The proportions of the workshop were peculiar. It was almost like the longer you looked, the bigger they became.
Paint stained, saw scratched benches were arrayed across the indeterminate space. From the ceiling were dangling pyramids, odd colourful spheres, stars and multicoloured orbs. But unlike the walls, it seemed more solid, more permanent. It was tin, corrugated tin. The sort that twanged like a waterfall of gongs when the rain was splashing on it. Which it was now.
Then in came the rascals. They looked a bit like teenagers but they seemed a bit more ghostly and ethereal. They put on their aprons and goggles and masks. They were gossiping in a language that sounded like crunchy gravel. They went over to the cupboard and started pulling out their projects.
Out they came in little boxes. One had a minature shop they'd designed. It was in a Victorian style. There was a great swirling font saying "Baxters" in colourful stained glass. A newsagents. A deep brown varnish was ready to apply on walnut wood and he started lapping it on.
Around the corner, someone was chiselling a block of sandstone into a gargoyle. The chisel was coughing up the chips of stone and and yellowy dust. It had a haunched back, ready to glare down from a high church or a billionaire's townhouse.
On the next table there was someone designing this extrordinary lamp. It had this with a super strong bulb in this central circle in the middle. And then various little arms reached out of the center with different radii and energy-saving lightbulbs were staring out of these. The further away from the central bulb, the weaker the wattage.
In the corner of the room there was the glue gun. One of the rascals was fixing together some cheap and tacky plywood. Like something from a discount Chinese furniture catalogue. The glue come out too fast and now there was a rapidly drying whip of glue sitting on top of what had been the tabletop. He threw his arms up in frustration and made lots of angry gravelly sounds.
Then in the corner there was the class pyromaniac. He liked heating metals to see what colours they would turn. He was heating little strips of metals. Some of them became a sharp penetrating blue. Some became a purple. Some became an almost blinding white when held in the bunsen burner. He was planning to make his own fireworks, but he was more of health and safety hazard than a wizard pyrotechnician so far.
The bunsen burner had been left too close to a plastic bucket full of the metal strips. The plastic was melting into a white/brown sludgey mess. He'd gone to the toilet and everybody was so engaged in their own projects that nobody noticed the whistling and flashes from the corner of the room. Plumes of smoke were erupting and bellowing into the room.
Someone looked around, screamed and they began to panic. They dropped paintbrushes, files and screwdrivers and dashed towards the door. They fled down the corridor and just as everyone escaped there was an explosion that hurled bricks and textbooks across the playing fields.
Meanwhile in the Gents, he knew he had bad diarrhea that day. But didn't expect to be so bad that the building around him would collapse. He'd let loose and suddenly he was sitting in a pile of rubble. The door of the cubicle had blown off. And the class was staring at him. And the ones who weren't traumatised with shock, laughed.
