Rose never bought red curtains. She thought blue was much friendlier to onlookers.

Rose's two bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom house with a dull blue paintjob and dark shingles stood on a sloping hill of perfectly manicured lawn and overlooked clean sidewalk hemmed in by marigolds. She was a model resident to her HOA, but a single, childless thirty-six-year-old woman was more suspect to her neighbors.

But there was an exception.

Every Saturday afternoon, Rose tidied and swept her already pristine foyer. She evenly spaced her sensible heels on her shoe rack, smoothed creases of jackets on the coat rack, and leveled the painting offering a modest pop of color. Finally, she checked her bathroom mirror. As she chased stray black strands back behind her ear, she caught a glaring detail. Rose clicked her tongue when she found herself wearing a white blouse with red hemmed sleeves; that wouldn't do at all.

By the time she carefully selected a solid yellow long-sleeved shirt, the doorbell chimed from the hallway. Another quick check of the mirror, and she was ready to answer the door.

A man with dark, mousy hair was in the middle of fidgeting with the rolled-up sleeve of his white button-up when she answered the door. He straightened up with a sheepish smile.  "Hey, Rose. Sorry to bother you again."

She raised a brow and teased, "Let me guess. You need a cup of sugar again?"

He laughed, and a bright thrill ran through her. "Gee, am I really that bad about my grocery shopping that you can guess now?"

Rose grinned. "Don't worry, Dan. I don't mind lending you sugar. What are you baking tonight?"

"Nothing, actually. I came to ask for something else." Dan scratched the back of his neck, and Rose's mind raced to come up with the request before he could. She guessed right when he came out with, "I wanted to ask if I could come have tea with you sometime. You mentioned the other day you liked drinking tea while you read the news."

Her mind instantly recalled the atrocious state of her living room. "Ah."

He drew back at her hesitance. "If you don't want to—"

"Of course, I'd love to have you over," Rose blurted louder than she meant to. She plastered on a smile. "Yes. That sounds great. How about same time next Saturday? I'm sure I can get the house in order by then."

#

As soon as Dan left, she temporarily moved her old furniture into the basement and went for an impromptu shopping trip. The fruits of her labor lay around her in tasteful fashion. She commanded the men transporting her dark green loveseat, matching two armchairs, coffee table, and end tables with thorough precision. Rose filled the other odd corners, empty surfaces, and bare walls with more artful clutter and simple artwork. She'd been meaning to redesign her living room for some time now but never had the motive for it until she was confronted with the fact that Dan would see it.

Saturday's noon came knocking and brought Dan to her front door. Then, finally, inside.

"Wow. I feel like I'm walking into a home magazine." He shrugged off his coat, and Rose was quick to intercept it and direct it to the coat rack. "Thank you. Your house looks amazing. You didn't need to be so worried about what it looked like."

Rose smiled at him, cheeks warm. "You're too sweet. What kind of tea did you have in mind?"

"I'll have anything you'll offer me, but I'd like to give you this first." Dan went back to the coatrack and produced a tin from his jacket pocket. "I figured I ought to make up for being such a lousy neighbor with this."

"Ellington's? This brand is so pricey—you shouldn't have!" Rose was so happy that when she led him into the living room, she nearly missed the red mug she left out that morning. Her mood fell from bubbly heights to flat horror. She scooped up the mug and quickly excused herself to the kitchen where she'd put a kettle on prior to Dan's arrival.

She shoved the scarlet mug into the back of one of her cupboards. Rose had been so busy that she'd forgotten about the mugs. Rose clattered through the ceramics with increasing frustration when she couldn't find anything suitable. There was red text on this one, a strawberry on that one, a cherry pattern on this one—it was a disaster.

Blushing horribly, Rose resorted to her glass cups. She considered making iced tea since hot tea would be uncomfortable to hold without a handle, but she couldn't justify it in autumn. Once the kettle started whistling, she had to pour the tea and return to Dan.

"I'm sorry. We'll have to make do with glass cups."

"I can't complain if I'm getting a cup of tea from you, Rose." He smiled amicably and took a sip. "What is this? It's great."

"Oh, stop." Rose had a sip herself and let it calm her nerves. "I just added a pinch of cinnamon to one of the blends I had lying around."

"Now that you've got me hooked on it, I couldn't imagine not coming back for another cup." He had another generous sip, unperturbed by the hot glass.

