Children

Jim looked out of the window.  In the garden the children were playing, Elise and Misbet were discussing something, and Little-jim and the Van Tosten child that only seemed to have a surname were doing something involving running in and out of the tree-house.  He dipped another dirty plate in the soapy water in the sink and wondered if he should go out and check on them. He scrubbed the plate, vaguely curious as to how Mrs. Van Tosten could make such a mess with just a cup of tea, some loose dentures, and a malted-milk biscuit and decided that he'd just open the window a little and listen in.
He pushed the window slightly ajar as stealthily as he could when none of the children were looking his way, selected another dish from the pile, and listened while he scrubbed.
"It's a motto," said Misbet.  "My mummy has lots of mottoes, and she lets me use them if I ask her nicely and she doesn't have one of her headaches."
"My mummy gets headaches too, after Daddy hits her," said Elise.  Jim's jaw dropped open in shock; the only time he hit his wife was during sex and she pretty much insisted on that.  And she gave as good as she got; he was still surprised that they'd managed to conceive Little-jim after the beating he'd taken that night.
"My mummy hits my daddy if he touches her mottoes," said Misbet.  "But only with an open hand, she says.  Never with a fist."
"What an open hand?"  Elise looked puzzled.
"I don't know," said Misbet.  "I think it might be one of her ornaments, I saw her hitting him with one of them once."
"My daddy only ever hits mummy with cushions," said Elise.  "They do it when they think there's no-one watching, but I hide behind the couch and they never find me."  Jim relaxed a little; Elise was talking about play-fighting.  He thought he should probably talk to her about this a little later on though, and explain that he and mummy weren't hitting each other, just in case she mentioned it to anyone at school.
"Oh that's no fun," said Misbet.  "I go to the hospital all the time with Daddy, and the nurses there give me things for being a brave little girl."
"You're so lucky," said Elise, a little wistfully.  "I've never seen a hospital."
Just then Little-jim came flying out of the tree-house stark naked and pushed between the two girls, who squealed, then ran off round the garden.  Moments later the Van Tosten boy, also naked, ran after him, and the girls squealed again.
What the hell? thought Jim, but again he decided not to go and pursue them.  The garden had high fences and lots of trees and the boys had been wearing clothes when they went into the tree-house, so they'd probably go back and put them on again.  Possibly when they got cold.  It was good practice for university anyway.  He decided not to consider that that was still a good ten years away.
"Oh, they stepped on your motto!" said Elise, looking down.  Jim stood on tiptoe and craned his neck and saw that there was a strip of paper trampled on the ground at Misbet's feet.  "Here!"  She bent down and picked it up.  "You can still read it, see: Do not dwell on things that do not deserve to be dwelled upon!"
Jim smiled, and realised that he'd finished all the plates, so he started on the cups.  He could definitely agree with that motto.
"What does it mean?" asked Elise, her pretty face scrunched up like a pretzel as she tried to understand it.
"It means you should try to live on things that aren't for living on," said Misbet confidently, and Jim's smiled stretched further across his face.
"What like?"
"Well, ironing boards," said Misbet.  "Mummy hates it when Daddy puts me up on the ironing board."
Elise thought about this, sticking her tongue out of the corner of her mouth.  "Ye-es," she said at last, "where would you do the ironing if you lived on the ironing board?"
"Exactly," said Misbet, with just a momentary hesitation.  "Or the sink, you couldn't live in the sink."
"You could live in the bath though," said Elise.  "But you'd get wrinkly and look old all the time."
Little-jim and Van Tosten came running back again, and Jim noted with some surprise that they wear both fully clothed again, and that he didn't recognise any of the clothes.  They raced into the tree-house, which he'd built at ground-level to avoid having any of the children fall out of the tree.
"Daddy lives in the dog-house a lot," said Misbet.  "I don't know where that is though."
"That's a pub," said Elise, confidently.  "My mummy and daddy go there on weekends, only they tell the babysitter they're going to a restaurant."
Jim dropped the last cup and it bounced on the floor, luckily not breaking.  How the hell had Elise picked up about the sex-club they called the doghouse?  He thought quickly and decided it was time to bring the children in for something to eat and drink and change the subject.  Just then Little-jim and Van Tosten tore out of the tree-house stark naked again, and he realised that he'd better find out where they were getting all the extra clothes from as well.

