side door into the kitchen. Now we exit out of there into the dinner hall because Withit and Jackson will be at the opposite end, and if we sneak low then the tables will provide us with plenty of cover. Then it's straight up the stairs to the staffroom and home-free." Eric looked to his friend for a reaction.
"Brilliant plan!"
"Yep. I was looking at those schematics we knocked up on Monday night and I figured it all out."
"So now all we have to do is nick the biccies and coffee tomorrow morning and we're home-free. I think I can handle that portion of the exercise, 'cos there's nothing decent on telly tonight so I'll be going to bed nice and early."
"Great." said Eric. "So let's just play it safe for the rest of the day, eh?"
"Alright, I think I can avoid the temptation to land us in any trouble for once."
"Really? That's awfully big of you." said a surprised Eric.
"Yes it is, isn't it?" said Boy Wander, vowing to make up for it later by bombarding Einstein with paper pellets.
Around about then Mr Wacker came into view down the hall, prompting those few still standing to sit down abruptly and those who were already seated to shift round to face the stage. The assembly then proceeded along the usual lines as Mr Wacker firstly berated the pupils about their slovenly attitude towards school work and then went on to explain how he was still disappointed at the lack of co-operation he was getting in tracking down the individual responsible for Mr Blessed's victimisation. It was all as water off of a ducks back to the assembled children.
Once he had finished there were a few moments of silence and then the bell rung out signalling that it was time for the first lesson of the day, which for Eric and Boy Wander meant traipsing all the way up to the top floor of the school to attend another one of Mr Creak's surreal journeys through time.

Because of their proximity to the front of the hall they were among the first to arrive at Mr Creak's room, and Boy Wander seized the opportunity to have another quick go at opening the safe that lay just inside the room.
"You'll never get it, you know." said Eric as he kept lookout for his friend. "You only get a few chances every week to have a crack at it, and there's got to be millions of combinations."
"Ah, well, I reckon I might have it this time as I saw this program about the art of breaking into safes at the weekend. It showed you all about how to do it using only a coat hanger and a glass so you can hear the clicking noises as you turn the dial."
Producing said items from his satchel Boy Wander set to work while Eric probed his memory for reasons why this particular method of safe-breaking seemed familiar.
"Are you talking about the episode of MacGyver on Saturday?" ventured Eric.
His friend froze in his activity and his back stiffened. "Um, no..." his voice making it clear that he had been well and truly rumbled.
"Yes it was, you git! You should know by now that none of those inventions he makes on the show ever work in real life. Remember when we tried making that bomb with my dads fertiliser and some moth-balls?"
"It kinda' worked. It did fizzle a bit."
"Yeah, but it didn't blow up like in the episode."
"Still burned down your dad's shed a treat though, didn't it?"
Before Eric could remind Boy Wander precisely how much hell he had caught for that little escapade the rest of the class emerged from the stairwell and began moving through the library towards them. Kicking Boy Wander urgently Eric ran over to the nearest desk and sat down on its lid. His friend got up and patted the dust from his knees.
Angleface was the first through the door and he eyed the pair of them with ill-concealed suspicion. "What have you two been up to, then?"
"Nothing much. Just the every day to-ings and fro-ings of the common or garden pupil." said Boy Wander. "Yourself?"
"Well, before the assembly I spent the morning loaning out my services as a protector of my fellow pupils for modest sums of money."
"Protection racket." said Eric and Boy Wander in unison.
"Call it what you will, but either way I don't recall seeing your name on the list of people who've paid. We shall discuss this at length during morning break, if you catch my drift."
"Considering how much you smell, it's difficult not to catch your drift, Angleface." said Eric. As soon as the full-stop had passed his lips he bit his tongue and shot a sideways glance at his friend.
Angleface's eyes widen as he puffed himself up to full height. Looming over Eric he said three short words. "You. Are. Dead." 
Boy Wander watched him move off to the rear of the classroom, and then walked over to Eric, who was still staring straight ahead.
"Oh, way to go on the whole 'play it safe' thing, mate."
"I don't know what came over me." said Eric, lowering himself slowly into his chair. Boy Wander took up station besides him.
"Big fat pillock syndrome, I suspect."
"Thanks for the comforting."
"No matter, I think we'll easily be able to outrun him until next lesson. What have we got next, by the way?"
The school had recently gone onto a two weekly rotational lesson schedule, meaning that most of the pupils were still finding their feet and that it was not uncommon for entire legions of children to converge on one classroom, all believing that their next lesson was there.
Eric withdrew a dog-eared timetable from his top pocket and began scanning along it. "Um, I think it's science next." he said.
"Is that back on, yet?" asked Boy Wander. "Has Mr Rockitt dealt with that whole rabbit thing, now?"
"Ooh, I dunno. We can always turn up for the lesson anyway, it'll either be that or 'library time'."
The two of them considered the possibility of spending the best part of an hour in the library with Angleface and no adult supervision.
"Y'know I never thought I'd be looking forward to a science lesson." said Eric.
It was then that Mr Creak arrived. Scrubbing the previous days subject from the board he began to write one of his own.
"How I single-handedly won the Battle of Bosworth Field." read out Boy Wander. Yep, he thought to himself, it looks like being another corker of a lesson.

