AND ALL THAT, BY EL SIDI CAMPEADOR

AND ALL THAT, by el SIDI CAMPEADOR

The central library was about to close. There was only two minutes left and Richard Chester couldn’t ride his bicycle any faster than that.
“Too many things for a single mind to deal with.” He thought.
In just two days, the most incredible experience of his life happened to him, all of a sudden, as fast as a thunder strikes.
Everything started about a year before, in the springtime of 1986. It was a cold morning in Oxford, and Richard was on his way to the university as usual.
Richard was a sort of a lunatic guy for many people, as he very seldom spoke to anyone and was always lost in his thoughts about research methods for chemistry and the different ways that the human body reacts against certain substances and all that. In all, he was looking for a good method to cure some weird illnesses resulting from the pollution of the late 20th century.
He really enjoyed the career he was doing and now it was his last year and, as he was far too smart for most of his classmates; he always had more extra time then anybody else during check-up terms. He was really happy while having that extra time because he really enjoyed chatting with his teacher, Miss Fawns, an incredibly talented Doctor in applied chemistry that happened to have the most beautiful legs in the whole university.
He used to waste at least 15 minutes after he done the exams before to return them just looking at her, always convinced that she wouldn’t notice it.
Of course she noticed it at all times, but she didn’t seem to mind at all, especially because she had had secret intimate relations with too many of her students in other universities where she used to work. In fact nobody else knew but she and her lovers, so let’s say they were under the same condition, they both had the horn and all that.
Most of his fellow students came from very rich families and had carte blanche to access almost every private room within the university through their contacts, and, as Richard was one of the few who earned the loan through his excellent qualifications and the only one who most of the time stayed apart from the rest, the students used to do some jokes about him and leave him traps in his room, very disgusting ones. Once he was working on an experiment in his room involving a very large rounded bowl made of glass and a few things such as gasoline and matches. Meanwhile his classmates they were collecting excrements from a cow’s field during a whole day until they had enough of it to fill a plastic bag.
They left the bag with the crap in front of his door. They set fire on the bag, ring his doorbell and run away.
When he was going to open the door, he should extinguish the flame using the first thing at hand, that would be his feet, and the rest would be curtains.
That would be a rather easy way to finish that issue for an average standard person, but for this genius it was going to have a bit different ending.
As he opened the door and stared at the fire, he started thinking quick as he had only a few seconds to find a way to solve the fuss.
“We have a fire of a minor magnitude. If it catches the carpet, it will lead us to a major disaster, and if it doesn’t, I might have just about enough time to find a bucket and fill it with water, but if it happen to fail the consequences won’t look very good either.”
He thought quickly:
“If I manage to stop the oxygen from the area in which the fire flames, the flame will occasionally get extinct and so we’ll all have a good ending here.”
He covered the fire with the bowl and, after a few seconds, the flame set off. All this happened in about six seconds. Of course there was still another little problem after he lift the bowl and that was the unpleasant odour of the, well, crap.
“Hmm. There is a funny smell.” He thought.
“Whoever done this, he wasn’t thinking much on our beloved planet earth. We all know how cow’s excrement contaminates the air, without even talking about ozone.”
Suddenly he thought of trying a little experiment involving a few chemical elements in order to transform the excrement into a non contaminated substance, and so he went to the main laboratory and started mixing the elements, hiding previously the excrement on a secret box in his room.
The long corridor that crossed to his room led to the headmaster’s office on one side, and the toilets on the other, and it was overcrowded by students of different classes. At his left, there was an open room in which some maths students were trying to match a perfect girl for “The party of the year at the uni.”
He wondered about the party for a moment. “Hmm. This is my last year here and I never heard of that before. What can that be? Maybe it’s a contest to make experiments in groups. That’ll help me to find some interesting students at my level. Let’s try that.”
He approached their room and ask them about it.
“Hi guys. I’m sorry to interrupt your chat. I was passing around and I couldn’t avoid listening to your conversation and I’m a bit curious. What’s that party about? I never heard of it before.”
“Oh.” One of them said surprised.
“Everybody knows about the party except, of course, the teachers.” They laughed at the very sound of it.
