Biochemist v. Biographer

Sobs as the Biochemist drags the body of the Bioengineer, yard by yard, to the Archer’s hound's cairn.

The rain, which had abated, begins again.

A few yards west from the cairn she drops the body. She takes stones from the river and begins piling them. A pile forms, covering the Bioengineer's corpse. Larger than the Archer's hound's cairn. Exhausted after several hours of dragging and lifting and dropping, she collapses. She's soaked with tears and rain and sweat.

When the Biographer arrives, rain dripping from the brim of his light green bucket hat, down his long waxed jacket, he sneezes. Then again. Then uncontrollably, several times, before wiping his watery eyes. He's a younger man in his early thirties, who - with long face, great goatee and glassy stare - has the look of a disappointed schnauzer.

He sniffs, spots the Biochemist lying against her husband's cairn, and trods over.

He introduces himself. She nods, wiping her eyes with the cuff of her jacket. He sneezes.

Excuse me, he says. The change of seasons always brings on a cold. I can't think of anything worse.

She notifies him of the death of her husband, buried under the cairn.

The Biographer, standing awkwardly, shuffles through a list of platitudes. Coming over nothing that meets his standard, he quotes:

But who knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried? Who hath the Oracle of his ashes, or whether they are to be scattered?

The Biographer pauses for effect, folding his hands. Sir Thomas Browne, he says.

She stands.

Whose skull, the Biographer adds lightly, wiping a finger under his nose, was - I guess fittingly - stolen from his casket and kept on display at a medical museum for over a century. Until being re-interred in nineteen twenty-something. I forget the exact date. But maybe that wasn't an appropriate piece of trivia at a time like this.

No, she says. She walks toward the oak.

It probably wasn't, he agrees. He follows close behind.

They choose their guns, then walk to the field, standing ten paces apart.

They raise their guns. Their guns go off.