Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25220801-20161001121928

He’d said it was a bad idea. Or at least Envy would've if he’d been there beforehand. Not that this was in any way a possibility of course. You couldn’t be part of a decision making process unless you existed before the decision was made. It was impossible. Unless you were God he supposed. In those circumstances anything was possible. So therefore not an option for him obviously – he was firmly on the other side of the fence, although heaven knows not by choice.

So what if God had angels dedicated to specific goals - it didn’t automatically mean the devil had to follow suit? But of course in his usual haphazard way he had. Envy could only guess the devil had responded in a jealous pique, which was a feeling he could obviously understand. Truth be told, the devil was jealous of a lot of God’s moves, which made Envy’s own existence somewhat of a duplication of effort in all honesty.

The Seven Deadly Sins. A lovely idea in theory; a nightmare in practice. The worst examples of the human condition made flesh to help direct the masses along the path toward eternal damnation, maybe even offer a helping hand to a chosen few along the way. Trouble is, when you’re designed to have one sole overriding focus, tied to a world in earthly form with all it’s messy temptations and emotions, what did the devil think was going to happen? Then again, the devil seldom second-guessed these things he’d found; he was very much a creature of impulse, a deliberate polar opposite to a God who made his moves with all the speed of a stone. On a flat surface. Nestled under a mountain.

Envy called the 963rd meeting of the Seven Deadly Sins Society to order, bringing the gavel down on the table with a light, apathetic tap. A wisp of dust was the only thing that responded with anything resembling interest, bouncing up from the table like an excitable puppy and then, almost in disappointment having had a quick look round, settling back down to resume its slumber. Originally the cavernous room had been kept clean by a succession of monks, then servants, the occasional maid, and finally a middle-aged cleaner named Janice who carelessly dragged a rag round the more obvious dust gatherers once a month. At this stage there seemed little point or enthusiasm to maintaining appearances; nowadays there was better chance of a stiff breeze shifting some of the slowly accumulating dust than any formal attempt to stage an aggressive fight back. It was hard to generate any appetite for action when you were the only person who attended the meetings.

He flipped open the cheap notepad he’d picked up from the newsagents round the corner and pulled the cap off the biro with his teeth (long gone were the days of formal parchment and quill), skipped the minutes from the last meeting (there were none), and moved on to ‘Apologies for Absence’.

“In this the year of our Infernal Lord, 2016, please be advised that the following members offer their apologies for their absence.”

He turned the page and quickly rattled off the list:

“Lust – still in prison since the incident at the London Petting Zoo. Not expected for release until 2019.”

“Sloth – has not left his bed nor answered any calls since 1975 and will continue to be marked as absent for wont of any formal position taken on attendance.”

“Pride – despite numerous invitations will not, and I quote from his latest missive: ‘...stoop to meet such a group of deadbeats and social outcasts’.”

“Wrath – the 1,923rd incarnation of wrath died this weekend past after a car chase with a lorry driver on the M1 who failed to ‘indicate in a timely enough manner when changing lanes’. We await the arrival of the next incarnation in the hopes that they can maintain his or her temper long enough to actually attend a meeting.”

“Gluttony – currently in the middle of filming a new obese dating show: ‘How Deep Fat is Your Love’, followed by a gastric band operation and signed up for a stint on Celebrity Big Brother. Booked solid. Sends apologies.”

“Avarice – still banned from formal meetings following the theft of the ceremonial chalice, cutlery, chandeliers, paintings, carpets, and other miscellany three years ago.”

Sighing, he looked at the empty chairs around the musty table and then said in a tired, wan voice:

“Envy – present.”

He sat back, stretched his arms above his head, and then boomed in a theatrical, over-the-top voice, echoing in the vast chamber of the room.

“Anybody got any issues to raise? Any demonic action to take? Any furtherance of our dread master’s goals on Earth? Anyone? Come on...don't be shy!”

Silence. His arms fell to his sides, a brief, ironic smile rose and then fell in a face now long since used to disappointment. He put the lid back on the pen, closed the notepad, pushed his chair back from the table with an echoing scrape across the floor, and then left the room without a second glance. Another meeting, another waste of time.

He wasn’t surprised the devil hadn’t chastised them for their lack of action all these years though. Left to their own devices, humanity had proven more than capable of handling their own downfall. Trying to add any kind of infernal influence would have been the equivalent of bringing a match to a bonfire party (one that had already spread to a couple of adjacent gardens and looked set to spread quite merrily into several more).

The only reason he still came to the meetings was that, unlike the others tied so tightly to their pre-designed roles, he had learnt a means to free himself at least a little from the overriding compulsion of his reason for being. The key he’d found was to find a focus, a single thing to direct his dark impulse against.

No one suspected the pleasant Mr. Jones from down the way had, within the confines of his three bed semi, a single cramped room decked out with all the grim finery of your average stalker. Newspaper cuttings, magazine photos, printed articles...every single space filled with the life and times of one unique man. A shrine, somewhere to go when the need took him, when his dark desire threatened to overwhelm him. A place where the depths of his jealousy could find a suitable target and be expunged in a torrent of bitter envy, sating his base needs and leaving him free for at least a little while to live a normal human life.

How little did the world suspect that their continued existence was free of the additional influence of Envy thanks to the presence of the ever photogenic, charming and upstanding George Clooney in their midst.

TBC? 