Gorillamumps

It was assault day.  At any other school it would have been illegal, but at the Gorillamumps Academy it was mandatory.  Even notes from your mother wouldn't be honoured on assault day, and anyone failing to turn up on the day would be best off never turning up again, as the punishments for missing assault day were arguably worse than asssault day itself.
There were some rules though; as Gorillamumps was the premier destination for the offspring of the world's mighty and powerful undead, there were rules about the amount of assault that was allowed, and the degree of the assault.  The zombie children could be assaulted as much as you like, but not assalted or in any other way attacked with salt.  Fire was also out, not just for them but also the vampire kids, the young mummies, and the Sporelets of the Creeping Mould.  It was also banned for the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, but no-one at Gorillamumps would admit to having met any of the Dark Young, so it was still a questionable point as to whether any were currently attending.  Skeletons, ghouls, Gelatinous Cubs and flame-efts were all fair target for fire, though if you were daft enough to attack a flame-eft with fire you deserved the consequences of your actions.
Nicky, an undine, stared at the piece of plastic in her hand and wrinkled her face again as she tried to understand the rules of assault day.  Little droplets of water splashed from her onto the plastic and trickled off onto the ground.
"Oh give it up, already," groaned Jermander, her vampire best friend.  He was dressed, as usual, like a New Romantic, having decided that the eighties was an iconic era and fitted somehow with his parents Victorian ideals.  He ran a hand through an impossibly stiff quiff and adjusted his lacy white shirt a little.  "It's simple, right?  On assault day we all try and kill each other with things we know won't have a big effect.  No-one's really supposed to die, but it's good training for after school when we go out into the real world and run the risk of discovery all the time.  Like, you're probably fine because you dissolve in a rainstorm, but for me, if I'm caught creating an army of pawns or influencing politics through blood, I might have to disappear for a few decades.  And no-one's going to just let me walk out of there, or trickle down a drain into the nearest body of fresh-water."
"But... but it's not like this in the films!" protested Nicky.  "In the films the humans all want to go the magic schools and join in!"
"You've got to stop watching that rubbish and start paying attention in lessons," said Jermander.  "You've failed every class you've taken so far.  We're only friends because our parents are neighbours."
"You're so mean!"  Nicky dropped the paper, giving up on trying to read.  She'd mastered about half of the alphabet, but the curvy letters all looked much the same to her.  The teachers felt she was lazy, the headmaster thought she was probably retarded and regularly told her so, and even her best friend was mandated.
"Look, what's your plan for assault day?  Maybe if you work out now what you're going to do you won't end up as a claim on everybody else's list."
"I don't have a plan," said Nicky hopelessly.  "What's yours?"
"Tridents," said Jermander looking pleased with himself.  "I did a bit of research and I reckon that most years everything's just improvised, which is a bit silly if you ask me.  I mean, that gives the edge completely to the Gelatinous Cubs, the Werewolves, and the Dark Young."
"Are there really Dark Young at Gorillamumps?"
"Absolutely definitely.  There's too many kids get admitted to the Mental Injuries Clinic each month for there not to be."
"Oh.  What's a clinic, Jer?"
Jermander ignored the question and got back to his tridents.  "See, a trident can pin the skeletons in place, pin down the mummies without hurting them.  Well, much.  The werewolves will be fine being stabbed so long as there's no silver or wolfsbane... by the way, did I tell you that I spotted wolfsbane growing the herbarium?  I reckon one of the teachers is going a bit rogue again."
"Again?"
"Dear Gods, Nicky!  Haven't you noticed?  It's like your Harry Plotless films, every year another teacher goes completely bonkers and murders a few students before someone works out what's going on and brings him to justice."
"Is that what happened to Dr. Pumpkinhead?"
"No, definitely not.  He just got a bit carried away with his barbecue and decided his own head would taste good."  Jermander stared at Nicky, remembering that sarcasm was something she had trouble with.  A bubble slowly rose through her face and popped at the top of her head, and he wondered how she ever remembered to breath.  "Anyway, Nicky, I've got myself some stashes of tridents set up and I'm going for the record this year.  The current record is by Miimelak back when the Frost Giants were allowed in Gorillamumps; he stamped on seventy-nine students and only two of them were disqualified for being actual kills.  I reckon I can do eighty with a bit of planning."
"I don't think I can hurt anyone, Jer," said Nicky plaintively.  She gurgled a little; instead of crying she just fell apart and splashed on the ground, and the gurgle was a fairly reliable indicator that that was about to happen.
"I thought you'd say that," said Jermander quietly.  "Don't worry, I've got an ice trident as well.  I figure that if I get you cold enough you'll be stuck in one place too, but you'll be fine when you thaw out."
"What?"
"Oh, just meet me here tomorrow," said Jermander.  "Assault day starts at nine, so let's get here for eight-fifty-five, yeah?"
"OK," said Nicky sounding a little more cheerful.  "Maybe tomorrow will be fun after all!  We're a team!"
"Yeah," said Jermander, smiling with his teeth.  "Now, what kind of trident do you think will stop a Dark Young?"