Rose couldn't suppress her grin, but she tempered her delight before he noticed it. "First you ask for a cup of sugar, and now you want a cup of tea?"

Dan startled when he realized his rude self-invitation but quickly recovered when he caught her smile. "I'll have another entry ticket ready."

#

Rose was careful about the house from then on, and it paid off. She hadn't left anything embarrassing or strange out during Dan's visits, but she kept working on the house. Houseplants, art pieces, and tchotchkes started filling up the house.

The house was perfect, but the flaws hid just around the corner. Her furniture still lay in her basement while she figured out how to get rid of it, and her bedroom and office were in a worse state than her old living room. Rose wasn't too concerned since Dan would have no reason to enter those areas, and he'd been the perfect houseguest so far.

He came like clockwork every Saturday armed with expensive tea blends which gradually turned into sprays of flowers or books that he thought she'd like, and every weekend, she could look forward to serving him tea. Dan was the paragon of neighborliness even if he himself thought otherwise.

"I have something to confess, Rose." He said with a loud, refreshed sigh after a sip of hot chamomile. He set the mug down on a white coaster. "I wasn't quite the honest with you when we first met."

"Oh?" Rose turns her eyes away from the snow drifting down outside. "How so?"

"I didn't actually need all those cups of sugar." He glanced to the side and put a hand over his mouth as if to hide his face. "Truth be told, I don't know how to bake whatsoever."

Rose couldn't hold back her laugh. "Then, what were you doing with all that sugar?"

"Trying to bake." Dan glanced at her quickly before looking down again. "If I made something edible, I would've given it to you, but it didn't work out so well."

"Why did you keep asking for sugar if you couldn't use it?"

He stammered before he confessed, "I wanted an excuse to see you."

Rose blinked.

"I couldn't work up the nerve to talk to you." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I know I'm too old to be acting like this, but I hope it doesn't make you think any less of me."

"Dan, how could I ever think less of you?" Her chest warmed, and she let her full appreciation beam through her smile. He seemed unsure still, so she ventured to say even if her breath shook a little to confess, "I-I think everyone has their flaws, and we shouldn't condemn them for having them. Nothing changes the fact that you've been so kind to me."

A smile grew on his mouth, but the nervous quality of his expression remained. "If you don't mind that I took this long to ask to have tea with you, would you mind if I took this long to ask you for a date?"

#

Although Rose was over the moon over how things were developing with Dan, she was stricter than ever with herself. She refreshed her wardrobe with the kind of clothing that Dan complimented her on—which was practically everything—but most crucially, she cleansed the house. Now that she was seeing Dan, there was no telling when he might see intimate sections of the house. For now, everything— clothes, décor, books—went in the basement where her old furniture was exiled. She installed a lock for good measure.

Her bedroom, office, bathrooms, and kitchen all received the same treatment as her living room. She lived in pleasing aesthetic and devoted herself to sterile perfection. Rose thought she had her bases covered.

Dan held her mitten-clad hand in his as they strolled past the storefronts in chilly December air. Rose watched the windows go by thoughtlessly, tired out by the play and dinner that she attended with Dan. He insisted on paying for it all even though she invited him to the play. He justified it by reminding her that he still had to pay back all his borrowed sugar—a debt which failed to decrease in his internal accounts at all.

Her eyes drew to a boutique window display where a beautiful evening gown dripping down a mannequin's curves like dark wine. Dan slowed to a stop with her and said, "Gorgeous, isn't it?"

The silky material hanging attractively off the hips mesmerized Rose. "Yeah."

"Do you want it?"

She realized that it was a startling, flashy red and stumbled backwards. "No!"

Her outburst drew heads their way, and she blushed as she tugged him past the store. Dan struggled to catch up with her. "What's wrong? I thought it was pretty."

"I don't like it after all."

Dan pulled her to a stop. "Rose? Can you tell me why you're so upset?"

"I'm," she tried, grasping for anything but the truth. "I don't know. I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry." He rubbed her shoulder and brushed his glove over her cheek. "The dress is pretty. I thought red would look great on you."

"Really?" Her heart was pounding.

His mouth quirked into a handsome smile. "Are you fishing for compliments? Obviously, you'd be stunning in that thing."

