Chemistry Lessons (1)

Silas sneezed. Delicate glass crunched. He opened his eyes slowly. Afraid of what he'd see before him on the lab table. The tube was ruined. He'd squeezed too tightly. Involuntarily. Too bad. Now it was broken. The four percent solution had spattered across the jumbled notebooks, beakers, tins and other chemist's impedimenta piled all over his work space. No fire. This time. That was good news, such as it was. He set the tongs down and retrieved his broom and the dust-pan. The glass was too brittle to salvage, so he brushed it into the pan and would dump it into the rusty old barrel out back. One of the lackeys or minions would haul it away once the barrel was filled. Silas didn't want to know where they dumped all that toxic sludge. In his line of work one did not ask too many questions of one's patrons. A putty knife picked up a good deal of the congealing white powder residue. Thankfully this had only been a four-percent solution and not something more power