When it was just Juro and him left the called each other. Ludwig stared straight out. He read the ad again. Juro turned up their cards. He had a straight. Without thinking Ludwig turned his cards and showed him a tree-of-a-kind. Juro hit Ludwig on his arm.
”What the hell, Smiley?”
He laughed and reached for the pot.
”Now I'm damn ready to take over the world.”
Juro lined up the matches in neat piles.
When they finished, Ludwig asked if he could talk with Juro in private. Ludwig had previously bought a few things from him who was Hall's own Morgan Freeman. Ludwig asked if he could fix a cell phone with a prepaid card. According to Juro he was in luck. He would fix so he had it already in the evening.
When Ludwig was strip-searched before closing at eight o'clock in the evening the warder submitted an old Sony Ericsson handset to him.
He announced that the next visit of the cells with the Springer Spaniel dogs would be done in three days. The ward-ass closed the door to the cell. Ludwig wrote a response fast, linked up, signed with a rather similar alias, Norfelt instead Norén, and sent to
[email protected] He quickly pulled the battery.
The show was about to start.
Ludwig put his head against the door. He heard the warder´s footsteps down the hall. A door closed.
The hallway outside was empty. He took off his watch.
Removed the cover of the TV and lifted out the circuit boards. Took up the clock, coaxed out two links.
He put together the watch bracelet again. Took what looked to be links and mounted the circuit boards where several other similar pieces of metal were.
He picked up a green marker. Stood between Hopper's Nighthawks and Crewdsons man in the rain and looked at his painting.
The warders who wondered what it was would probably say that the painting looked like a metallic rose with large clusters of fat rectangles of pencil, the center of each rectangle was colored in red.
It was hard to imagine what it was but it was also what Ludwig’s intention was.
The clusters shone like foliage from the middle. A large portion of the metallic rose, however, had recently been released in a green, thriving shimmer and abandoned its metallic and rose red character. Ludwig took the pen and filled in two parts of the leaves in the bottom corner.
He pulled the duvet cover and under the sheet on the bed. He tore them into smaller pieces. He opened up the mattress which he previously had divided into two parts and put the strips in long track in the mattress. About half of the strips he put back on top of the mattress.
He took out the mp3 player the prison lent him and lay in bed. He pressed play and started In Vains version of Wayfaring Stranger.
It was a few weeks ago he had an anxiety attack. He had faked some recently to carry out the operation he planned. He listened to the music.
I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger
While traveling through this world below
There's no sickness, no toil nor danger
In That Bright Country to Which I'll go
The show kicked off.
The warders outside the corridor could hear Ludwig's screams cut through the walls. They had heard it before and knew they would hear it again. They opened up the electronic lock, and ran to his room.
Previously, they were afraid that he might have committed suicide, but after being involved in several attacks they were now calmer. What they did not understand was that Ludwig wasn´t placed in the psych ward.
The next day, Ludwig had calmed down. The ward-asses had given him new sheets and everything was under control. He received a dose of sleeping pills and a routine conversation with the psychologist. Ludwig insisted on working in the carpentry, despite what has happened. And as usual, they let him.
After closing, he sat on the stool in front writing desk. He read the letter sent to the journalist, who wanted to visit him and who came by the prison a few days earlier in January. The journalist wrote that he was glad that he was finally going to set up an interview, that he put the money in the place that Ludwig asked him.