#

That red dress had made Rose too complacent. Just because he liked what he'd seen of her now wouldn't guarantee he'd accept everything else about her. Her mistakes kept piling up. She ordered tomato soup during dinner with Dan. She borrowed a copy of 1984 on a library date. She wore a red jacket on Dan's birthday.

Rose had to take more drastic measures.

Before dawn, Rose rented a moving truck and waited for Dan to leave for work before getting everything in her basement loaded up. Everything except for a clearly marked box, so the crew she hired wouldn't take it by accident. Rose had her basement cleared out in a matter of hours, and she'd left no sign of her business by the time she left.

#

Although Rose intended to be back by night, she was gone for a total of four days. She couldn't remember what she'd done in those four days, but she assuaged Dan's worries by explaining that she'd gone for a visit to her parents. Dan moved in a few months after that.

But Rose's guard was getting weaker.

It had been a few weeks until she noticed that she bought a mug with a holly berry on it. She blamed the mistake on the fact that Christmas was getting closer. Then, she saw that she bought marinara sauce even though it wasn't on the shopping list. She figured she bought it because Dan was talking about getting Italian food earlier. Finally, Rose got caught with hair dye on a night she thought Dan would be out drinking with his coworkers.

"Rose?" Dan gaped at the scene before him. "Are you dying your hair?"

"Um. Yes?"

He tilted his head, mouth curled and curious. "That's not your natural hair color?"

Rose flushed with heat and tried not to cry. "No."

He put down his work bag and came inside to comfort her. "Aw, no need to cry. Why would I care if your hair's black or purple?"

She sniffled and stopped herself from getting any more worked up over this than was reasonable. "I know. I'm just embarrassed you caught me like this."

"What?" He gave her a quizzical look that went from her wet, goopy hair to her puffy eyes to her inky hands. "I think you look gorgeous."

"Stop." Rose tried at a smile, but her hands shook as she swatted at him.

"What's your natural hair color, then?"

"Brown." She made a mental note to purge all her baby photos from her albums. "What are you doing home so early?"

"Oh." Dan stepped out of the bathroom and hesitated for a moment. "Finish up in here, and we can talk some more over a cup of tea."

She gave an apprehensive nod and rinsed out her hair. Rose dried and treated her hair as fast as she could before stepping out into the living room where Dan had two mugs of tea ready. She tried not to frown when she saw him holding the holly mug and instead thanked him.

They sat in tense silence for a few moments before Dan began, "You know one of my buddies was telling me about how his nephew got a job this year."

Rose drank more tea as if it'll thaw the cold dread creeping up her back. "Yeah?"

"He's a strong kid, so he works for the local moving company."

"Oh." She put her mug in her lap and tightened her hands around it.

He sipped without a sound. Rose couldn't look up to see what kind of expression he had. "You weren't visiting your parents, were you?"

Rose pressed her lips together and shook her head.

"What were you doing?"

She wondered how much he knew—how much she had to answer for.

"I'm not mad, Rose. I'm just confused."

"I was just moving things."

"I could've helped you move all that instead of hiring a company. What was it?" It was a light suggestion, completely in line with Dan's endless kindness, but it felt he was cornering her.

"No, no, I couldn't ask you to do that. I was just moving old furniture. It was old, so I had to—"

"So, you had to go burn all of it in a ditch on the side of the highway?"

Her blood froze in her veins.

"Rose? Aren't you gonna answer me?"

She wished she could.

"My nephew said that you loaded up all that stuff into a truck and took off. Two days after that, there's news about a huge bonfire on the side of a highway." He waited for a response, but he didn't get one. "That fire. That was you? That was the same place those murders happened a decade ago. Psychos wander around there, so—"

Rose said softly, "You think I'm a psycho?"

"No, Rose, I'm just saying that it was dangerous. You have all these things you don't tell me, and there are even more things about you that confuse me; it makes me feel like you're going to get yourself in trouble one day. I just want you to tell me what you're hiding."

She put her mug on the coffee table and looked away from Dan. Not because she couldn't look at him but rather, the mug. "The furniture was everything."

"You can't expect me to believe that. No normal person just sets fire to half their furniture in a ditch where people got murdered."

Dan didn't think Rose was normal. After all the hiding she'd done, he'd found her out anyway. He wouldn't like what else he found, then. Rose's eyes shuttered. "Dan, I think we should take a little break."