“But you are not a teacher, are you?”
“No.” He said. “I’m studying chemistry. But I don’t normally go to parties that much. I thought that maybe was something to do with some assignments or so.”
“No, no.” They carried on laughing.
“Nothing could be further from the truth. The reason why teachers don’t know about it is because is a private thing organised by all the students at the campus. There’ll be lots of drinks, music and…girls. Boy, come along and maybe we can get a nice charming beauty. There’ll be lots in there.”
He was a bit nervous because the very thought of lots of beautiful top magic wands all around the campus waiting for a male to spend the night with drove all the theories about reactions of the human body away.
“Ok. I might go there after all.” He said.
“When is it?”
“It will be in a week. Starting from four o’clock in the evening next Monday until dawn next day. Don’t forget this, tell only students, and come wearing your best suit. There’ll be a contest for the best couple and all that.”
“Ok. Thanks guys. I’ll see you there.”
As soon as he left their room, he heard some girl screaming at the corridor.
“I wonder what’s going on.” He thought.
There were a lot of people forming a circle around this girl who was on the floor really scared. Richard went there.
“What happened to you?” he asked her.
The girl was really frightened and started to speak very slow bubbling. “The-the-there is a re-re-really big spider. Huge! It’s over there. I-I-I am really scared of spiders.”
Richard went to where the girl led him and found it.
“Oh, my god!” He shouted.
“This is no spider. This is a tarantula and is very dangerous. I wonder how it came here. Hold on a tick. Quick, mate, gis that bucket, will ya?”
Everybody was frightened by now about the tarantula, but they were also wondering why somebody like Richard, much disciplined and always well spoken young student, could suddenly say something like that using that sort of slang at this campus in Oxford.
What they didn’t know is that Richard was raised in a very low area in east London where his parents were originally from and, although he didn’t often use it, sometimes unconsciously he did in rather extreme situations due to a trauma during his young hood, what himself called “Unconscious variations of the dialect once spoken by everyone at the same level.” That happened once when he was 12 years old and some gangs in his neighbourhood tried to steal some money from him, speaking in their gang slang, and he tried to avoid risks by starting to speak well spoken English and be polite to them, what made the members of the gang nervous by thinking he was a snob and they gave him the worst beating he was ever going to receive.
He avoided speaking in a correct manner most of the times in view of a very tough or dangerous situation since then without even knowing exactly why.
He put the tarantula in the bucket and took it to his room where he kept some of the tarantula’s hair for his own researching before to show it to Miss Fawns. During that week all you could hear about within the campus was comments about how the spider, I mean the tarantula, came there and all that.
How did that animal appeared there? It wasn’t its natural environment, and it was a very cold weather for it. The only person who made any productive use from it was Richard. He went to the lab and worked for days in complete secret, until he could find the substance to make crap a non contaminated substance.
After five days of intense work using a lot of chemical elements, plus the hair of the tarantula and a lot of imagination…all he made up was a useless viscous liquid.
Totally desperate, and needed of sleeping in any humanly possible way, he decided to keep the liquid that he made so far in secret until he could carry on doing the experiment any other time.
He left the lab with the liquid on his way to his room when two beautiful girls stopped him.
“Hey. Aren’t you the guy who found the spider? Wow! You must have a lot of courage. And you are pretty handsome, too. What’s that inside the bucket, pretty boy? Is it the spider? Can I see it?”
“No, no…”
“Please…”
The girls tried to persuade him to let them see it by kissing and touching him sensually. He was really nervous by now and the girls tried to steal the bucket from him. Fighting for it, both girls were pulling strong the bucket towards their side and he was pulling towards his when a big lad with huge muscles and a long beard appeared on the scene and the girls let the bucket go.
“James, what are you doing here? I thought you were still in Chicago on holidays.” One of the girls asked him. The other one stood aside.
“That is irrelevant now, is it not darling?” said James in a very arrogant manner and very angry for the situation.
“So what are you doing to my girlfriend, monkey?” He asked Richard.
“Listen. Hmm. This is a bloody stupid situation mate. Your gal tried to nick me bucket and I was just defending my position here. Now if you just…”
James grabbed Richard by his neck against the wall with one hand while extending the other one towards the bucket and with a slow movement of his head, asked Richard gently to give it to him.
