The Clockwork Funeral

Tick tick ticking. Hush.

The clockwork funeral assembly parade through the village, holding up the dead for all to see. A smart box. Pretty, pretty. A smart box, with a flesh-crawling, rotting corpse asleep inside. Pretty girl.
The Mother wears a veil, the Father a top hat. Their heads bowed in a stolen silence. They too, climb the hall with the rest of assembly, with the box. The skin belonging to the murdered child is flaking, "Thank goodness for that box!", that pretty, pretty box.
The villagers watch the clockwork funeral climb her pretty corpse up there, backs bent under her weight. The Mothers and Fathers thank the lord their child was spared.
"Their time will come" whispers the ticks of the clockwork assembly.
The children,oblivious to the ghost of Death, sing in hushed tones: the Grand Old Duke of York, he has ten thousand men, he marched them up to the top of the hill ...

Can you see them there?
The clockwork funeral on the top of Rosary Hill? Weeping, salty tears land on golden hands and feasts upon the shine and then slowly, gives birth to the rust that swamps their clockwork wrists and spreads higher and higher; twisting around their ticking necks. Tick tock tick. Hush.

They gently let her go, down into the deep hole with walls of thick earth surrounding it. Trapped. Mud falls on her and her smart box, until the ground is even, and the clockwork assembly stamp on the freshly dug grave. Their ticks say only one thing:

"Bye bye, my sweet, bye bye."