While Eric and Boy Wander were having any chance of passing their history GCSE's further destroyed by Mr Creak's reinterpretation of the events of the mid fifteen-hundreds, Mr Rockitt was preparing the science lab for the exorcism that would take place there in that mornings break. As well as the religious items he had procured from home he'd also stopped by at a local twenty-four hour religious antiquity store and picked up a brass replica of Pope Pious IV's nose and Turin Shroud tea towel. Draping the latter over his head like some bespectacled Mother Teresa, he made the sign of the cross over those tools that would be employed in the coming ceremony. Kneeling before the holy metal schnozz of some past pope he offered up a prayer to whatever God was rota'd in to listen to him that day.
Having finished that, he got back to his feet and moved over to the glass bottle, which he had taken off the heat upon arriving that day. Now that it had sufficiently cooled down he took a wooden spoon from one of the drawers and used its handle to crudely smash the multicoloured crystals that stuck to the bottom of the demijohn. Once he was satisfied that they'd all come loose he poured them into a tub and placed it on a nearby desk. That done he went over to the intended star of that mornings event. The skeletal rabbit had resumed its pacing of the hutch and despite its shortcomings in the eye department, Mr Rockitt had the distinct impression that it was glaring at him.
"Not long before you'll be cast back from whence you came, you evil loathsome spawn of hells pits!" said the science teacher, the events of the previous days having had a marked effect upon his vocabulary. Crossing himself once more, he picked up his battered copy of 'Armageddon: The Musical' and settled down behind his desk.

Up in his computer room Mr Jackson had a free lesson and was using the opportunity to clear off some of the many games that accumulated upon the PCs over the course of a normal school week. So far it had been a relatively simple job, but on this particular PC a freak combination of a virus and a Space Invaders clone had interacted on a machine code level and turned into a weird hybrid game that refused to be deleted from the hard drive.
"You stubborn little bugger!" he cursed as yet another attempt to eradicate the rogue program failed. Sitting back he cracked his knuckles before reapplying his fingers to the keyboard. "Lets see where you've hidden yourself this time..."

At the other end of the school Rose was partaking in her favourite activity, which was the daily updating the school reports files to include all of the lines dished out during the previous day. Her finger traced down the list of names that had just been handed to her and as she noted the particularly large tallies, she tutted to herself before copying the figure to the computer. As she came to the latest batch of lines that Eric had landed himself with she drew breath and gave an even more admonishing tut-tut than usual. Clicking on the relevant cell in the spreadsheet she was using she tapped in the first digit of the gargantuan figure and was rewarded with an odd buzzing noise that was quite unfamiliar.
Moving the pointer back to the cell she clicked again, this time the screen went blank momentarily then flicked to a simplistic black on white display of what appeared to be a game of some sorts. After a few seconds it flicked back to the normal display with no trace that the interruption had ever occurred. Shrugging to herself she clicked on the cell once more - this time getting no resistance from the computer - and tapped in the number.
Discounting the event as a software glitch she put it to the back of her mind and carried on with the task at hand. After she had finished and saved the document, she turned off the monitor and went about her business filing the various day's reports in cabinet that loomed in the corner of the room.
Unheard and unnoticed the hard drive purred into life for a fraction of a second, just about long enough for it to change a very large number into a slightly lower number.

"Oh sod you then." said Mr Jackson under his breath. He had now exhausted all of his computer expertise in his fruitless efforts to purge the file from its host computer. Each time he tried it seemed to go into hiding somewhere else on the network then pop back onto the PC a few seconds later. It was taunting him.
"You'll get yours." he sneered.

"And that's when I gave King Richard his horse, in exchange for all of his earthly goods." concluded Mr Creak.
At the back of the class Einstein's head thudded against his desk, his mind boggling at the amount of misinformation being spewed out by the aged teacher. He had long since given up trying to correct the many historical inaccuracies that were par for the course in Mr Creak's lessons. And on those occasions in the past when he had raised his voice in dissent he had been pelted with paper planes and rubbers as the class showed its allegiance to the far more entertaining and completely skewed history that Mr Creak expounded, and the complete ignorance that went hand in hand with it.
Damn them all to average exam marks, he thought to himself.

