The frayed rope had already been used one time tonight.  And once again tonight the sinners of this world would bathe in their sin. They would understand why it was God’s will to destroy them.

Alice had tied the rope extremely tight to Williams body, it wove over his suit covered skin and anchored him to the office chair. Even around his neck the rope tied his head down to the leather chair.

“Good evening William,” She greeted tastefully. Currently, her stained fingers did not warmly grasp the knife currently. She did not need it for what she had in store for William tonight. God would wield her hand in a different way for William’s punishment.

The office was large, too drably over decorated for her own taste.  A large fireplace and mantle dominated the opposite wall from them. Perhaps she should’ve lit a fire in the hearth tonight.

Alice sat in front of William, her right knee was pressed up against the brass handle of one of the desk’s walnut drawers. It was cold despite the warm air that pulsed through the mansion but she didn’t mind. Her thoughts were bare except for those pertaining to her goal. The cold would not deter her, nor heat, blood or death.

“Uh…good evening?” Ever the con-man, William’s confusion barely betrayed him in the steady tone of his gruff voice. Alice smiled with an inhuman like glare imposing onto him. Her hand outstretched to the large desks’ top. In perfectly organised bundles about fifty groupings of coins decorated the top. Some were copper, others tin, even silver groupings stood high there.

Williams eyes tracked her movements to the desk, acquisitiveness swindled his heart as he stared at the coins only inches from his unmovable form.

“William. Do you know why you are here? Do you understand what has led you to this home, to this room?” He did not look over for a second. His pulse battered like horses rounding the finish line, a hunger all the same glowed in his irises. 

Yet, when he finally turned, the hunger died in a slumping and heaving form as his eyes locked with hers. He took a hefty gulp, “Do I understand what?” William was a disgusting man even before he began to speak in front of her. His abhorrence festered in his soul with the overwhelming stench of sulfur. The hand of Satan gripped tightly on the people she had encountered tonight. Each were the sons and daughters of the damnable Lucifer.

Alice shook her head disappointingly, she muttered to herself, “Why do they never understand? It is so simple.” She stood, scooping a bundle of coins into her hand.

He tried to speak but her fingers pried open his mouth and stuffed his throat with his own vice. He looked like a humanity-wracked Hellmouth. Quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. Rusted and new. Each systematically crammed down his choking.

“You did not earn such a merciful death. Yet, this is God’s plan and I will not stray. Why did you stray William?”

Each time he tried to spit them up, his throat expanding and closing over each metallic piece. And each time he did, Alice held his jaw closed, fingers wrapped around the bone - a muzzle for the greedy toad. He croaked and gasped, his nostrils flaring as his eyes watered.

She stared down at him, waiting and calculating for when to open the muzzle once more. His eyes brimmed with choking eyes, reddened and yellowing with every passing second.

Snot poured down from his sinful nostrils as he choked on the manifestation of his own greed. How many had he swindled using this cash? How many had he sent into the depths of poverty? William was responsible for stealing the souls and hard earned money of the residents of his village.

A few coins fell from his gaping mouth when his lungs finally gave out. His body loosened and the stray coins fell onto his yellow handkerchief.

There were no more bundles atop of the office’s walnut desk. Cleared of sin, it was cleansed and unsoiled now. Greed had risen and died in this room. Alice had cleansed this room with His hand, she smiled to herself as her eyes analyzed his own. Thick bulging eyes and broken blood vessels. Blood pooled in them. “For as for the life of all flesh, its blood is identified with its life.” Now William’s blood went unmoving, therefore his life is gone now too.

William was wracked with sin. Even in his last moments Alice knew he lamented the House of God despite his soon arrival to his archenemy’s Kingdom. Perhaps now he would learn.