Alice's bloody fingers grasped the needle of the record player. It sighed a relief and crackled before coming alive. A symphony broke alive within the hallowed walls of the mansion's ballroom. One could imagine the extravagant parties and rendezvous they would've had here.

The sin that would've teemed and been worn within these walls.

His golden pocket watch was still dangling in the pocket of his violet suit. He'd bought it not but days ago after the opening night of his newest play. Oh how he'd been showered with praise and how he'd showered himself with a blazing ego.

Charles's own preoccupation with his status and possession's had become excessive. No longer did he honour God, that would change tonight.

It was a rhythm, perfectly played in her head. The chord and notes rising and falling in a crescendo and decrescendo. Each bang against the mirror reverberated with the anger of the blaring classical music. 

Alice smirked from her chair, watching him like a moving painting. An art form baring itself before her, naked and trembling. Trapped from above, beneath and around with transparent mirrors, Alice could see him but he could not see her.

What a predicament Charles had found himself in on this very evening. 

Charles analysed his form using the mirrors that encased him once the adrenaline began to seep from his overgrown veins. Running fingers through his dark hair to fix it and smooth flyaways down. He shot a hair raising smile at himself before winking.

Alice sneered from behind the glass, flipping and twisting her knife between her fingers, waiting, hoping. But Charles stopped for a moment, entirely preoccupied with something that had caught his eye.

It wasn't an object but the harmonious and honeyed music that played overhead. His eyes frosted over as he listened for a couple moments. Entirely frozen with concentration.

The glass wasn't very thick, a couple good whacks would break it, which is exactly what Alice prayed for. Despite his pride being a failing his morality,  Charles wasn't stupid. Perhaps that was a part of why he was here.

His fingers grasped the edges of the wooden stool Charles swung overhead and down onto the glass. His strength rippled across the glass as the edge of one of the legs dug through it.

Alice smiled from afar, watching him work like an animal at a zoo trying to escape. He wasn't far from one.

He crashed through the glass, making it rain down and slice through his skin from above. His feet slipped and slid on the wreck of the mirrors till he fell to his knees.

With a rattled outcry as he fell, his fingers, hands, toes and knees were all punctured by the debris. Alice smirked, her voice teeming with god given satisfaction, "Come, dear boy."

She outstretched a hand, another one behind her. Charles's confusion ladened wrinkled face stayed still for a moment, Alice could see the gear's turning and derusting as he stared up at her.

Alice gestured back once more to her outstretched hand, she was sure he could see the blood that marred her outfit, but she didn't care. Who was he going to tell after all?

Charles did not grab her hand, he hoisted himself up from the ground gracefully, arrogantly. As though he hoped Alice did not see him crash from the glass box he had been in not two minutes ago.

He brushed the glass pieces from the lapel and from the wrinkles in his suit. He looked prideful as ever, fussing over his clothing as if he did not understand the predicament he was in. They never really did understand the path she would carve for them in a few teetering seconds, but she would make them. They would understand their rightful path once she was done with their mortal, screaming souls. 

Holding a firmer grasp on the knife behind her back, the bovine handle was cold in her palm. It was a reminder of why she was here, the sensation broke her focus on the man before her. She would not fail tonight.

Suddenly, she jolted, sending out a deadly cut horizontally across his face, across his eyes. Blood screamed as he did, raining down from his orbital cavities. "Do they truly desire your presence?" She joked, "I can barely stand to look at you."

"Please! I cannot die here tonight! I have plays to run! The theatre industry will fall apart without my needed presence!" He pleaded but did not fall to his knees. His fingers were clasped together but lacked any true tension in his tendons. Did he really, truly desire to live?

Charles fell to his knees, the wooden creaking beneath the impact. His hands pressed into his blood eyes as he shrieked piercing cries of pain.

Blood penetrated past the cracks in his fingers. The streams of hot blood cracked down onto his purple lapel. Alice muttered, "God save us" before lifting her heel and slamming it down onto his chest.

Charles' body went limp as it slid across the ballroom floor from the sheer Godly force in her shove.

Alice cleaned the gleaming silver blade along her stained vermillion apron before ripping his hands from his face and slicing a smile into his mouth. Now his outsides matched his insides.

"You're a monster!" He bellowed through the room, the cuts deepened as he screeched. Alice could hear the shaky echo of his statement beat down around her. But it didn't matter, he did not understand.

"God would have saved you from eternal damnation but you did not take his heavenly outstretched hand. That, my dear, is why you are here tonight. That is why you will die tonight." Her voice was almost mellow, gentle against Charles' bloody prideful face. He did not feign pain but he feigned fear, he was an unchangeable coward.

Alice continued, a euphonious voice emitting, so unlike her own, "Do you understand now, Charles?"

But he did not respond.

Blood had pooled around his body, it had hardened in his onyx hair. The cuts to his eyes were petrifying like staring into an empty abyss. Muscles and veins shone under the candlelight sending a ripple down her spine. He understood.

Hoisting his sanguinary frame from the floor, Alice dragged it to the still playing record player. She fixed his body nearby, moving and twisting his jagged and glass-decorated arms into a kneeling position against the wall. His fingers intertwined with each other as a declaration of his submission to God himself.