View From The Ceiling

• Kiran Rasaratnam, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2014

Joe didn't know how to react when he started floating, like a balloon towards the ceiling. He did not know how he could start floating just by drinking a glass filled with clear liquid. Joe thought hard to retrace the events that led up to this sticky situation.

It was a foggy morning on July the 3rd. There was a slight drizzle and the air was clammy inside the lab. That day Joe, a skinny lad with enormous front teeth and his class 7A, were on an excursion at the famous Dr Von Bunsen Burner's laboratory. There were all sorts of funky metallic gizmos and burning hot ceramic pots spitting vile and putrid fluid onto the tiled floor. Somehow it made Joe feel thirsty. As the class walked on Joe spotted a bottle with clear liquid saying "Test Potion 102 DO NOT DRINK, maybe lethal." However Joe was a greedy lad and because he was a slow reader he wasn't sure what "lethal" meant. He took a guess and thought it meant "delicious" and chugged the bottle in four mammoth gulps.

When he finished the potion he felt woozy and a little unstable. Then ever so slowly he started rising of the floor and towards the ceiling, like a balloon. He tried screaming but all that came out was a sort of "glug,glug" sound. In the meeting room next door, the teacher of 7A, Ms Austere, head-counted her class briskly. She realised one was missing and immediately a boy yelled, " Everyone look at Joe!"The class of 7A piled into the potion room and when Ms Austere walked in she looked perplexed by the reality of Joe in the air, and so was he. He did not know how he could have lost so much density that he started rising towards the ceiling, but how could he complain when he had such a magnificent view over the lab. Ms Austere looking like she might burst, scientists in a frenzied panic and the class laughing their heads off at his new way to cause mischief. "How can the situation get any better than this thought Joe."

Dr Von Bunsen Burner did not raise an eyebrow as he entered the room because he had expected a catastrophe like this to happen to an ignorant Year 7 student. so he had a shimmering blue antidote in hand. now for the first time in 3 years he felt fear. His brow became sweaty and before he knew it, his teeth were chattering too. If the antidote did not work he would be stuck like a balloon for his whole life and he would be a subject of ridicule because he would be tied to a string everywhere he went. The doc brought the syringe down swiftly onto Joe's leg and inserted the antidote. Joe gradually increased in density causing him to fall to the floor and shatter the tiles in the process.

Joe, thankfully was safe but received a harsh rebuke from his teacher and a firm grounding from his parents. As a result of what happened, Joe swore always to think before acting. And learn to read better.