#

Walking into the basement again after so many weeks of strict abstinence felt like finally taking off a too-tight dress. Down here, she could relax in her shame. Down here, she could be alone with her deprecating eyes. Down here, she could be surrounded with red.

The scarlet walls, the dark cherry-wood, the shining maroon box. It was her and this box. The box humming quietly where it sat against the wall, and her sitting opposite, humming with anxiety. This was how it was down here for the first few days. It was different as time passed.

Without Dan's judgement looming over her anymore, her impulse had gone out of control.

Floor lamp with a red tasseled shade, a rectangular rug colored dull burgundy, a second-hand ruby-red armchair, a ceramic bowl with a sangria glaze holding a bushel of apples, and a myriad of other things. She didn't remember how she found them—or rather, how they found her—but they were here to stay.

Sometimes she gathered enough nerve to rise from her armchair and cross the floor to the dark box, but she never quite got to the point of touching it before her mind clouded, lost her course, and returned to her seat. She once managed to open it back when it first appeared after that night, but she lost all memory of what she'd seen. However, she instinctively knew that the humming, scarlet specter of her past was all that remained as evidence.

The newspaper headlines could be called evidence, but not to Rose—not in the way that mattered to her. Nothing about "THREE GIRLS MURDERED BY ROUTE 80" and "SMALL TOWN SERIAL KILLER DISAPPEARS?" was as concrete to Rose as the box before her.

The more intangible proof came to her whenever she nodded off in her chair into smudged, violent dreams with uncertain scarlet plots. The bloody, confused conjectures of her subconscious imagined that she was being hunted, but other times she was the one hunting. These dreams recur with some variation, but they were all crimson.

Every passing year she fell further into confusion and fear until she now understood that she couldn't be fixed.

She was normal otherwise. That was how she got Dan. She was normal with him, or at least she tried her best to be. Rose tried to escape the red, but it would always lurk in her subconscious and remind her over and over what color her insides were. She couldn't help being red.

All she could do was dream feverishly these days as if she could find an answer in them. Some were in the ditch. Some were with Dan. One was in the box.

That was the dream she was wading through before she awoke to muffled chimes piercing into her basement. The ringing was becoming frequent these days even though she wished he would forget about her, but he wouldn't. He kept calling for her, and she was afraid he'd never stop.

That was why she pulled on thick clothing and answered her door.

The sight of Rose had a physical effect on Dan, who nearly collapsed before wrapping her in a hug. "Rose. Thank God. Are you okay?"

"Yes," she murmured. All of her resolve to break things off had melted away in his embrace. He was so understanding of her even though she'd done nothing but the incomprehensible.

"I'm sorry for pushing you to talk before you were ready to tell me. I'm sorry. I won't ask until you want to tell me anything."

He was here for her. He tried for her. He loved her. Maybe he could accept her.

"Dan." Tears rolled down Rose's cheeks. "I have red hair."

A beat of silence. "What?"

"And I'm red all the way through." She scrubbed at her wet, freezing cheeks. "That's what I've been hiding. That's what's wrong with me, but I didn't want you to know because I didn't want you to leave me."

"I don't understand, Rose." His eyes shined at her. "Help me understand."

She let him in. Splashes of red all over the house overwhelmed the eyes. She unlocked the basement for him and let him see into the deepest parts of her home.

"Rose? What's this room?"

"I'm not sure." Rose made it to the bottom of the staircase with Dan and stepped in front of the box even though her heart was pumping hard enough to burst.

She couldn't turn to look at what kind of face Dan was making.

"Those serial murders happened two decades ago. I was supposed to be girl number four. I don't remember what happened, but I guess I got away. And then, there was this box was here. Every time I try to get rid of it, my head gets fuzzy, and I forget what I'm doing. I can't make it go away."

"Rose?" Dan said carefully. "What's in the freezer?"

Rose swallowed and looked at the floor next to his shoe. "Sometime later, it started with something small. I started buying strawberries. Next, I wore red clothes. Next, I painted my walls red. Next, my furniture, then my basement, then everything was red. I don't know why or how, but I couldn't help myself. I tried to get rid of it. I tried selling my red things, but nothing worked as best as burning them. But even that didn't work in the end. There was no getting rid of it. There was no helping it. And now I know there's no hiding it."

"Rose. What's in the freezer?"

"What's inside the box is red. I am red. What's inside the box is who I am." Rose lifted the lid. "Would you think any less of me?"

END