By now Mr Jackson was well on his way to the science lab. He had all but given up on his computer problems and had instead decided to focus upon his part in what he considered to be the day's main event. Jogging up the final few steps to the landing he knocked on Mr Rockitt's door, which after a small delay was unlocked and opened barely a few inches, just enough to allow Mr Rockitt to see out of the crack and ascertain who it was that knocked without.
"Ah, good, it's you." he said.
"Yes, it's me." replied Mr Jackson as the door was drawn back to allow him entry.
Stepping in he took off his jacket he draped it over the back of a chair. "Are we all set up?" he asked.
"Yeah, we've got everything ready." said the science teacher as he closed and locked the door securely. "I've been practising the ritual of exorcism and I think I've got it down to the bare essentials."
"Which are?"
"Well, I wave this brass nose around and then pour the holy water over the rabbit."
"Oh. Right. Very concise." said Mr Jackson, the sudden inclusion of an exorcism into the deal confusing him slightly. "And, may I ask what that is on your head?"
"Ah! Perfect copy of the Turin Shroud, only smaller. You can never be too careful." Mr Rockitt tapped the side of his nose.
"I'm beginning to see that, yes..." said Mr Jackson as he took a few steps back. "And after the opening ceremonies we use the crystals, right?"
"Yep. The combination of the holy might of God and the power of pure science should be enough to vanquish the hellish presence entirely."
"Fair do's. Let's get on with it then, I'm due a class in ten minutes."
Mr Jackson pulled out a chair from one of the nearby desks and plonked himself down in it while Mr Rockitt went about with the mystical fifty percent of the proceedings. Waving the replica nose around the hutch he hummed 'To Be A Pilgrim' to himself and then made generous with the holy water all over the occupant. Smiling happily that everything was going according to plan, he turned around.
"There, that's that dealt with. Now if you'd care to put on those gloves," he indicated a thick pair of electrically insulted gloves he had place beside the tub of crystals. "You can grab Mr Bouncey and pop him into the sink and I'll sprinkle on the good stuff."
Mr Jackson obligingly picked up the gloves and pulled them onto his hands. He gave the vicious brute in the hutch quick look. "Are you sure these will afford me enough protection?"
"Ample. After all he's lost all of his claws and teeth now, and those things with withstand up fifty-thousand volts."
Mr Jackson inspected the label that adorned the left hand glove. "It says they can only withstand up to thirty-thousand on here." he pointed out.
"Trust me, I've tried them with fifty-thousand and they stood up to it magnificently."
"Really?"
"Yes. Absolutely." beamed Mr Rockitt. "Slight hair loss, but that's all."
Mr Jackson's eyes widened. He was quite protective of his hair and wasn't sure how his wife would react to him returning home having seemingly suffered from an instant acting alopecia. "Hair loss?" he asked with not a little concern in his voice.
"But it doesn't matter anyway, as the release of energy upon cleansing the rabbit of the satanic foulness that inhabits it should generate very little electrical energy at all."
Mr Jackson relaxed at this announcement.
"And precious little radiation." said Mr Rockitt. Spotting that Mr Jackson was edging towards the door he added. "Just kidding. It'll be perfectly safe."
"You're quite sure?" asked the sceptical computer studies teacher. "No hidden dangers? No alpha, beta or gamma rays buzzing about the room? No explosions? No holes being ripped in the space-time continuum and spaghettifying our bodies into a bloodied mess?"
"No. No. No and-" Mr Rockitt pondered the last possibility. "No. In fact there's a greater chance of a plane crashing into the school."
Mr Jackson let out a sigh of relief.
"Or one of us becoming demonically possessed and murdering the other one." mused Mr Rockitt.
But Mr Jackson wasn't falling for that one. "You're pulling my leg, right?"
"Yes. Yes, of course I am!" laughed Mr Rockitt. At least I hope I am, he thought. "So, if you could grab our little lab assistant, please?"
And so Mr Jackson went over to the hutch and began fiddling with the latch with his now oversized hands while Mr Rockitt measured out a few grams of the magic crystals and tipped them into a beaker. Once Mr Jackson had a good hold upon the struggling undead rabbit he hauled it out and joined his experimental partner by the sink. Keeping the whirling dervish at arms length he placed it into the basin and held it relatively still.
"Ready?" ask Mr Rockitt.
"As I'll ever he." replied Mr Jackson, turning his head away from the sink in expectation of something dire.
Upending the beaker, Mr Rockitt let the crystals tumble out onto his former pet. As they struck home a blinding light shone forth, a white glare as bright as the sun, but as cold as snow. Shielding his eyes, he put the beaker down.
"Well, it seems to be working, doesn't it?"
But Mr Jackson wasn't listening to him; he was too preoccupied with saying the Lord's prayer as fast and as often as he could. He wasn't by any means a religious man, but if he was going to die anyway, he figured it couldn't hurt to do a bit of sucking up.
After about a half of a minute of Mr Rockitt marvelling and Mr Jackson praying the glow subsided and the two teachers looked into the sink to see what damage had been done. As Mr Jackson withdrew his hands they were both surprised and pleased to see that only a fine white powder remained in the basin.
Mr Rockitt looked up at Mr Jackson. "Gosh. Seems to have worked a treat. I wonder where the expelled present went to?"
Turning on the taps to wash away the remains he picked up the beaker and made to return it to the cupboard at the other side of the room.
Mr Jackson was still watching the remains of Bouncy T Rabbit gurgle down the plug hole when he heard Mr Rockitt speak again.
"Aha. That's that question answered then."
"Pardon?" said Mr Jackson as he swivelled around. "Oh. I see."
In the middle of the room floated a fluffy white cloud of ectoplasm. It was bobbing up down a few feet above one of the children's desks and displayed none of the malevolence that the pair of teachers had come to expect from the evil spirit which had taken over Bouncey's corpse.
"Doesn't look very nasty to me." said Mr Jackson.
Mr Rockitt, being the more adventurous of the two, walked up to the ghost and tried poking it. It didn't seem to take any heed of him. "I guess those crystals burnt all the badness out of it. This must be a bog-standard plain-flavoured phantom."
"You think?"
"Can you think of a better explanation?"
"Nope." he said, walking up to stand beside Mr Rockitt. The apparition was only a few inches in front of him and he took the opportunity to walk all around and inspect it from all angles. "It's going to really distract the kids during lessons."
"That's true." Mr Rockitt scratched his chin and toyed with a few ideas. "I'm guessing that a hoover won't do the job to shift it."
"How about hanging that tea towel over it? Pretend it's a lamp or something?" Mr Jackson considered the stupidity of this plan. "Forget I said that."
Pulling the scaled down Turin shroud from his head, Mr Rockitt threw it experimentally over the ghost. It passed straight through and fluttered to the desk below. "Hmm... Seems we're stuck with a real quandary. It's a pity that it's not like it's that film with the short fat American lady in it..."
"She Devil?"
"No, not Roseanne, entirely different woman and film." said Mr Rockitt as he searched his memory for the correct title. "Um, Poltergeist! That's the one."
"Oh, right. What with all the 'Go into the light!' stuff?"
Between them the ghost started drifting slowly upwards towards the ceiling. The two men backed off and stared at its ascent.
"That was easy." said Mr Jackson. "I guess that woman knew her stuff."
"Yes... I wonder if we can speed it up, though?" said Mr Rockitt. "Go into the light! Go into the light!" he chanted.
The ghost redoubled its pace towards the ceiling and within a few seconds made contact with the light fitting, where it stopped.
"Wow, a ghost with a sense of humour." said Mr Jackson.
Mr Rockitt studied the now inert form that hung from the ceiling. Doing some quick mental calculations and hypothesis he came to a speedy conclusion. "Um, you know that thing I said about their being no risks involved with this whole thing?"
"Ye-es." said Mr Jackson slowly.
"I may have been wrong."
The two teachers barely had time to hit the deck before cracks started to crazy-pave the surface of the lightbulb, making unpleasant high-pitched squeaking noises as they spread. And then with a deep 'Foof!' noise and a feeling of massive pressure the bulb exploded into a million powdery particles, which drifted down like tiny dust motes.
The ghost was gone. And so was the power to the entire school.

