The Philosophy of Childhood Mischief

Jam and Ty jumped the turnstiles at the Solar-Rail station and ran into the train before any of the station workers could stop them. Jam could feel his blood coursing all throughout his body as he stumbled into a seat on the train. He thought back to his vocabulary list and picked a word to describe the sensation: exhilarating. He was happy and full of energy as if he’d swallowed a whole bag of ThunderFruit candy.

“Why’d we do that anyway,” Jam asked his companion, Ty. The two became fast friends when Ty transferred to his Learning Community last year. Ty always seemed to know a more fun way to do anything and everything, and Jam had learned life was more fun if he followed Ty’s lead.

“What do you mean, man? Wasn’t that awesome?”

Jam laughed, “Yeah, it was, but we didn’t have to pay if we don’t want to.”

Jam was correct, skipping the fare was unnecessary. The City’s tax system took care of keeping all the public transportation running. Fares were basically donations to the transport system and didn’t have to be paid if a person didn’t want to. The turnstiles didn’t even lock, they only stalled every once in a while to prevent large crowds from swarming to the trains all at once.

“It’s the philosophy, man,” Ty said. He didn’t say explain further, because he knew he didn’t have to, Jam understood the philosophy very well. Ty’s belief was that everything that was done wrong was better. Breaking rules made life more fun because it meant that everything a person did carried the risk of punishment. There was nothing better, in Ty’s opinion than the feeling of escaping punishment, and the more Jam hung out with Ty, the more he agreed with his friend.

“Here, take one of these,” Ty said to Jam. He reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a bag of ThunderFruit candy, encouraging Jam to take a few.

Jam didn’t bother asking how Ty got it, because he already knew that it was stolen. Stealing candy was another activity that it took Jam a while to fully understand. All his life, whenever he wanted candy from a store but lacked the money to pay for himself, he could just ask the shopkeeper or a passing customer for some small job to do, and they’d give him the candy in exchange. It was the same all over the City, for all children and adults. Even the ascetics that chose to live on the street and sleep in the park were often given free food and clothes, or even money in exchange for some small daily assistance.

Jam happily took a ThunderFruit from the bag. His head jerked when he bit into the sour candy shell and felt the spark of electricity in the center of each round, blue pellet. He’d eaten ThunderFruit hundreds of times before and had never come across one so powerful. The electric shock had actually hurt him much in the same way that it had the first time he’d tasted one, back when he hadn’t yet gotten used to the flavor.

“Ow!”

Ty chuckled, “See? Even stolen ThunderFruit tastes better when you’re eating it on a stolen train ride with your best friend. It’s the philosophy, man!”

Jam eagerly picked up another piece. With a large smile on his face, he raised it to the sky and said, “To the philosophy!”

Ty and Jam rode the train for a bit longer than usual. Ty thought it would be fun to explore the City for a bit before going home, and Jam suggested they go to Border Street. He didn’t really plan to cross into another sector, because he knew kids weren’t supposed to. He really just wanted Ty to think that he was brave enough to want to do it. Jam reasoned that if it looked like they might actually cross into the next sector, he’d just make up an excuse to go home instead.

The two boys got off on the Border Street station, and immediately Jam could see the stark contrast between it and the roads he was used to roaming with his friends. There were no candy stores, no friendly ascetics roaming the streets offering the words of their many different gods. There weren’t any bicycles on the road, nor even the rarer cars that Jam sometimes encountered while out in the City. The street was mostly abandoned, with a few large, fat, square buildings here and there, but no obvious signs of life out on the streets.

“I remember what Tutor said about this place,” Ty said. “I heard that on the Border Streets throughout the city, there are all kinds of offices and warehouses that handle business and make sure people cross sectors right. They don’t want people or things getting lost, especially since the City’s always growing and becoming more complicated.”

“So where are all the people then?” Jam asked.

Ty shrugged, “I think they’re all in the buildings. Making Border Street work right is a long and difficult job.”

The two boys began to wander the empty Border Street, looking for something fun to do. Ty was determined to find other people, and Jam wondered if it was because he was planning to steal something from them. The thought of it excited him, and he too began to anxiously look around for some unsuspecting soul whose Coin they could swipe.

