catawampus

[kat-uh-wom-puh s] Chiefly Midland and Southern U.S.

adjective

1. askew; awry.

2. positioned diagonally; cater-cornered.

adverb

3. diagonally; obliquely:

We took a shortcut and walked catawampus across the field.

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Something was wrong. She could tell that much right away. The moment she entered her apartment it was clear that something was off. It didn’t even take her long to figure out what it was. Everything in her apartment had been moved. Not taken, just moved.

The difference wasn’t much. Most people wouldn’t even have noticed the shift, and even if they did, they most likely wouldn’t have cared. But not her. She knew it had happened, and she couldn’t stand it. It made the entire place seem messy and unorganized.

When she had left for work that morning, every piece of furniture and every appliance she owned was either parallel or perpendicular to at least one wall. But now everything had been shifted onto a slight diagonal slant. She felt her eye twitch when she looked around. It was now wrong. All wrong. Distressingly so.

She immediately went to the phone to call her landlord. First she needed to know how such a travesty had occurred so she could prevent it from happening again. The landlord had no explanation. The only keys were hers and his, and he had no reason to go making such small adjustments. Nor had anyone asked him for the spare key. Plus, the fact that nothing was actually missing meant it wasn’t a criminal or some such. It was some prank. A joke by someone who knew her well enough to know how to upset her. That was hardly a comfort. It didn’t tell her how someone had gained access to her apartment, nor how to prevent it from happening again.

She considered getting a new lock or some kind of chain on her door, but those would be expensive and probably go against her lease in some way, so she would have to go without anything like that. She needed something simpler and cheaper. After a few moments of thought, she decided to simply set up some kind of door jamb when she left for work every morning. Since it was most likely someone making fun of her, that would most likely be enough to keep him or her out.

With that done, she turned to the askew furnishings. Since the diagonal shift was small, she felt confident she could move it all back into its proper place by herself, it was just a matter of time and effort. The real difficult part would be getting everything back into its exact place, like it was before. That would take a bit more effort. After all, if even one piece of furniture was even a tiny bit off, it would be almost as bad as it was now. It might even be worse, since everything else would be correct except that one piece.

She sighed and started making preparations. She sat on the couch, collecting her thoughts in preparation for her task. Before she could stand back up though, she looked around the apartment. As she did, something odd happened. She found that she liked the new set up.

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I'd probably be one of those people who wouldn't even notice a change like this. As long as it was small enough it wouldn't matter all that much to me. I'm sure there's quite a few people who it would be maddening for though.