Today they would die. Their sins withering alongside their decomposing corpses.

As they slithered from their mothers womb with the sickness that betrays them, she would cure them from their sickness. The apostates were born into this God-fearing existence with the simple plan laid before them by  God, a plan that separates them from pure existence. From pure humanity.

The beige dilapidated rope dug into Henriette's form. Her skin had been rubbed red and became flaky with irritation as she had been transported.

There she sat, upright in the oak chair and completely unaware of her fate that Alice had almost rejoiced in it. God had been merciful in his execution of the extinction of her sinful nature.

The wind blew beneath the midnight sky. It blew past the skin, nestling and infesting beneath it and into the bone with freezing temperatures.

Angry tree branches crashed against the mansion's large windows. Arrhythmic and staccato, the tips of their wooden arms dragged against the glass panes. Banging the ends of their fingernails and letting their blood drip down as their nails ran beneath its skin. The tree branches broke the quiet of the room.

The dining rooms, chandelier candles shone a quiet, calm and deceitful shine just above Henriette's weary frame.

Her slender fingers untied the rope letting it go limp and fall into Henriette's lap. She didn't stir as Alice's fingers brushed against her skin.

Alice's fingers and palm curved with the curvature of her victim's skull. Diving beneath her blood hair and messing at her perfectly curled Victorian mane.

She wondered if her hair had looked similar as it shifted beneath her enraged hand as it landed on the open skin of the children.

Stripped of her wimple, God would not save her tonight. For God's hand could only be felt through her Saviour, the woman standing behind her limp form.

She gripped it like a weapon, smashing Henriette's forehead into the dark oak dining table. Hearing the crack splinter outwards into the warm air surrounding them. The table shook, the force throbbed through the ground and rattled the China cabinet at the other end of the room.

She could have imagined the dinner parties that had taken place here. Yet, that was long ago. Now, spiders and creatures hid in the shadows. Stalking their prey with hungry eyes, empty bellies and skittering legs.

When Alice's hand retracted from its grip, Henriette's bloody head shot up. Eyes dilated with pain reverberating through her forehead and the fear of her situation choking at her lungs.

"Run." Her voice was calm and unexpected as the force of her violence still shook the China plates, almost unamused in its ambiguity. Henriette looked up at Alice, her eyes wide with fear and festering with confusion. The woman before Henriette seemed perfectly God-fearing. Her mahogany hair gleamed beneath the yellow candle light. The silver string of her cross floated away from her neck as Alice bent down to the woman.

And if there was such a word to describe Alice, God-fearing was it. "Run!" She scampered from her chair, the ties of the ropes falling away as she almost tripped over her large red ballroom gown.

Henriette rushed to the nearest door, tearing at the brass doorknob. The door was locked. She banged at it, wailing and beating at its towering oak frame. Blood began to rush down her forehead, slithering over the bridge of her thin nose and down her slender cheekbones.

Henriette turned, scouring for another way of escape when her eyes landed on a silver knife that lay on the quercus credenza beside her. How one could be so blind as their struggle overtook them. It annoyed Alice.

And then she stopped struggling. She sneered and ripped the knife from the credenza top. Her face began to crinkle as hostility rushed through her ungodly veins. Brandishing it to her blithe captor. Suddenly overtaken with a false sense of security and wrath.

She swung at Alice with the knife, slicing at her white puffed sleeve. "Leave me be, You Heathen!" Her voice boomed in the echoes of the dining. She drew the smallest inkling of blood.

Alice questioned if her heaving and ferocious figure had looked similar to the view she’d given the children she lumbered over at the convent. Had the wrinkles that plagued her face now, looked similar as she beat the orphans with the crucifix of the man she claimed she loved?

The thought made Alice's eyes glint with intention, cracked mirror of Henriette's eyes as they screamed with infuriation before her. Yet, the Devil was not within her tonight. Tonight, her hand was being guided by her creator.

The Creator.

For Alice's blood was red. An organism formed from the heavenly hand of God and saved by the blood of Christ. She was their agent, created by their hands and destined to be destroyed by their maidens.

Henriette swung again, mouth open like a lion with teeth bared and hair stuck up with the slickness of the sweat that marked her forehead. She was hunched over with piercing enraged aegean eyes that attempted to dissuade Alice of her goal.

How disappointing that the beautiful blue eyes that God had given her had gone to waste on such a wrathful creature. Perhaps she'd take them, give them back to the community as a gift.

Repurpose and redistribution as an act of charity. How Luke would be grateful.

However, Alice would not be dissuaded by intimidation. God had granted her this path and she would not fail him, in fear of his wrath and the loss of his love.

Henriette stepped forward again, swinging the knife with an anger filled over exaggeration. Suddenly the strength of her wrath faded as Alice pushed her down to the ground, her fingers pressing into her throat and her legs straddled around her abdomen. Draining the air from her furiously panting lungs.

Her eyes blurred with glassy tears as she choked, frothed with spit at her scarlet lips and fought for breath. Less of a lion now and more of a cub. Or a deer. The false wrath of the Devil faded as she met her match. The face of her creator stared down at her from above.

Alice pressed with all her strength, driving the woman's oesophagus into the floor beneath her. Henriette struggled as her fingers tore at the ground around her and tried to pry Alice's deadly fingers from the circumference of her oesophagus.

Alice stared at Henriette's terrified eyes. Her throat bobbing as she gasped for air. Air that would never reach her lungs.

"Shhh," Alice's quiet voice whispered in Henriette's ear. "Shhh. Be calm" Her voice was breathy alongside Henriette's violent gasping.

Henriette's feet crashed against the ground. The chandelier shook and swayed over the length of the dining room as her ankles struggled and crashed against the planks. Giving and taking away light as it swung from side to side.

Alice unfurled her fingers from Henriette's purple throat. Her cerulean eyes had popped, tears dripping down her sad arsenic-whitened cheeks and tore at her rose blush.

She grasped the knife, slicing the skin at her bruise slowly to create finality in Henriette's death.

Wrath had been conquered tonight with the might of the Lord.

Alice smoothed the blood down on her white apron, thankfully Henriette's heathen blood hadn't marred her white dress. What a shame that would've been. The white lace of her dress was extremely delicate.

The light had darkened her eyes. The anger had seeped from her beastly face and onto her red velvet apparel.

Alice muttered a brief prayer for Henriette's safe passing and crossed herself.

Unlocking the dining room door, Alice's brown high heels clacked through the puddle of blood on the floor and into the darkened mansion's main hallway.

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