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I’m already taking off my belt, wrapping it around my hand as I slowly push open his bedroom door.

He’s not on the bed. Then I look down. For a second, I can’t figure out what…

Huh.

He’s on the floor, a halo of blood pooling around him.

It’s splattered everywhere—the walls, the bedframe, dripping off the dresser in thick black strings. Two steak knives are jammed in his eyes. A third and fourth stick out from his neck.

“Are you kidding me?” I whisper.

His body has more holes than Swiss cheese. I nudge it over with the toe of my sneaker, and something slinks out from the gaping wound in his side. It’s so dark I can’t tell if it’s intestines or just a large blood clot.

Grabbing the mini flashlight from my pocket, I click it on and swing it around the room to get a better view of the damage.

Six more knives scattered around.

Cracked bedframe.

Hole in the wall.

Chair flipped over, one leg broken and missing. I follow the trail of blood over and find the missing piece half under the bed, covered in his brown hair and gore.

Son of a bitch.

I had this booked.

I grit my teeth hard enough to hurt. “You don’t need it to look like a Grindhouse set to get your point across.”

I walked into amateur night. There’s no other explanation. Who leaves murder weapons lying around? Who cleans out the entire cutlery drawer for one person?

And—give me strength—who uses a paring knife?

I bend down and pick it up, pinching it between two fingers as it drips onto the carpet. There’s blood from the blade all the way to the handle, like whichever idiot did this jammed the whole thing into him and kept going when muscle resisted.

Tossing it into a pile, I pick up every other knife here, grumbling to myself the entire time.

“Who does this?”

Downstairs, I throw them all in the sink, my chest heaving.

“Where’s the—the staging? The composition?”

If you love something, you do your best to make it as perfect as possible.

This is a trash heap with blood and guts.

I nudge the damn silverware drawer shut with my hip and trudge back upstairs. It’s even worse the second time around. I squeeze my eyes shut so I don’t start screaming at midnight. When I open them again, I have to appreciate one simple fact: Dead is dead. Even if the focal point is the furniture and not the body.

Going around the room, I fix the things that bother me most: the crooked lampshade, the pillows half out of their casings, and the drawers torn out of the dresser.

Immediately, it’s a hundred times better.

Now the eye doesn’t have a dozen different places to get stuck on. The next person who comes in has a chance to actually appreciate the kill.

It’s not worth it to finish the entire ritual, no matter how much I’d like to.

There are just too many holes.