He was the envy of all.

Daylight died on the dust capped windowsill. Oak bookshelves lined the walls beneath the ivory crown molding. Each shelf was filled to the brim with books and awards of the highest degree.

They were monuments of success perfectly aligned with the eyeline of anyone who would enter the secluded library.

His emerald green suit was in a wrinkled pile nearby. For now, James sat unconscious. Mahogany eyelashes glued shut, highlighting the wrinkles across his eyelids. Did he know the impending moments? Did he understand what had led him here? To this minute and to this instant? 

Her knife blended in with the shadows. A blade given to her by God, her weapon wielded by His extended hand. He would guide her tonight.

Grabbing a clump of dark hair, Alice wrenched it backwards, waking the immoral boy from his sacrilegious slumber.

The knife sliced beneath his skin. Emitting an ear splitting scream, James wriggled and writhed in excruciating pain as she took a bloody segment of his chalky skin. Coiling like an emerald snake, his body tried to move from the pain that God's wrath disposed on him.

This was James' retribution, his day of reckoning before his appearance before the dark lord of sin.

His own envy had transformed him, a black soul forming from his once God given one. "Did you watch with enjoyment as they walked to the gallows? Did your eyes shine bright as their bodies dropped and the cracking of their necks echoed?"

He inhaled shakily with each frozen touch of her blade and exhaled with relief as the ripping ceased. Tensing and untensing in monotonous patterns.

"This is your fault James." She stared down at his tear filled eyes. Alice was sure her own face was too blurry behind the tears. "You lied. They were good people but you lied. Why?"

For once Alice went off script, she dug the blade into his muscle bared leg. She twisted the metallic blade in slow, excruciating circles until James broke. His throat was thick with mucus and filled with saliva as it dripped down his throat. "Because they fucking deserved it! Do you know what it's like to watch them succeed when I knew I deserved it so much more than them!?"

"No." Alice deadpanned, "I do not know what it's like, because I have rid myself of that idiocy. I am without flaws when you, my dear, are simply riddled with them." James gulped.

Alice's hand shook as she took his last piece, adrenaline coursed through her vermillion veins.

And then it was gone, the green of his skin, the envy that coursed through his veins. Dropped and seeping into the floorboards beneath.

His body lay still, eyes open and pointed to the awards on the wall.

Alice was not the decider of his fate, he was. God had given him the choices of submission to his will. Choices of goodness. This was God's will and James had thrown it to pieces.