How to Dye Window Treatments

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     She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally decided to walk through the door.​

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     She saw what she knew she would. Justin, spread-eagle on the family room floor, his lifeless gaze fixed on the ceiling. The blood, inching out from beneath his body like doughnut filling, staining the hardwood. His eyes did not follow the rotating fan above him. However, that’s not what bothered her, nor what drew her eyes.​

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     She stepped over the body to the window and took a pinch of drapery in her fingers. This would not do. Red stains covered the bottom of the newly-bought white curtain, the one Justin had suggested they buy. No, this would not do at all. It was the wrong color red. The recipe online had distinctly said that it would come out a darker red in color, not this bright shade.
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     She sighed. She had thought that it would work this time. When she had first put the recipe to use, she had used strawberries, thinking that the author of the online article could not really be serious that she should use human blood. When she was done, the curtains had matched exactly nothing in her house—not her hardwood floors, not her pristine white walls, not even the white-faced, red-painted clock above the mantle. Red was such a hard color to match.
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      She shrugged in defeat and turned her attention to the problem at hand: what to do with all the extra blood everywhere? Perhaps she could use it to dye the already stained hardwood and then the curtains would match. But no; too much work. And it would be better anyway if she could just clean this mess up.
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      The knife she had pushed into his heart lay where she had left it on the floor. Picking it up, she began to hum as she wiped it on Justin’s shirt. She would just have to try again.
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      When she reentered the kitchen, the first thing that caught her eye was the abandoned book on the table. Really it was her journal of recipes, taken from websites and written down with her small, precise hand. She set the knife in the sink and returned to her journal, opening to the page she had been perusing before. How to Dye Window Treatments, the title read. More like how to botch window treatments, she mused wryly, scanning the sheet.
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      Wait! She had missed something. She didn’t remember writing it, but the small asterisk at the bottom of the page was definitely her handwriting. It read:
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      *DO NOT use the blood of a significant other. This will turn things sour between you and the curtains will not come out the right color.​

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      Thinking of Justin’s mangled body in the living room, she twisted her lips. Sour, yes. She wished she had remembered this before beginning the recipe. Oh well. Something else would have to be done.​

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      She eyed the knife in the sink, and then her own vein, blue and innocent there under the skin of her wrist. There was really nothing else she could do. The curtains had to be red, the right red, or else the entire feng shui of the house would be off and the negative energy would bring bad luck. She had read about feng shui on Wikipedia.
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      Her mind was made. She retrieved the knife out of the sink and went to dye the curtains the exact right color with her own blood. After all, it was always better to do things yourself. According to Wikipedia anyway.



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