I can see it now…
EXT. Day. Squalid medieval village, everything and everyone seemingly covered in mud, with a haze of smoke fills the air. Various barnyard animals are loose on the mud road. The villagers are listless, aimless, demoralized, and quite possibly insane… Two are fighting in the mud over a few kernels of spilled grain, while another shovels mud into his mouth; a woman repeatedly, robotically flings a cat against a wall; a man falls down a well; nuns are beating on a corpse; there is an apparent suicide hanging inside one of the shacks… One man, carrying a triangle-like noisemaker, leads a mule-drawn cart, piled with several corpses, down this lane.
CART DRIVER: “[Ding!] BRING OUT YOUR DEAD! [Ding!]”
MIDDLE-AGED VILLAGE SON: [approaching cart with the body of a wizened old man slung over his shoulder] “Here’s another one for ya…”
HIS FATHER: [querellously] “I’m not dead yet!”
SON: “Shut up, you’ll be dead in a minute.”
FATHER: “I tell you, I’m not dead.”
CART DRIVER: “Look here, 'e says 'e’s not dead!”
SON: “When are you comin’ 'round next?”
DRIVER: “Thursday.”
SON: “Aw, can’t you come 'round sooner?”
DRIVER: “Can’t! The Robinsons alone lost nine today…”
FATHER: [tunelessly singing] “I feel happy,…”
SON: [conspiratorily, to the driver] “Look, isn’t there something you can do…?”
FATHER: “…I feel happy…”
CART DRIVER: [Furtively scans the street for witnesses, then produces a club, and delivers a killing blow to the old man’s head.]
SON: [unloading father’s corpse onto the cart] “Oh, thanks very much, and here’s your ninepence.”
