The shocked crowd gathered around the body. It was obvious that there was no hope, that there was no possibility of putting the parts together again.
The head lay at some distance from the body; it wasn’t even looking in the same direction. It seemed to be preoccupied with something else, some other mission. It seemed to have lost any interest in reconnecting to the main body.
The body itself had obviously suffered heavy damage; there was clear evidence of a recent beating and it had shrunk to an almost unrecognizable size, obviously starved of what had previously kept it healthy.
Various limbs lay scattered around looking lost and unattached, some desperately attempting to connect themselves to other bodies. Incredibly, one limb seemed to be having some success in attaching itself to a nearby putrid but amazingly healthy body.
There was a wide divergence of opinion as to the exact cause of death but everybody agreed that a complete lack of guts was a major contributory factor.
Clearly, a number of those present had had a close relationship with the recently departed. Some became hysterical, refusing to accept the awful reality. A Mr. Paul McKay repeatedly called on the body parts to reassemble, to continue as before; he was led away sobbing.
A Mr. Cannon made a desperate call for help in breathing new life into the corpse but his pleas fell on deaf ears as the ever diminishing crowd drifted away to make funeral arrangements.
It was clear that the Party Departed was permanently redundant.