“Listen.” Richard said. “You don’t seem to get it now, do ya? There’s a big mistake here. What that bucket contains is part of an experiment and it can be dangerous to play with and…”
James took the bucket, wet a few fingers on the liquid and then painted some stripes in his face with it, as if he was on the war.
“Please don’t do it!” Richard shouted.
But it was too late. After a few seconds everybody would know there was a funny smell coming from big bad James and they were moving apart from him.
“What on earth is this?” James asked.
“Well, it’s very hard to explain…”
“I hope it is not what I think it is!”
At that moment one of the teachers came around, Mr Harry Clouds.
Harry was a forty year old man, very tall and skinny that came from a very snob family. Most of his brothers and sisters decided to become managers and lawyers, and he decided to study psychology and become a teacher. Famous for his research methods, he was a very intelligent man to whom you couldn’t get in a trap quite easily.
“Holly Moses, James, you stink. I can recommend you very good bath salts, but you have to promise me you will use them. What do you say buddy?”
“Mr Clouds, the experiment this student was working on was unknown to me, but I know something does not smell good in here.”
“Still, why on earth would you throw that thing all over your face? And in respect to you, what was your experiment based on that you needed to get some…is that excrement I smell?”
“Well, yes, Sir. Partly it is. But let me explain it to you…”
“There is no time for explanations here and now. You will both go straight to Mr Candle’s office and he will sort this mess out. Now, go!”
Both students went with their heads bent over knowing that this episode wouldn’t have a happy ending for them.
Mr Candles was the headmaster, but on top of that he was a severe, angry, bossy, violent mid-age man very difficult to speak to, and he had six people looking after his whims any time he decided to call them at his service because they were so scared of him. James and Richard were really afraid, because they knew this wasn’t going to be chats with somebody telling them just don’t do it again.
This was meant to be a juridical sentence, and the judge was going to declare them guilty and condemned them to prison for life!
As they were on their way, James said to Richard:
“If we ever get out of this one, I shall kill you, pot face!”
“Listen, bud, I’m really sorry for the whole thang, but wouldn’t yer girl tried to take the bucket, none of this had happened.”
“Don’t you ever dare to say a word about my girlfriend again, nail-head, or I will knock you in the floor, and you hear me?”
They started to fight as students normally do, James thrown Richard to the floor and tried to knock him off, while Richard defended himself the best he could, trying to stop him, without even notice that they were already in front of Mr Candle’s door.
Suddenly, a deafened scream from inside the office made the door starting to tremble.
“What are you going to do about it, hum?”
That was Mr Candles speaking by telephone.
“Do you want to have some kind of contest between both universities?
Of course we will be prepared, but I hope you’ll give shields to your students, ‘cause this mean war!”
He rang off and continued shouting:
“Where did they earn their credibility as headmasters, these fools? Telling me how to do my job! They’ll be working as domestic cleaners quite soon, shall they have a duel with us.”
He was a fifty year old man, fatty and bold with a big dense moustache that filled half of his face. He was sweating hard and, as the light touched his forehead, he resembled more and more a giant billiard ball.
As James and Richard passed into his office, he stacked a big cigar in his mouth and one of his assistants ran quickly towards him.
“Mr Candles, please allow me to light your…”
At that moment he looked at his baldy head.
“…cigar.” And so he did.
Mr Candles spoke again, well, he screamed again let’s fairly say.
“Who the hell are you two guys and what do you want? Can’t you see that we are busy here?”
“Well…Mr Clouds sent us here, Sir.” Richard slowly and scared said.
“What for? ” A big silence filled the tension.
“Let me explain it to you.” Finally James said.
“I was going to see my girlfriend and she wanted to get some viscous liquid from him that he didn’t want to show. I think it was part of an experiment, as weird as him, that he made up. Anyway, I went to rescue my beloved girlfriend when he throws that stuff all over my face, and…”
“That’s entirely bollocks and you know it! Oh I’m sorry I said that, Mr Candles.” Richard answered.