After the ensuing chaos had died down a bit and power had been restored by Albert's expert rewiring of the fuse box in his cubby hole things returned to normal. Or at least what passed as normal in St Christopher's. In fact a whole two lessons managed to pass by without anyone being hurt or maimed in any way. It was probably a record.
During the afternoon break all of the staff gathered in the first floor staffroom to both discuss the day's events and get ready to present Mr Blessed with his cake.
"And so after it disappeared and we blew out all the fuses I got the hoover off of Albert and cleaned up all the mess." finished Mr Rockitt.
"And what did you do with those crystals you mentioned?"
"Oh, I've locked those safely away in my room and gave the key to Albert. Don't want them getting into the wrong hands, do we?"
As far as the rest of the staff was concerned Mr Rockitt was those very hands he spoke of, but no-one vocalised this thought for fear of hurting his feelings.
"No. Wouldn't want that at all." summed up Mr Carter. "Anyway, Mr Blessed. We've got a little surprise for you, haven't we everyone?"
As if by magic an A4 sized card appeared from nowhere and was shoved under Mr Blessed's nose.
"We know you've had a bit of a rough week this week so we all decided to get together and get you a cake."
"Oh, you shouldn't have!" said a blushing Mr Blessed. "Oh God bless you all! This sort of thing never happened at my old school..."
On cue Mr Wacker entered the room bearing the cake upon a tray and a mildly annoyed look upon his face. Sliding it onto the table by the far window he stood up and addressed the room. "You've got ten minutes and not a minute more." he stated.
As he walked from the room he was passed by Rose entering. "Have you cut the cake yet?" she asked.
"No, not yet." said Mr Carter.
"Didn't think so." said Rose. "After all you forgot to take the knife!"
Slapping his expansive forehead Mr Carter trotted over to Rose and took the unnecessarily large knife from her. Turning it so it's handle faced away from him, he extended his arm and offered it to Mr Blessed.
"Thankyou very much." he said gratefully. "And thankyou very much to the rest of you."
Cutting deeply into the luxuriant cake his divided it into thick wedges which he lifted off onto the steady stream of plates which appeared then disappeared at his side. Once the plates had ceased to flow he straightened up and turned to face the rest of the room. Each of the staff members present (which now included Albert as well) had a plate in their hand with the portion of cake waiting on it. Putting the knife down on the cakeboard he collected his plate from Mr Withit who was holding onto it for him.
"Well. Thanks again for making me feel truly welcome in a week that's been a bit grotty for me." he picked up his slice of cake and bit deeply into it, finding the experience to be an intoxicating blend of tastes and textures.
The rest of the staff needed no further instructions and began to set about their own slices with a vengeance.
"Oh my!" said Mr Carter. "Mr Bun has certainly outdone himself on this occasion."
The rest of the staff murmured agreement in-between mouthfuls of the heavenly cake.
"You're not wrong there. I've never tasted something as light and sweet and truly exotic as this. It's a truly unusual blend of flavours." enthused Mr Blessed.
Noticing that all conversation had stopped and that people were looking his way, he decided to qualify his statement. "I've just never tasted anything like it before, that's all." he said.
"You've never tasted coconut cream before?" inquired a genuinely puzzled Mr Jackson. "Why is your eye twitching like that?"
"Coco-NUT?" asked Mr Blessed in a tremulous voice. "As in a kind of nut?"
"Well, yeah." replied Mr Jackson.

