DISTURBED

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Writing exercise. Write a ´slow text´ in no more than 400 words.

DISTURBED
Joan pulled out one pair of silk socks after the other, felt with her hands in all corners and nooks of the drawers, pulled them out and checked under the bottom. Systematically she continued with shelves bulging with vests and pants, sticking her hands deep down each and every pin-striped pocket and into the toes of the polished shoes.

Halfway through she tiptoed back to the large bedroom. Erlandson´s wife was still moaning quietly with a cold cloth over her eyes . The curtains were drawn and threw a sickly-green tinge over the bed. One could almost feel pity for the woman.

Joan continued with the bed and the bedside table. Checking under and over, inside and behind, up and down. She pulled the sheets off and turned the mattress. The two small drawers revealed a large collection of main-stream porn and the occasional dust mouse, but not a shred of interesting paper anywhere.

She swung out the flat screen from the wall, scrutinized the backside and let her fingertips run down the wallpaper. Nothing. But she knew her subconscious mind had registered a detail which jarred. A bird sailed past the window, and her heart skipped a beat.

She placed herself in the doorway and looked around her as if she saw the room for the first time. The bed, the wardrobe, the bedside table. The walls and the carpet. She had even tried if the skirting boards were loose.

The table! He had put the alarm clock and the ashtray in the windowsill. Why use the sill when there was a table at hand? Joan knelt down next to the square piece of furniture. Experimentally she dragged it away from the wall, rocking it from side to side. Something rattled inside the plinth…

“What do you think you are doing?”

Her eyes darted round and revealed to her what the room must look like from his point of view. Underwear and socks spilling out of the drawers, a couple of porn magazines on the floor, both wardrobe doors wide open and here she was, sitting on his sheets, turning his bedside table upside-down. She let the four round legs slide back into the four corresponding marks in the carpet as if the drawers were loaded with nitroglycerine. She drew herself up and let go of the table.

She knew that she could not talk herself out of this.