“Oh shut up you two. That’s enough. Do you really think I have time for your silly games? Make no mistake, boys, you are going to have a big punishment for this mess, a very heavy one.”
He holds his cheeks with his left hand and started to think for a few seconds.
“Ok. I got it. As you seem to like to smell like a pig, you will have two assignments this week. Today, you will clean all the toilets of the campus, including the staff rooms as well and I hope I can see my face on their floors, or you’ll start doing them all over again. Now you better go and have a shower, and immediately after that you will start doing this first assignment.
Tomorrow, from early in the morning, you will spend the day at the closest farm around, helping the farmers to feed their pigs.”
“But, Sir, clean all of the toilets will take me hours, probably until one or two o’clock in the morning.”
“Then I suggest you to go to sleep straight after that. You’ll go to the farm tomorrow at seven in the morning, and you will have somebody recording you on video to show to your classmates. That will show you to have good manners. This is a respectable university, for God’s sake!”
“But Sir, that is not fair.”
“And who said it should be? That’s the way that life teaches and that way you should learn it so.”
“I’ll tell my father about this. He is a very important lawyer from Central London. He’ll get you in prison for this, oh yes he will.”
“Oh. Really? I’m dying to see your dad’s face when he sees by himself who stole Mrs Dennis’ purse last week. There was a big profit in it, hum?”
“Ho…how do you know about that? Hold on, you don’t have any proof of that. Have you?”
Mr Candles pointed towards the video cameras with his finger, and turning his head with a big ironic smile he looked at Richard and spoke again.
“I was waiting for the perfect occasion to catch you in fraganti, James, and this is it.
Now what do we know about you? What was in that bucket, boy? Answered me! I don’t have a day to waste with you two!”
One of his assistants talked.
“He is that genius boy everybody is talking about, remember Mr Candles? The one Miss Fawns presented as the new promising figure of the university.”
“Ok. I want everybody out of the office, except him and me. Now! That smell is driving me nuts; you go and have a shower for God’s sake.”
Fast and scared, they all left the room without saying a word.
“Now listen to me son. You may have some of the best qualifications we ever had by a single student in this campus, and many people will probably envy you for that, but, as you might understand, you come here to learn in a particular way and do things in a particular way, following the rules of the campus, and not to mess around. Now do you understand, boy?”
Slow and sincerely, Richard explained the whole situation to him including the smallest details, and finally Mr Candles seemed to understand as well.
“Hmm. Ok. I’ll accept your excuses this time if and only if you prove that is true. I like the way you talk, you’re honest and I like honest people. You’ll have to finish your experiment in less than a week under Miss Fawns’ supervision. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“It’s nothing personal, boy, but we have rules and certain discipline in this campus and everybody must learn to accept it in order to end up their careers and in order to be somebody, even so-called geniuses. Got that?”
“Of course, Mr Candles. My experiment will be finished quiet soon. I only need a few more days. Maybe a week.”
As Richard left his office, Mr Candles smiled and laughed.
“Non-contaminated crap. Ha ha.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Five days passed by and he couldn’t find the proper mix for his formula. He needed inspiration. Anytime he went outside his room, he looked everywhere in case James was around trying to kill him, as he promised.
In three more days, the party of the year would take place and he didn’t have any nice suit to offer to any of the young ladies he was dreaming of.
He wanted to wear a non-standard dress, anything that no one else would think of wearing it.
He took a walk around Oxford looking for clothing shops. He stared closely at how other people was dressed. As he passed the Magdalene Bridge, on his way to the city centre, there was a crowd of foreign students from Japan. They all probably came from the same school, as they all wore the same t-shirts. Oxford is a city for students, and so many people spend a few months now and then go back to their countries of origin and some new people come by then and so on. As is always a busy place, Richard had more and more wearing to look around as he walked.
“Ok.” He thought. “We have the typical classical black suit with a short tie and a white shirt. No, that’s too snob and depressing. Then we have the…”
On a side there was an old man who stink whisky strongly.