The two eventually made their way to the edge of the street, and there they found the perfect place to play. It was a large, square building whose glass windows had all been shattered and blown out. Neither had to wonder if anyone was inside because the warehouse was obviously abandoned and had been for years. Turning to each other with wide grins, the two boys raced each other inside the warehouse, ready to have the most fun of their lives inside.

The very second both Jam and Ty entered the warehouse, the front door slammed shut behind them. Both boys immediately fell under a blanket of shadows which was only randomly broken by small beams of faint light from the windows high above. Jam squinted his eyes closed for a few seconds to make them used to the limited light, and upon opening them again Jam realized that he and Ty had crossed into a kingdom of refuse. The warehouse floor was dirtier and dustier than the ground outside. Sharp, rusted scraps of metal were scattered all throughout the space, threatening the boys with cuts if they wandered too close. Roaches, rats, and other vermin raced each other in and out of the beams of light and piles of discarded metal. Jam and Ty gave quick glances at each other, telepathically beaming at the beauty of the terrifying paradise they’d just discovered.

Jam suddenly saw something out the corner of his eye, something that made him jump and lose his breath somewhere in his body. With a turn of the head so fast that it was audible, he scanned the ground for the patch of movement that he’d only almost seen before. Then he sighed, for it was only a rat scurrying past.

Just as Jam let out his breath, Ty let out a scream. A hand had thrust itself towards the rat, ensnared it in its grip, then slowly raised the rat up, up, up over a pile of rusted metal.

“What is that!” Jam shouted as he frantically grabbed for Ty’s hand. Usually, clasping their hands together was enough to make both boys feel safe in uncertain situations. This time their shared grasp did nothing to stop the ferocious beating of their hearts.

The rat fell onto the pile of metal, and its head disappeared into a small opening in the pile. There was a noticeable shift in the pile, then a spurt of red, and then the rat no longer had a head.

The boys realized that the opening was not a hole in a pile of metal, but rather the black mouth of a broken and aged head which was buried in the pile of rusty metal. So wrinkly, deformed, and brown was the face that Jam and Ty hadn’t realized what it was at first. But they realized the truth as more and more of the rat disappeared into the head’s mouth. When the rat’s body was finally gone and the head had licked itself of all red color, one of its eyes turned to the boys.

“I am a vampire,” the head said.

Jam began to pump his legs, fully meaning to run away from the horrible place. He’d learned about vampires in school, all his friends had. They were meant to be treated as ordinary citizens, but that didn’t stop older boys from telling their stories. Stories about young, misbehaving boys that wandered away from home usually ended with a vampire encounter, and the boys never being heard from again. Jam was determined that he and Ty would not become a story.

Ty, however, did not also pump his legs up and down. His body remained perfectly still, his feet firmly on the ground. He did not want to leave, and because Jam was still gripping his hand, Jam could not leave either.

“I am a vampire,” the head repeated.

“Ty, let’s go!” Jam said, his voice becoming high and girlish as his fear and sense of urgency rose. He pulled on Ty’s arm with almost enough strength to hurt it, but the boy wouldn’t move a centimeter.

“I mean you no harm,” the head of the vampire continued. “Please, hear me out.”

“Let’s see what he has to say,” Ty said without looking at Jam. His eyes were still locked with the pile of discarded metal and the vampire underneath.

Reluctantly, Jam settled down. He stopped pulling on Ty’s arm, but did not let go of his hand.

“I am a vampire. I say that first to be honest. I don’t want you afraid of me or worried that I’m trying to trick you. I need your help if I am to live. Months ago, I was lured here by my enemies, other vampires who meant to do me harm. It had been too long since I drank, so I was very weak when they carried out their plan. Since then, I’ve managed to free an arm and my head, and I use both to catch and eat the small pests here as they run past. But it’s never enough. My strength has not returned, so I cannot free myself from this pile. Please, I need your help or I will surely die.”

Jam’s stomach began to twist itself as he began to question what kind of help the vampire wanted. “We’re too small to lift those things off you,” he explained.

“I know, I know. That’s not what I need. I need blood. Human blood, or at least a blood supplement pill. Have you boys ever been to a candy shop and seen hard, red candies wrapped in a white paper that says Red Delicious? It’s a candy for vampires. If you can get me three pieces of that candy, or one bag from a blood bank, then I will have my strength back, and I will be able to free myself and go about my day.”