It was very fortunate for Mr Blessed that every phone in the school was hard-wired into the local hospital's switchboard. As the ambulance pulled out of the front gate with its sirens blaring Mr Jackson turned to Mr Carter."Anaphylactic shock, eh? Who'd thought?"
"Poor man. Best just buy him a pair of socks next time, eh?" said a dejected Mr Carter.
"Yep." agreed Mr Jackson. "Probably be a good idea to check he's not allergic to wool or anything first, though."
"Yeah."




FRIDAY

Friday's assembly began on a more sombre note than usual with the announcement that all of Mr Blessed's religious education and history lessons would be cancelled until the following week. However it was made clear that the teacher was expected to make a full and speedy recovery from the acute case of Total Body Swelling that was symptomatic of his particular peanut allergy. In fact it was reported that the only thing preventing him returning to work that very day was the fact that he was currently unable to fit through the double doors at the front of the school.
Once this was over and the school day had begun proper the children drifted off to their respective classes, which for Eric and company meant a trip up to the computer room to learn about the 'theory of artificial intelligence and how it can be applied to model the behaviour of individuals in a building'. Quite what use that might have was beyond Eric.
Seating themselves at their regular machines towards the rear of the class they half listened and made notes, while devoting most of their concentration towards getting a new high score on whatever game was in fashion with them on that particular day.
"I've just got onto the second level of the third island!" whispered Boy Wander excitedly to his fellow gamer.
"Have you seen those bouncing skeletons?" asked Eric in a likewise furtive manner.
"Yeah. Damn things cost me two lives so far."
"They're almost as bad as those vampire bats, aren't they?"
"Oh, I hate those."
And the gaming continued unabated.

Over the far side of the school Mr Wacker was busy in his office. During the previous day he had successfully completed the first draft of his speech and then later that evening had rehearsed it in front of the mirror. As it stood it was precisely forty-two minutes too long.
After deciding that he could not really cancel the lesson following lunch so that his unabridged version might be heard, he began looking through the mighty speech for sections that could be edited or removed entirely. His opening preamble upon the ever-popular theme of 'why children are innately evil' had been savagely cut down by some ten pages to a more manageable three paragraphs, while his discourse on the 'lack of proper morale fibre in society as a whole' had been halved in size. However the main body of the speech, in which he extolled his own twisted brand of values had hardly been affected, with only his pregnant pauses having their gestation periods shortened from those of an elephant to something more akin to frog spawn's.
He was just tidying up the final continuity errors that had crept in when Rose shuffled into his office with his normal morning cup of tea upon a saucer bedecked with biscuits.
"Ah, thankyou, Rose." he said as she placed his refreshments upon the corner of his desk.
"Is that your speech, then?" she said, turning her head to try and read a few snatches of the text.
"Yes." he said, making a few hurried scribbles he slapped down his pen with a sense of finality. "And I've just finished."
"Would you care for me to give it a quick proof reading, Mr Wacker?" asked Rose; eager to see what thoughts the headmaster had laid down.
"No thankyou, I've checked it thoroughly and it's near as dammit perfect." he said.
Looking out of the window opposite his desk he noticed that the day was showing signs of being gloriously sunny. "You know, I think I have my tea in field today. Lovely weather, after all."
Picking up his speech he folded it in four before squirreling it away under his mortarboard. He then picked up the saucer from his desk, tipped the biscuits into his top pocket and wandered from the office with his steaming cup of tea in hand.

Once the bell had rung for first break most of the children ran from the computer room in their usual frenzied rush to get to the tuck shop. The only one who took his trip at anything like a leisurely pace was Einstein, but then he wasn't in any hurry. He had spent most of that morning getting ready for his display of an ancient Hawaiian ritual dance and was just going to make the final preparations.
Walking into the geography room, he placed his bag upon a desk and began unpacking his materials. Among them was the native Hawaiian costume that his mother had crafted for him from odds and ends of fabric, adorning it with exotic flowers from her collection in the greenhouse. Holding it up in front of him by the shoulders, he looked it up and down. It was a perfect replica of the specifications he had supplied her with.
She had also made him a hat, which he wasn't so sure of. Such was the amount of flowers and exotic fruit adorning it he felt sure she had probably been idly watching a Carmen Miranda musical on television while she tacked it together. It certainly bore no resemblance to the one he had pointed out in their Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Deciding that it was a touch over the top, he tucked it back into his bag before walking back over to the classroom entrance and shutting the door. Casting his eyes about the room they alighted upon the tall backed chair of Mr Withit, which he duly dragged over to the door before jamming it under the handle to prevent anyone gaining entry while he changed clothes.
Within minutes he had stripped down to his Spiderman underpants and struggled into his authentic island garb. The grasses woven into it tickled his legs would probably see him sporting a large rash by the end of the day, but as long as he got perfect marks for this assignment it would be worth it.
Sitting once more at his desk he pulled further items from his bag. Several sticks of greasepaint and a compact mirror were used to paint ornate patterns onto his face and chest, while a cassette recorder and some small speaker were also removed, trailing leads behind them.
Once he was satisfied that he was finished with his own decoration, he pulled a piece of paper from the pockets of his shorts, which were sat in a neatly folded pile on another desk. He had let Mr Withit in on his plan after that Wednesday's lesson and gained the co-operation of the teacher. His last job was to get the extension cord from the resource cupboard at the rear of the room and connect it up to the tape record and speakers, so that they could be hauled up the stairs and connected into the computer room's wall socket. He duly did this, finding the cable to be a mass of tangles.
He was still unravelling it when the bell went for the next period. Had this been any other day, then upon discovering him in this state of undress the rest of the class would have felt in necessary to give him a good kicking. However, because most of the student body would leap at the chance to shed their school uniform in favour of something more tribal, they too where dressed in an array of poorly hewn grass skirts when they spilled into the room.
Mr Withit followed not far behind and had to shout at the top of his voice to calm the boisterous crowd of children down. Espying Boy Wander in the crowd, he noted with little surprise that he had also decided to go with the grass skirt look. On the bright side, though, at least his didn't appear to be made of plastic like the majority of the students.
"I see you went with the flow as well, Boy Wander." he said.
Looking up from the drawing he was currently penning, he replied. "Well, you know what they say, 'When in Hawaii'."
"Yes." said Mr Withit. "Well, before we get onto the fascinating projects that I'm sure you've all come up with, we're going to start with a demonstration by Einstein. So, everybody up onto the fire escape."
They didn't need telling twice.