By the way he looked; he had probably started drinking when he was a teenager, far too long to stop doing it now. Many people in the street were laughing at him. When he walked, he did so very slowly and always falling over his right leg with each step, not so because he was limping, but because he could barely watch a full view of the street as he tried to walk, and that made him loose the balance. Such level of drunkenness he had. As he approached Richard a girl behind him imitated his movements and he made a gesture with his hand to show he didn’t care for their disrespect ness.
As the man approached Richard, he put a man on his shoulder.
“Do you have some change, please?” he said in a very intelligible way.
Richard stopped for a moment and looked at him closely, from head to feet.
He was wearing a long green jacket, old enough to be his grandpa’s, but really elegant in a way though; it had nice ornaments all over the buttons and on the sleeves, resembling something between tails and a sort of mariachi suit, Richard thought.
Still, it was rotten dirty, old and broken all alongside.
“Yes, sure I have.” He answered, and he gave him some coins he had and then asked him about the jacket.
“Oh. This one?” the drunken man said laughing ironically as it was probably the only one he had. “Well, somebody gave it to me from that charity shop over there a couple of months ago, mate.” The drunken looked at him suspiciously. What interest could some young man like Richard have on an old jacket belonging to a drunken man after all? “Now you aren’t going to nick it off me, are ya?”
“No. Listen to me, please. Would you sell me the jacket?”
The drunken man looked at the bottle he had on his other hand as if maybe he had drunk too much or something.
“Well I don’t know from which planet have you just landed, young man, but let me tell you something, mate. We have to do almost anything to get some money nowadays, young man, so we have a deal I say.”
After he bought the jacket, Richard took it and went back to the uni with it.
As he was getting inside some students felt the intense odours of the street coming from the jacket, and laughed at him.
“Look over there. That boy collects crap and old jackets. Why don’t you study in the street, with your homeless friends?” They all said at him, laughing.
He didn’t seem to take notice of it, though.
“I need something that’ll give me a source of inspiration to complete the experiment as I was so depressed last week. He thought to himself. That party was going to be it. He didn’t know what he was about to confront there yet, but he decided to take the risk. Meanwhile, there were some rumours about James spread all through the campus.
At first his classmates laughed when they watched the film with the farmers and him and so, but after a couple of days, he seemed to have vanished from the campus. He didn’t attend any of the classes and nobody seemed to know anything about him.

The funny situation that explains the whole issue concerning his disappearance states:

James was in his room while his girlfriend looked at him, horrified and crying.
James’s face looked much darker than usual, as he was a very white-skinned boy, but on top of that, something incredible and weird had happened to him.
His left ear had overgrown in size for no reason at all and now it looked about one and a half times bigger than the other one, which remained at its standard size.
The funny thing about it was that he had an earring which also remained at its normal size on his bigger ear, and now it looked really small and tight and stacked at his new ear.
“This is terrible. I can’t stand it!” his girlfriend shouted.
“Don’t shout at me like that, do you also want me to get deaf from a giant ear on top of my disgrace or what? This ear is very sensitive right now for some reason.”
When they left his room, the student’s response didn’t improve his situation at all.
“Ha, ha. Morning, Dumbo. Can you hear me?” said one.
“Don’t turn your head so fast, buddy, my coffee is getting colder. Ha ha.” Another one said. In that moment, Mr Candles came around.
“What’s happening here?” he asked.
He lifted his hand to his head but let it suspended for a few seconds when it was half the way through and looked at James astonished.
“What on earth happened to your ear, farmer?” Everyone laughed.
“Is this a new fashion now, one ear bigger than the other? How’d you did that?”
“Yeah, that’s very funny. I need to see a doctor, boss, and quick.”
“Oh, sorry, James, you’re right. Let’s go. Mel, could you call Miss Brooks? Quick, is an emergency!”
Miss Brooks was a terrible nurse, but most male students liked her as she was young, pretty, single, innocent; and all that sort of stuff young fellas wanted from a woman to have, she had it double size.
“Ouch. What a horrible thing to happen to a young and strong boy like you. Let’s make an x-ray of your ear straight away. Maybe there’s something inside. How did it happen?”
She said all this in a very slow and polite manner, almost treating him as a spoiled boy, but she used to do that to everyone, and James’ girlfriend was there trying to defend her territory.
