The morning’s cold air clings tightly to the skin as if likewise in shock and seeking comfort. The witnesses, who covered their large eyes, knelt, or turned away at the moment of the passing now regain their composure. The weak sun faintly illuminating stunned faces who reluctantly take in the scene.
The small metal body lays stomach down where it had fallen, hands outstretched as if in surprise; it swims, still in its distinctive leather jacket, in a mixture of oil and an undiscernable gloop steadily pouring out without restraint onto the damp cobbled stones below. The ecstatic Frenchman, dressed in scanty women’s clothing and sporting a pulsing erection clearly unbothered by the deathly chill, takes in his final victory with an exhale; the large, rusty blade with a new oily coating in his hand sways lightly in the wind. An old enemy of countless battles finally vanquished and cast to the netherworld, never to return.
His gaze rests upon the severed head, some ten feet from its body and vacantly staring at the nervously shuffling feet of its own kind, the light brown wig still clinging tenaciously, unaware that its line of duty was now at an end. He picks it up with a care and tenderness unlike the hatred he had poured upon it in times past. Two pairs of empty eyes locked together for a moment that seems to stretch for eternity, a memory that one would relish and relieve day after day even until the lonely, choking throes of the noose a few years from now.
He turns to the other Frenchman, with obvious foreign blood, who approaches with a quilted scarlet pillow outstretched in his hands, awaiting the final delivery into his possession. This one had come all the way from Bordeaux to personally witness the end of an era at the hands of his fellow countryman; though there was no love nor favour granted in this, only a quiet acknowledgment and a desire to part ways as soon as politeness permitted.
The head is slowly and delicately placed onto the cushion, now angled to gaze up at the endless grey sky above, then the foreign Frenchman turns and moves to the group of Nandroids behind him, a bobbing assortment of wig colours and strained faceplates. In front of the others meekly stands one that had attended to the departed just moments before, its hollow blue eyes fixed upon the head as it paused and hovered expectantly before her.
She grasps it, tensing and gasping quietly as her arms droop before recovering, not anticipating the weight it carried. She pauses for a few seconds, perhaps processing the enormity of what has happened, then turns and is enveloped by her friends, who quietly begin to walk with her to the remains. They will not let any human touch them; silk white palms out, they force back those who try to help, to console or reassure. Slipping on the dark fluids, the sound of metal tapping on stone, they surround and stoop over the artificial carcass, pulling away the chair in which the final moments had been spent. A faint whirring of limb motors as they lift what is left of their friend, gripping by the jacket and jeans; afraid the clothing will tear and the contact of live metal with inert. They organise and, unspokenly, begin to walk in synchronisation, faces fixed on the grassy plain thirty yards ahead, a very small rectangular coffin lying in wait next to a freshly dug hole of a similar size.
The small frame just about fits, the jacket rubbing and creasing against the walls of its wooden tomb as the thin arms are crossed over the narrow chest. The Nandroid holding the crown genuflects with her still leaking parcel, her faceplate frozen bar the lips moving soundlessly no doubt with parting words and a curse for the executioner. As there is no other space, she carefully places it upon the corpse’s pointy feet. Standing up, loose strands of her auburn bob cut blowing faintly in the wind, her sisters join alongside and pay their final, mute goodbye.
They remain motionless until the coffin’s lid is sealed, then begin to leave; their now darkened gloves again held up and away from themselves to reject all offers and to not stain their dresses, quietly departing in the direction of a waiting motorcar.