As Mr Wacker sat on the bench at the rear of the school, he was in his own private heaven. He had just finished off what perhaps the finest speech ever penned by a head master, so good that he was thinking of getting it published in the next edition of The Head Teachers Quarterly Review, that most esteemed of publications which every school in the land held in the highest of repute.
And what a glorious day it was, too. The sun blazed down and scorched the playing field. The distant hedges seemed to waver and undulate as heat rose up and distorted the air. But Mr Wacker was as cool as the proverbial cucumber as he sat in the shade created by the back wall of Albert's room.
Picking up his mug of tea, he sipped noisily from it before placing it back down beside him and taking a healthy bite of a chocolate digestive.
What a beautiful, sunny and hot day.

"Bloody 'ell it's getting cold!" said Albert as he awoke from one of his regular morning naps.
Having lived for most of the past three years in the in the immediate proximity of the boiler, he had grown used to the roasting heat that it radiated, and was therefore very susceptible to slightest drop in temperature when it ran low on fuel.
Getting to his feet, he stomped over to the coal reserve and pulled his shovel from beside it.
He was about to dig it into the pile when he noticed a box protruding from it. Bending down, he pulled it free and tried to read the blackened label.
It should be noted though, that Albert wasn't a young man, and so any knowledge he might have had of foreign languages had long since passed away.
"Well, I wonder how this got into the coal delivery?" he asked himself. Sliding the box open, he revealed the contents to be thirty-six grey spheres, each about the size of a golf ball. Putting two and two together (thus making five), he surmised that they must have fallen in with his coal at the distributors.
Picking out one of the little bombs, he eyed it carefully. "I reckon it must be one of those new fangled smokeless fuel pellets." he decided.
And so, believing in the old proverb of "waste not, want not", he starting placing the misidentified fireworks onto the coal heap, carefully arranging them into an aesthetically pleasing pattern.

Two floors above him, Einstein was already well into his tribal dance. He had already explained at some length that the dance was used by ancient Hawaiians to quell the anger of the volcano gods, hopefully sparing them from a rain of fiery death.
And so Mr Withit was keeping an eye on his watch, Einstein had told him that the dance lasted ten minutes in total, which at first he had been quite happy to accept. However, Mr Withit had not counted on his additional lengthy introduction, and so had decided that he would allow Einstein a few more minutes before stepping in and curtailing his act.
After all, he had to allow the rest of the pupils at least two minutes each to give him some feeble excuse about why they hadn't done their homework.
Looking back at his watch, he studied the second hand as it slowly ticked around the dial. Sixty seconds, he though to himself.

After tipping a shovel full of coal into the boiler, Albert picked out one of the little grey bombs and regarded it at some length. "Let's see how well these buggers work then," he said to himself as he tossed the deadly French firework into the open front of the boiler. Swinging the door back into place, the latch clicked home, securing it tightly. Inside, the coals began to glow about the edges.
Had it not been for the toughened glass behind the grating on the boiler, things could have gone very badly indeed for Albert. As it was, they were just going to go badly for somebody else instead.

Mr Withit's hand snaked out to the stop button and pushed it in. With a loud "thunk" the tape stopped, leaving Einstein gyrating for a few seconds without an accompaniment before he realised what had happened.
"That's excellent, Einstein. Well done. 'A+'," said Mr Withit as he stood up and started clapping the temporarily disorientated Einstein.
Coming to his senses, Einstein stopped jiggling about and faced towards the rest of the class. "But sir, we shouldn't stop the dance prematurely. The ancient Hawaiian's believed that doing so would be a blasphemy to the gods of the volcano. Probably resulting in an eruption."
Mr Withit waved his arms expansively. "D'you see any volcanoes around here, Einstein?"
"Well, no but-" started Einstein, before being interrupted by one of those really contrived coincidences that have littered this story so far.
From beyond and below the fence that bordered the fire escape, there came a muffled "WHUMP!" as the contents of Albert's boiler finally gave way and exploded. Luckily the boiler was quite unaffected by this, being of sturdy and well-designed construction. However the little tin hat, which sat upon the top of its chimney, was anything but, and so gave way at the first sign of trouble. With an unpleasant noise of metal ripping and a cloud of smoke and sparks, said article departed into the skies at something approaching a hundred miles an hour, whistling past the eyes of Mr Withit and his entire geography class.
The eyes of all those assembled followed the projectile's course into the clear blue sky, and as it crested the top of its arc Mr Withit looked back down at Einstein and patted him on the shoulder.
"Okay, you can finish your dance, but we're all running inside." and once again, the class didn't need telling twice.