“Listen carefully, baby doll. If James wants somebody to sleep with, that’s me. Get your hands off him if you don’t want some serious trouble with me. Do you understand what I mean?” She said.
“Look, I’m sorry if it looked something that it wasn’t, I was only trying to be polite. I thought he must be suffering a lot right now and the first thing he needed was some good care. I never meant to put it that way. Please do understand that you made a mistake here, I’m sorry to say, darling.” Miss Brooks answered.
“Don’t you dare to call me darling, girl, and let me tell you that the only person who made a mistake here was you, if you think you are going to earn my respect by talking polite to me.”
While both girls were busy fighting each other, James put his right hand over the bigger ear he had covering it, and yelled in extreme agony.
“Would you both please shut up? This is hurting a lot and I can’t. Ah…”
At that precise moment, James’ bigger ear went back to its normal size, suddenly and without expectation. Everybody was looking at them completely lost by now.
“Oh, thank God!” He shouted, when suddenly his nose turned half his original size and his upper teeth grew slightly bigger as sudden and unexpected as when his ear went big. The situation turned from bad to worse and there was no possible explanation to figure out a way to resolve the issue.
“Ahh! This must have something to do with that guy and his crap inventions. I’ll find you, asshole!” he shouted running fast on his way to Richard’s room while the students laughed at him again.
“Hey you big rat, go back to the lab, we didn’t finish the experiment yet. Ha ha!”
“Hey guys the Joker is panicking the students throughout the uni, but don’t you worry, our hero is here to help us, Ratman.”
James couldn’t be any angrier by now. On his way to Richard’s room, a few teachers stopped him and grabbed him by his hand. Shortly afterwards they sent him back to Miss Brooks’ clinic.
Meanwhile, Richard was finishing his new dress for the party; he was working hard for a whole day and made the perfect suit by now, something that no one else would be wearing. That’s for sure. “Now I can carry on doing the experiment.” He thought when somebody knocked at his door.
It was Miss Fawns, his teacher and his tutor by now.
As she went into the room, she stopped for a minute and looked at the decoration. Despite his natural talent and the “innocent introverted loony boy” fame he was earning within the uni, he was even crazier when he was creative. The walls in his room were completely full of weird photos of funny situations that he probably made throughout his life. In all, he put it all together as an artistic collage resembling Andy Warhol’s Pop-art but from the eighties. For a person without a big sense for humour and art, it would be meaningless, but Miss Fawns was really impressed by now, since she was a very crazy woman in her spare time and that sort of environment made her feel a bit younger again. In just a few seconds, she had a reaction in her head and came back to reality. She was determined to talk to him by now about what had happened.
“Ok. Listen to me Richard I don’t know about the whole thing you made up here, but you are going to have to put it together right now and explain to me what exactly did you mix for your liquid, because you are in deep trouble by now and I can only help you if you and I work together in this. I won’t argue that you are one of the best students we ever had studying here and by the way I love the way you put things together especially your sense of art, boy I really feel comfy in your room, but hey I am your tutor and need your report immediately, do you understand love?”
The whole idea of having Miss Fawns inside his room was simply non existent for Richard, so whatever happened from now on, he thought to himself, I must let her feel happy here.
“Ok Miss Fawns. The thing is…” and he explained the whole thing all over again in order to let her know what was going on. When she saw the different elements he was using there, she said:
“Hold on a moment, Richard. You couldn’t possibly mix (potassium chloride with nitrated calcium) and had it mixed with such a strong agent as cow’s excrement. That’s simply not possible, since those four elements can’t be mixed together without generating a tremendous reaction never seen before. Tell me you hadn’t gone that far, boy, please.”
“Well…” Richard was really scared, as he knew that this would be curtains for him.
“Oh this is amazing Richard. You didn’t only break the rules of chemistry at your own will, you also made up something up that could…”
Richard never felt so much fear since he discovered Saint Nicholas was just a fake. What would be next? They would probably fire him from the university. What the hell would happen with that experiment? Of course next Mondays’ party wasn’t even arguable now, not even thinking on Miss Fawns’ legs anymore. What would she say next? “This would put me behind bars for the rest of my life; I shouldn’t have gone so far.” He thought. Miss Fawns continued speaking like she went mad. “What did you say the original purpose of your experiment was?”
