This marks my first short story review of 2012. Back in August, Kinna Reads reviewed this short and I was intrigued.  I downloaded the story and finally read it last night.  Yes, New Years eve.  My husband and I were at a concert and waiting for the band to come out.  I carry my ereader everywhere I go in case there is a spare minute to read.  Doesn’t everyone?  LOL!

We don’t know for sure if the unknown narrator is a male or female but my best guess is male.  He goes to Lisbon on business often.  The company he works for booked her hotel room but when he arrives he finds out the hotel is overbooked and gave her room to someone else by mistake.  The manger gets involved and he hits the jack pot of hotel suites, the presidential suite.  

He was so busy with business meetings and dinners that He doesn’t get to take advantage of what the suite has to offer until his last day there.

“I had a long soak in a bath that might more accurately have been described

as a swimming pool, enjoyed a massage in a particularly sophisticated form of Jacuzzi, shaved in front of a whole wall of mirrors, and asked to have my breakfast out on the balcony.”

Later, he hears two maids in the suite.  It is so big that they don’t notice that it is still occupied.  One of the maids was telling a story about a village with a terrible drought.  It was thought that a woman had caused it.

“Her husband had left her a long time before, and then her son had died and she had wept so much that her body had dried up, her eyes had dried up, she had turned into a withered trunk, bent toward the earth.”

The village knows that the woman must die for the rain to come again but nobody wants to do the deed.

The narrator isn’t sure why he eavesdropped as he claims he doesn’t make a habit of it.  However, the story moves him and he feels ill at ease. 

There is more to the story but I don’t want to spoil it.  You can read it at Words without Borders, here.  The writing is fresh with powerful descriptions.  I really enjoyed it and it is very short, less than 7 pages.  
Short Story Monday is hosted by John at The Book Mine Set.

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