'Let the Punishment Fit the Crime!'

[cyberghostface]

 

So here's the first EC story I'm posting for Halloween. It comes from The Vault of Horror #33.




The neighbors are of course curious about what is going on. The town undertaker says that the kids had come up to him earlier asking how him to prepare a funeral. They told him it was for a dog.

The town doctor says that the kids had asked him how to tell if something is dead, to which he responded it's when the heart stops. They then asked him what to do if  something is dead, and he said the only thing to do is bury it.

The local candystore owner thinks the whole situation is morbid, explaining that the kids aren't interested in natural deaths but violent ones--they were interested to read about someone getting the electric chair in paper. The town electrician muses that must have been why the kids why askedhim how electrocution worked. 

The local schoolteacher recalls how the children had asked why the man in the electric chair had to die, and she explained to them about capital punishment. The kids then asked her if robbery was an example of a crime deserving capital punishment, to which she had said no. A lawyer tells the neighbors that the kids had come to him asking about what capital punishment was.

Comments

[icon_uk]

On the one hand... that's creepy.

On the other hand, you have to admire that sort of dedication and commitment to finding out all about their subject matter before acting. They're weird and twisted, but thorough.

[freezer]

That is thirty-one flavors of fucked up, right there.

[chocochuy]

Thank you very much for replying at my request for this story, CyberGhostFace!!!!

Stories like this prove that you don't need blood, gore and monsters to write a horror story. This be a creepy yet powerful psychological thriller that does make use of very simple and real aspects of our daily life.

Eternal Excellency for EC Comics!!!!

I suppose many of us are gonna have some mild nightmares from now on, hehehe.

[cyberghostface]

No prob, I have your other request set to go as well. :)

[auggie18]

Huh. Didn't know kidnapping was a capital offense level crime. Interesting.

[glimmung]

Its not.

Not sure what era this is supposed to be set in though.

[freezer]

It was at the time, depending on the state (see: the Lindbergh Law).

It hasn't been at all since 1970.

[nezchan]

The funny part is the title really has nothing at all to do with the story.

It's weird that no adult bothers to approach the kids throughout, just letting them go ahead with this weird behaviour.

[glprime]

Hey, they're busy doing important small town adult stuff. Like, um... yeah, why aren't the adults talking to these kids? The lawyer and judge seem to have open enough schedules (as well as everyone else), and one wonders whether the kids have been running around for days outside of school to ask all these questions, or Ms. Priddy has rampant truancy issues.

And also, yes, WHEN and WHERE the hell does this take place? The town is modern enough to have an electrician and know of the electric chair (first saw use in the 1890s), but still rather small and self-reliant like a frontier town (the lawyer and judge are neighbors?!)

[gamerguy]

This was in 1953. Adults and children had a somewhat different relationship than they do now. Children did childish things and mostly were ignored as long as they were quiet and not being destructive. Before WWII there was no such thing as a 'teenager'; you had youths and adults. If you were not an adult, you were a child and very likely to be ignored since children have nothing useful to say.

[cypherfdp]

And people say bad things about kids these days...

[sindra]

The ironic thing is....they are now murderers. Therefore by their own understanding, they too should be put to death.

[kagome654]

You don't execute the executioner. He was found guilty by a jury of his peers, after all...

[sindra]

But they were looking for a reason to kill him before they even knew about kidnapping being a capital crime when they asked about the electric chair, and again when the victim's mom said they'd never forgiven him for stealing the doll.

Of course the real idiots here are the adults. Why didn't the mom just take the stolen doll from her kid and give it back to the girl when he refused to do it himself?

[silverzeo]

Whoever said that if kids ran the world, it would be a perfect place was idiot..... Twilight Zone and The Tattooed Man had stories about how pure kids are...

[glimmung]

Kids a amoral, they just don't have the power to make it a problem.

[glprime]

There's that young adult fiction novel I recall, The Girl Who Owned A City where all the people beyond a certain age died, leaving society to be run by young adolescents, not to mention Lord of the Flies.

Yeah, kids are overly amoral and given to impulse. I don't want a council of elders to run everything, but experienced and diverse minds from several generations would be best.

[icon_uk]

And the New Zealand kids series "The Tribe" (Well, the first couple of seasons of it, it go rather weird after that)

[baihu]

Lord of the Flies too.

[blackruzsa]

I do love the crypt of terror.

On that note, what chills me is what you see from far away, like if you go any closer, something might happen.

[proteus_lives]

Nice. A classic.

[superfangirl1]

Creepy but very nice story. :)

Kids do the darnest things

[blue_bolt]

Here's the thing, they were just trying to copy the adults and screwed up on the 'dolls = people'. Haven't you ever thought of some material item as a person? (Banks and Oils companies do it all the time! Oh wait, no they think of people as material items, my bad). So they were trying to be "just". But justice is a fickle thing, and exists mostly in the eye of the beholder.

Still, in Vlad's (the impaler) Transylvania virtually all crimes were capital offenses so he would have done pretty much what the children did, and that was the law of the land.

Here's a link to a page of 10 murder cases where the killers were all under the age of 13 and none of them had even half as much reason as the kids above.

http://listverse.com/2011/05/14/top-10-young-killers/

Read it and tell me what you think.

Re: Kids do the darnest things

[blue_bolt]

Correction: "None of them were older than 15, one or two were 14."

[baihu]

I knew 'kidnapping' would come up as the crux of the whole thing since honestly, I don't think kidnapping is a capital crime in most places? Murder's a no-brainer, but kidnapping?

[baihu]

By that I meant, because it was the most out of place example, it was obviously going to be the crux of the whole thing.

[newnumber6]

One interesting aspect (at least, it looks like, it's hard to say for sure because part of the story was just described, in order to fit the site rules) is that it looks like the story's told in reverse... that is, everybody more or less says what happened a little earlier in the story, where the adults gave them information on where to proceed next.

It starts with the funeral, and the townspeople mention that they've been strange for a while...

Most recently they go to the undertaker, because they need to prepare the funeral.

Just before that, they ask the doctor about how to find out if something's dead and what to do about it if it is - They'd already killed the boy, and the question is "What next?"

Before that, they ask the electrician about electricity and how people get electrocuted. They'd already passed sentence after deciding that the crime is kidnapping and deserves it, and were figuring out how to carry it out.

Before that they ask about capital punishment and what merits - They'd found him guilty and wanted to know what the sentence should be (granted, here it's two people they ask and apparently in the wrong order to make the pattern stick, but you can still imagine it as one phase, they just needed to consult two different people to understand how to go about it).

Before that, they ask about the jury trial - They'd accused the boy and wanted to know how to resolve it.

Before that, the boy stole the doll (or was accused, anyway).