Mr Wacker had only just drifted off to sleep when he was awoken by the noise of screaming children and running feet.
"What the blazes?" he said, getting off of the bench and looking about him. As soon as his ears had properly triangulated the source of the sound his features took on an annoyed look. "That bloody geography class! I told him no good would come of this..."
Striding purposefully around to the fire exit at the side of the school, he noted with verbally explicit dismay that somebody had removed the waste paper basket that he had used to prop the door open for his return.
"Oh for the love of God!" he shouted as he grew more and more angry.
His fists started pounding on the door to attract some attention. "Somebody in there had better let me in!"

Token Fat Boy, as he was known to his classmates, was just returning to his computer studies lesson from the toilets when he heard the thumping coming from the lower rear fire exit. As he approached it and took hold of the release bar, he called out to whoever was making the noise.
"Alright, I'm coming!" he yelled as he waddled closer.
With a few grunts of effort as he pushed the bar down and forwards, the door swung aside to reveal Mr Wacker. Normally this would elicit gasps of shock from any pupil as they came to comprehend just how close they were to their feared headmaster and his cane, Elizabeth. But on this occasion it was looks of puzzlement, concern and curiosity that passed over Token Fat Boy's face.
Firstly puzzlement for how a plainly unconscious man could make so much noise. Then concern as he noted the trickle of blood on the teacher's forehead. And then finally curiosity, as he tried to figure out the exact nature of the metal object that lay smouldering on the grass.
After studying the scene for a good few seconds, he came to a conclusion. "I s'pose I'd better get help, then."

It was about a half an hour later that Mr Wacker came groggily to, awaking to find Rose dabbing at his head with a damp cloth.
"You've got quite a nasty bump there, Mr Wacker." she said as he dabbed him once again.
Swinging his legs off of the staffroom couch, he sat bolt upright. A few milliseconds later the massive bump that appeared atop his bonce made its presence felt as it complained at the sudden movement.
"Ye Gods!" he exclaimed, foolishly bringing his hand up to his head and prodding the swelling accidentally. "Christ alive that hurts! What hit me?"
Rose reached over to the coffee table and pulled a lump of metal from beside Mr Wacker's hat now resided. "This did. No-ones particularly sure where it came from, though."
"Bloody hell!" said Mr Wacker as he took the twisted lump from Rose's hand and inspected it. "When I catch whoever did this, they'll be having a meeting with Elizabeth I guarantee it!"
"Oh now, don't be so rash. I can't see how any pupil could possibly be responsible for an act of God like that. I expect it just fell off the roof." Rose reasoned. "Just like that time a copy of the bible fell onto Mr Blessed as he was getting out of his car." she continued, and here Rose had to work very hard to suppress a chuckle.
"Well, I'm sure there's a pupil involved in it somewhere..." growled Mr Wacker. "Oh hell! What time is it?" he asked, suddenly aware that he had a speech to give.
"The lunch bell went about five minutes ago."
Getting unsteadily to his feet, he stumbled from the room shouting back to Rose. "I've timed this thing too tightly! I can't afford to miss any more time!"
"Well if you think you're up to it!" she called after him. Then shrugging, she pottered back up to her office to get her car keys. She had popped over to see Mr Blessed that very morning and offered to pick up his prescription for him, an offer of generosity that he had keenly taken up.
It's amazing what you can do with a scanner, PhotoShop 5 and a colour printer, you know...

As Mr Wacker walked a little erratically into the assembly hall, a pair of juvenile eyes watched him from beneath the display case.
"Blimey, he's a bit late isn't he?" said one shadowed figure.
"Looks like he's been drinking, too." said another.
Detaching themselves from the darkness, Eric and Boy Wander emerged into the light and carefully tiptoed over to the storage cupboard.
"Ssssh!" said Eric, holding a finger to his lips.
"Oh just hurry up you pillock." whispered his partner in crime.
Opening the door just enough to let themselves slip in, they looked conspirationally left and right before disappearing into the room and drawing the door closed.
Eric's hand probed the wall to his immediate left and after a few seconds found the light switch. Upon illuminating their current hiding place it was revealed to be filled to the hilt with chairs and tables, normally only brought out once a year for the exam period.
"Wow! We could make such a cool fort with this lot." said Boy Wander, as he looked the contents up and down.
"That's certainly true," said Eric as he stood equally awe-struck by the bountiful display of furniture before them. "But not now. We've got a plan to carry out."
"Right. Let's go." agreed his friend, putting aside any thoughts of massive wooden constructs for the time being.
Worming their way around the stacked chairs, they got to the rear of the room and Eric once more signalled for Boy Wander to be silent.
Opening the door just a sliver, he peered out to the kitchen beyond. Observing that the single dinner lady present was preoccupied with piles of potatoes, he motioned for his friend to follow him as they snuck quietly through and to the exit at the far end of the room. Here again he stopped, pushing the door outwards slightly and peering out of the window at the top.
"It's all clear, they've got their backs to us."
And everything else went like clockwork. After a few bits of crawling and some stealthy climbing of the stairs the twosome found themselves in the staffroom.
"Phase one complete, Wander. Initiate phase two."
"Yessir!" he said, saluting. "Oh crap! I've forgotten the camera!"
"What!?" said Eric, his eyes like two saucers.
"S'okay. It's in the lockers upstairs. Won't be a minute. Find something to pose with." he said, ducking out of the room and sprinting up the final set of stairs.
"Pose with?"
It took only a few seconds for Eric to find the perfect item in the room.
"Oh yes!" he said, walking over to the coffee table. "This'll be perfect..."

