'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

[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?