“I-I-I wanted to make that crap a non contaminated substance.” He said with fear.
“Oh. Well don’t mind that.” Miss Fawns changed the tone of her voice and looked more relaxed now and thoughtfully. “At least you’re trying something good for the progress of Mother Nature.”
Richard couldn’t understand anything. As he was expecting the worst punishment of his life, his tutor went mad. How could he ever get out of this one?
“Ok. I don’t know what the final result of your experiment is right now, kiddo. But we have to find out.” She looked much more calmed by now.
“You are not angry with me or anything? This is really annoying me.” She had a glance at him and smiled.
“I am your teacher Richard. Moreover, I am your tutor right now, especially in this your assignment. As a Doctor I really shouldn’t allow you to take things this far and we don’t even know what you have here yet, but presumably is something dangerous, as Mr Candles said. Mr Candles is a much exaggerated person who doesn’t know much about science as about finances anyway. However, most of the greatest discoveries and inventions in science, they have been made accidentally, and I am a very romantic person I must say Richard and let’s say I believe in you as a scientist here and now. I trusted you since the very first day I saw you taking notes in class. I am one of those persons who trust my instincts more than my intellect, you see? And you are lucky enough to have me on your side. I hope you understand that all this I am telling you will not interfere in our relation teacher-student. Between you and me, as soon as anybody stays on our way, I am going to be the person that you always knew, your tutor, and I will behave as such. But I really support the courage you had in trying to do this experiment, as you have tried to break those rules I told you, even if it was by pure accident. You see, don’t matter HOW, it matter WHAT you do, and you are very good at that my boy. I don’t want you to think of me as something I am not. I am a doctor as I said and I am going to assume responsibilities in this issue from now on, so between you and me, we are going to carry on working on this in secret ok? Nothing that we work on from now on goes out of this room. Understood?”
Richard was so impressed by Miss Fawns’ colloquial speech, that he didn’t know what to say. She was supporting him, and she was good, she was really good, a doctor in chemistry trusting him. He must have been a real genius after all.
“I think so Miss Fawns. Thanks a lot. But now please tell me what’s going to be my situation in respect of the uni at this stage. What happened out there so far? Is it because of James? I didn’t go out of the room in days fearing that he would try to kill me. He spread the liquid in his face.”
“Oh my God now that is what a call a bad situation. So that’s why Mr Candles is so angry right now. Let’s go and see what happened. No, you stay here let me deal it by myself first. Boy have you got good taste!” She said while looking around at the room again.
She left the room with a happy smile that became a surprised face as soon as she was out, just in case someone saw her.
Richard couldn’t believe what had happened. Miss Fawns was really crazy. But hang on, wasn’t he as well? That made them even.
Mr Candles called a meeting with all the teachers and members of the staff at the canteen, included Miss Fawns, because Miss Brooks couldn’t find anything unusual concerning James’ situation. It was a mysterious thing that his ear, nose and teeth had apparently mutated somehow for no reason. As they were all reunited, some carpenters were working outside the canteen.
“Ok. This is what happens now.” Mr Candles spoke.
“One of our students, Mr Richard Chester, made an experiment with a weird objective that I shouldn’t name because of its funny origin. Somehow this experiment fell over the face of another of our students, Mr James Derringer, who now has a big illness that our nurse, Miss Brooks can’t apparently cure. Well not exactly an illness, it’s…oh would you please stop it?” All the teachers looked at each other confused and scared without saying a word.
There were two persons on each side of Mr Candles’. They were Mr Smith, a maths teacher, at his right; and Mrs Broslofsky, who worked as a kitchen porter in the canteen. She didn’t speak very fluent English as she arrived from Poland a few months earlier and couldn’t understand a single thing of what was happening, especially why they were all reunited at that precise moment. Both Mr Smith and Mrs Broslofsky knew Mr Candles enough to know that any time he was shouting somebody was going to be blamed for doing something wrong. They were both trembling and anticipating a bad situation at the very moment those six words went out of Mr Candles’ mouth.