Ty shook his head, “How do we know you won’t just eat us after you get your strength back?”

If the vampire could have shaken his own head, he would have. “That’s not how my people work. Once we’ve had a full drink, we won’t need another for at least three days. If I tried to eat you after already drinking a bag of blood or eating three blood candies, I would only throw you up.”

“How do we know that’s true? It sounds like a lie,” Ty asked the vampire. His voice sounded innocent and sincere, but Jam knew he wasn’t being honest.

Jam knew the vampire was telling the truth because he remembered hearing the same thing in a lesson on vampires just the week before. The entire lesson was Ty’s idea. After learning that his cousin had caught the Vampirial Infection, Ty became obsessed with vampires and convinced the entire class to ask Tutor to change their weekly elective lecture. Instead of learning about the many types of spiders as originally planned, Tutor spent the past Thursday teaching the class about vampires.

Although it was strange to hear Ty lie when he didn’t have to, Jam didn’t question it too much. It was their philosophy to do things the wrong way, and that meant lying unnecessarily, even during emergencies. Yet at the back of his mind, Jam couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong with Ty.

“I understand,” the vampire said, “if it makes you feel any better, you don’t have to do it. Find an adult, perhaps your parents, and send them here with the things I need. But please don’t just leave me and do nothing. If I am not helped soon, I will surely die. I think that even if I caught ten rats tonight, I’d wither to dust in just a few more days.”

“Okay,” Jam said. “We’ll go outside and call an Emergency Service, and they can help you.”

Before he could hear the vampire’s response, Jam felt Ty’s hand suddenly go limp. Then, just as quickly, he felt Ty’s hand slide straight out of his grip as Ty slowly began to walk towards the vampire in the pile of scrap metal.

“No, we won’t,” Ty said with is back still towards Jerome.

In a matter of seconds, Ty was bending over the pile, picking up a thin, broken metal bar from the heap.

“You say that you have no strength now?”

Before the vampire could answer, Ty stomped his left leg on the vampire’s free hand and held it there under his heel. Such a stomp from a small, thin boy would hardly hurt a healthy adult, but the vampire had gone so long without a proper drink that his body was now much weaker than a healthy man’s. The crack of his hollow, fragile bones shattering under the force of Ty’s heel echoed across the room. He let out a scream of pain and shock, and began to mutter prayers to Ty in hopes he would let him go.

Ty didn’t care about the vampire’s blubbering. Hearing an adult vampire beg only made Ty happier. His mouth stretched wider and wider as his malicious glee rose. The same wide, brown eyes that always darted back and forth in search of some mischief glowed with a furious desire. Ty wanted to hear the vampire’s screams, he wanted to see the fear in his eyes, and he wanted to hurt the vampire even more.

“What are you doing, Ty?” Jam asked with wide, horrified eyes. He didn’t need an answer and he didn’t expect to receive one. Jam already knew that once again, the philosophy had come into play. Jam felt a part of his brain urge him to step forward, to push Ty off the vampire, wrestle the sharp piece of metal from his hands, and run away from the horrible warehouse. But Jam didn’t do any of those things. Although his body twitched with the desire to run, and his mind kept screaming at him to listen to the quick jumps of his muscles, Jam remained stuck in place.

Ty turned his head away from the vampire so he could look at Jam. Jam planned to shout at him, tell him that what he was doing was too wrong this time. Ty was making a mistake neither of them could walk away from as easily as they could after stealing candies or jumping turnstiles. Jam wanted to force Ty to see reason, but when his friend turned his head and their eyes met once again, something in Jam changed.

Jam’s body stopped twitching in an anxious struggle to get away. The screaming in his mind began to fade away. From scream to shout to whisper, and then finally to nothing. He no longer feared the vampire, Ty, or the consequences of their actions. To Jam, Ty’s smile looked less sinister and more jovial. His eyes didn’t appear hungry, they looked gleeful. Jam realized in that moment what he and Ty were: children. Just two little boys engaging in playful mischief once again. There was nothing so wrong about that. Mischief made the world more fun, after all. It was their philosophy.

“Do you think vampire blood tastes better than ThunderFruit?”

END.