The Ugliest

As I checked out today from the Hotel Cervia, I came upon the most disgusting woman I have ever encountered. She was the mother of the two women I had come to think of as the proprietors of the hotel and she it was who awaited impatiently my money. As I stood there counting out the money, she stood to my right, old, stout and stunted by age — remarkably in appearance like a troll — or an ogre. These things, though, should only have put her in the class of those many ugly old women I have met. She was set apart by her bouncing step synchronized with snorts over the obbligato of the sound of water sloshing, as of the sound of water moving back and forth in a ship that had begun to sink, in some horrible internal organ that surely she alone possesses. This sound insures her position as the most repulsive human being I have ever encountered. Even reconsidering the sound she produced, I stifle the urge to vomit while I shudder.