Downstairs, Mr Wacker had just got onto the stage, his podium being hastily dragged from the eaves by Mr Rockitt.
"Sorry, meant to do that earlier," said the science teacher apologetically.
Mr Wacker cleared his throat noisily and made to begin his speech. But something was missing.
Cursing all and sundry under his breath, he looked out over his audience. "Don't move an inch." he snarled.

On the top floor of the school, Boy Wander was also cursing under his breath. He had obtained the padlock which now secured his locker only a few weeks back, and ever since then had resolved to invest some of his pocket money in one that had not spent the last three years rusting away as it shielded his dad's shed from outsiders. Once again he turned the key, and once again the barrel refused to yield to him.
"Why did I have to spend all that money on Star Wars figures?"

Eric was completely ready. He had already removed his shorts, and upon hearing hurried feet on the stairs outside he pulled his pants down just far enough so that he could moon the doorway. Bending over, he finished off the ensemble by perching the scavenged mortarboard upon the small of his back.
"Look at me! I'm Mr Wacker!" he said in a pretty good approximation of the teacher's gruff tones.
"No." came the reply. "I am."
Looking through the gap between his knees, his eleven years of life passed before his eyes in a fleeting moment.
"Oh shit."




EPILOGUE

"I can't believe you didn't warn me!" said Eric, sitting on the pavement outside of school and cradling his head. It was a few minutes after school and most of the other pupils had left.
"Sorry. I was still upstairs trying to open my locker when the shouting started." said Boy Wander. "I tell you, even I didn't know half of those insults he was using."
"My parents are going to flay me alive."
"Yep. That's true."
"Oh, thanks for the comfort."
"Sorry... D'you reckon you could leave me your skateboard in your will, though?"
Getting up, Eric hitched his satchel up onto his shoulder and made to go home. "Very funny."
"Well, the worst you'll probably get is having your pocket money stopped," said his friend as he walked beside him.
"That's the last thing I need." said Eric. "Mr Wacker said he could never wear that hat again and that I had to buy him a new one."
"Ouch. Well, on the bright side, you didn't get any detention."
"He said I obviously wouldn't learn from it. I've got triple homework till the end of term instead."
"That's only two weeks, though. You can last two weeks, can't you?"
"Yeah, I don't mind the homework. At least I can hide that from my folks. But two weeks of term time left means that the reports will be sent out the Monday after next..." 
"Pity you didn't figure on a plan for that eventuality, eh?" joked Boy Wander.
His friends silence prompted him re-evaluate his statement. "Oh no... Tell me you aren't planning anything."
"Nothing you need worry about, no. I've stolen my report before, I can do it again."
"But they're stored in Rose's computer these days, you'll never get code for it!"
"Yes I will."
"How?"
"Thanks for asking. I'm damned I could think of a way to lever all this exposition into the plot." said Eric. "My plan is to confuse all of the teachers, I've done that before, all it takes is a pellet to each of the school shields and they'll be completely out of it..."
"Never could understand how that worked, myself."
"Nor me, but it does. Then I reckon it'll be pretty easy to knock down the teachers and get their codes..."
"What about freaky creaky? His one is kept in that safe of his, and we don't know the combination!"
"Well, I guess I'll have to bypass that somehow."
"Okay. Suppose you do get the passcode to her computer, how d'you plan on using it? She spends all her time using it."
"Now there I am stumped... If only she had a weakness. Some vulnerable spot. An Achilles heel. A Roger Peters' bladder..."
"Roger Peters?"
"You know, from infant school." explained Eric.
"Oh... Piss-Pants Peters."
"Yeah..."
Just then the topic of their discussion drove past in her shiny Morris Minor. She normally stayed late after school, so the Eric and Boy Wander had never seen her leave before.
They watched her car recede into the distance.
"Wasn't that the funny-eyed kid in the passenger seat?" said Boy Wander, unsure of himself.
"Well, I heard she had a grandson at the school, but I never suspected him." said Eric.
"Cor lummy." said Boy Wander. They had now reached the point at which their paths diverged. "Well, good luck with the plan. You can count me out, though."
"I can't say I blame you." smiled Eric. As he went on his way, there was less of a cloud of depression hanging over him. After all, he'd just found Roger Peters' bladder.



THE END

Copyright 1999 Graham Goring

Only to be distributed as part of the Klass of 99 zip file
