Bye bye School!

Last Sunday, it was time to go back to school to show our creations to Mr Jenkin Slenderbelly and to take the 80 pages long ethical test...


There he was again, still looking thin and turquoise with a huge black moustache and tinted glasses. That time he introduced himself as Mr Jenkin Slenderbutt, which was quite suspicious in itself you'll tell me.



He started to go round the classroom and asking every kid to show him their creation.

Loki had made a cool mini bulldozer with the front really looking like a bull. The teacher liked it.

Tepic had made an "ethical detector", that was strangely turning red (for "non-ethical") each time Mr Slenderbutt was touching it, whereas it was almost always green when one of the kids touched it (ok, only a few tried..). The teacher found it interesting.

I'm not sure I remember everything that everyone did, but I recall Red's little Babbage greenhouse (to allow plants to survive in this unwelcoming place). It was looking cool too. And Willow sewed a doll, Fiona had made a lamp, Tsula made an amazing device that was supposed to remove the magical powers if I understood well. It was really great and the teacher asked him to turn it off before someone got harmed.

Jimmy had built an impressive armchair, and when the Professor went to sit on it, he got electrocuted and couldn't stand up for at least 5 minutes! That was really funny to see him jerking in the chair. He finally got up and asked Jimmy to come see him after the class...

Sammy had made a hoop with a stick to bowl it and the teacher told him he was sure he had much fun with it, in a strange voice.
Sandi made a spinning snowman that didn't melt, Billy made a gun, Vivi made a boxing bot apparently designed to specifically boxe Creaky Gloom, and I didn't really see well what Clara made since the teacher had sent me to sit in the corner for talking in class, but I think it was some kind of clank.
Sevian didn't make anything but he had the excuse of being a magpie.

Then the teacher asked me what I had created, and I answered it was a story, so he asked me to stand up and read it aloud.

Here is my story :

Once upon a time was a little boy named Jack, who was living in
a little house with his mum and dad.
He loved them very much and was as happy as a little boy can be. He had little train toys and his favorite teddy bear was wearing a flight helmet, that way he could come along with Jack on all his adventures. And his mum would always knit him fluffy sweaters to keep him all warm and comfy during Winter.

One day though, a big fire burnt the whole house and his parents inside, and the boy became an orphan in less time than needed for the smoke to clear out. Even his teddy bear got lost in the fire...
He was sent to an orphanage where he was sleeping in a huge dormitory with dozens of other orphans like him.
The least we can say is that the adults who were in charge of the orphanage weren't very nice... They were feeding them some very clear soup with nasty bits inside, and some days nothing at all, and were taking every excuse to whip them and beat them up.
You would think that the children were trying to stick together against the grown-ups, but on the contrary, Jack was always laughed at and accused in place of others. He never made any friends there and was just so sad and lonely all the time.
For Christmas, they were just attending a longer mass but never got any presents.
Nor for their birthdays, and the little boy didn't even remember which day he was born on...

When he eventually turned thirteen, Jack was sent to a workhouse where he had to rub out the verdigris from copper-made objects. He wasn't fed much more than what he had at the orphanage and grew up but stayed very thin and bony. He was spending almost all his time in a dark basement rubbing out verdigris and the blue-green dust was sticking to his already pale skin so tight that even if he was able to take a bath, it would have been very hard to remove.

One day another of the boys working there stumbled upon some tool forgotten on the floor and the bottle of acid he was carrying fell and broke, spreading the liquid around. Some of the acid got into Jack's eyes and started to burn them. His eyes turned even redder than they already were because of the verdigris dust, and they became very sensitive to the light and even to the contact of thin air. They started to swell because of the inflammation and became two big blobs. Jack had to find two glass pieces that he would be wearing at all times to protect them, but the pain, although lessened, was still hard to bear.
He didn't make any friends in the workhouse either, because all the others were scared at his appearance, and he grew even more lonely every day, slowly forgetting the happy memories of his childhood that were keeping him hopeful during all these years.

Jack started to become bitter and angry, and couldn't stand to see people around him being happy when life was so cruel with him.

He eventually left the workhouse and started to wander in the
streets, hiding in dark corners, spying on the children laughing around him and he would follow them and play his tricks on them to make them cry. Only then would he feel as close to "happy" as he could get. But it wasn't really happiness, it was more of a revenge feeling and the more he was doing it, the more he was sinking into angriness and revengfulness.

One day, he heard about a test that the children of the city would have to take and he put a disguise on and begged the Mayor to allow him to be their teacher.
Once in the place, he started asking them what it was that made them happy, and he was planning on removing all of those things from around them to make them as sad as possible. He had a twisted feeling of satisfaction while he was imagining all those children crying around him, and he gave them some homework to do, of course, for the following Sunday, to prevent them from having too much fun in between. Because everyone knows that homework is boring.

The day of the test came, and Jack arrived in the class filled with children.
He started to ask them to show him the things they had created as their homework, and they came up to him, and offered them what they had made.
He received a fluffy warm knitted sweater, he received a teddy bear with a flight helmet... He received lots of other presents, and he was just standing there, looking at them while something was happening inside his mind.
The children started to sing "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you Mr Jack" and something funny started to tickle his eyes. He, who couldn't stand to hear children sing, or even birds, he let them wish him a happy birthday because he could hardly remember the last time he had heard that song addressed to him.
The children all ran towards him, and wrapped their little arms around him, to hug him all together, and suddenly something happened inside his chest, and the ice around his heart started to melt while all the memories of his happy childhood were coming back to him.
The children smiled to him, and for the first time in decades, Jack smiled in return.

Mr Slenderbutt didn't like my story, he asked me to stop, but I didn't.
At the end, I walked up to him and offered him the teddy bear with a flight helmet that I had made. And Red walked up to him and offered him the fluffy sweater she had knitted to him, and Willow walked up to him and started hugging him, and the others stood up too, to go hug him, and some started to hum "happy birthday".
The teacher started to cry.
But then he shouted to us to go back to our seats and to back off.

Triky said he hadn't showed yet what he had created, so the teacher turned to him and asked what it was.
Triky brought a huge metal machine with big metal teeth and the teacher backed off a little, startled and asking what that thing was.
Triky answered "It is a Teacher Eater". And he activated it.
The machine started to hum and the big metal teeth moved as if they wanted to eat something. The teacher looked horrified, but he was standing too close and he got caught by the teeth that slowly started to swallow him inside the giant mouth of the machine.
The kids stood up and tried to grab his legs to pull him out, but the Teacher Eater was too powerful.

Suddenly, some smoke started to pour out of the machine, and we almost all ran out of the school.
Miss Breezy was outside, wondering what was happening, and her school exploded before her very eyes...
There were still some kids inside, but luckily they could get out without any harm done to them.
The teacher, though, had disappeared, eaten by the Teacher Eater.

No longer after, we received a note from the Mayor, saying that the test was cancelled indefinitely and that we wouldn't have any other anymore.

It was the end of School for us.

Was it the end of Angry Jenkins though? Not so sure...