“I said please stop it. Can’t you see we are having a meeting?” Mr Candles shouted loud and so the carpenters could hear him.
A big effort for a short response is what he had. The carpenters didn’t seem to hear him and they carried on by doing their duties while they sang “Close to you”.
Mr Candles couldn’t be any angrier now. He put a hand on his face and looked slowly at every single person sat at the table until he tried to calm down a bit and spoke to the first person at hand closer to him. That happened to be Mrs Broslofsky.
“Could you please go to the window and explain to those workers outside that we are dealing with something important here and we need complete silence, please?”
Mrs Broslofsky turned red and worked on different strange gestures to show him she couldn’t understand a single word, although he didn’t seem to understand her that way.
“What the hell are you doing laughing at me like a clown? Do you think this situation is not complicated enough?”
One of the teachers, Miss Fawns, explained to Mr Candles that she was a new worker there, she was polish and she didn’t understand the English language very well and all that.
“Oh in that case, I am sorry, Mrs…doesn’t matter anyway please do accept my apologies. We are dealing a tough situation and this doesn’t help the matter. I’ll speak to them myself.”
Mrs Broslofsky looked all around confused and looked at everyone while lifting her shoulders and bend over her head smiling politely, as showing she was sorry for not understanding what was going on. Everyone laughed. She laughed too. Mr Candles went to the window and spoke to the carpenters. “Could you please stop working for half an hour? We are having a serious meeting right now and we need a bit of silence. Please.”
“Oh sure, Sir. Let’s go and have a break.” They said to each other while leaving slowly.
“Now!” Mr Candles shouted. And they run away off the place.
“Ok and now let’s carry on before anything will interrupt us again. As I was saying, this student had one of the ears bigger than the other, then it was normal size again, and shortly afterwards his nose became smaller.”
Every member of the staff started to laugh, which made Mrs Broslofsky laugh too, although she didn’t know what of.
“Ok I was laughing too the first time I saw it, but the thing had gone too far, and we are going to have to deal with a clinic from outside of the campus.”
The bells rang. It was the fire alarm.
“Ok, everybody out! You all know the procedures.” Said Mr Clouds.
Mrs Broslofsky was patiently waiting for the lunch break for hours, and, as she heard the bells ringing, she thought maybe that was it. She saw everyone leaving the room and looked at Mr Candles while doing a gesture of putting some fingers in his mouth.
“No Mrs Broslofsky, this is no time to eat, follow the others quickly.” He showed her where to go, and as he went out, Miss Fawns said to him:
“Could I talked to you privately a minute, please?”
“This isn’t a very good moment Miss Fawns. What can we do about it?”
“I know this is a tough situation, but we can’t go nuts about it. We need to stay calmed and think before to make the situation to be worse. I haven’t seen James yet and as such, I couldn’t tell if what happen to him is due to Richard’s experiment or not, but if we go now and intern James in a clinic, that’ll be a really bad reputation for this university from now on, needless to say that if this thing really go any worse, that’ll be curtains for us all.
However, if as you said, James had that trouble with his ear, however big, but after a while return to its normal size for no reason, maybe we are doing a big deal on something that, although extremely weird, shouldn’t have to be a rather extreme complication necessarily. Do you catch me?”
Miss Fawns knew how men think very well, which helped her to persuaded them in tough situations, especially to Mr Candles, who could be really angry and violent at certain moments, but would become quiet as a tortoise if she was leading him to be it, and she knew his weaker points very well…
“So what do you suggest we shall do?”
“Let me handle it. I am Richards’ tutor right now. We don’t even know what was mixed in his experiment, maybe there’s nothing to worry about, let’s see. Whatever it is, it will be under my control. However, please allow me to check James first to see what’s really going on. You never had a very good taste on choosing specialists. Miss Brooks isn’t even a real nurse and you know it. But it’s up to you whether you keep her in the clinic or not. That’s not my business, but if we can do something to help our reputation here before this goes any further…”
There were many things going on at that moment, one of them, which Miss Fawns didn’t happen to know, what’s that Miss Brooks was Mr Candles’ whim and he was trying to seduce her by all means.

TO BE CONTINUED…