Women of God can be a lot of things. Alcoholic, gay, or even surprising. Sometimes all three at once! Matilde was one of such woman. She had lots in common with many women, especially in Palermo, where she lived. Most things about Matilde were fairly ordinary. She was a normal adult age. She walked every day in the city where she grew up. She remained fashionable but her hair was often uncooperative in the wind. She drank coffee twice a day and sometimes after a night out as a treat. She wasn’t married to routine but she kept up the structure of her life. Coffee, walking, work. What she did for work isn’t important, as it almost never is. The important thing is that she loved walking and that every day she walked by the cathedral of her city. Most days she was just passing but when she had time in the morning, she stopped inside. There were usually elderly people praying in the pews, one or two security guards, sometimes the stray tourist family. Though she recognized some of the older people, she never saw anyone she knew since most of her friends had either denounced religion or worked long hours. As in many cathedrals, there were vaulted shrines to different religious figures lining the sides of the church. To the left of the altar was the shrine of the Virgin. To Matilde, it was indisputably the most beautiful shrine, even the highlight of the cathedral. Even the highlight of the neighborhood. This Madonna. She held her child of course, but she looked different from all of the other Madonnas in the city. She was decidedly Byzantine, with a round porcelain face and cloaked in the blue of the sky. Her crown was tall and gold, the draping insignia pattern of her robe was gold, the hair beneath her head covering was gold too. She was blue and white and gold, but she had very dark eyes and lips. Chocolate brown eyes and chocolate brown lips. She looked a bit gothic in this way. Notably to Matilde, the Madonna’s eyes were cast down rather than on her child. The infant Jesus was a chubby figure hanging on her left hip and reaching for something in her right hand. His face was turned toward her in a babyish upward grimace but she seemed a bit oblivious to his presence aside from holding him up. Matilde didn’t think much about the baby. Eventually it was a Thursday. On Thursdays Mass began at ten a.m., so Matilde arrived at half past nine to visit with the Madonna before the elderly people sat down for worship. Beverages were not permitted in the cathedral, however, vials of liquid were allowed since personal holy water samplings were sold at the cathedral gift shop. Matilde had bought such a vial once, and on this morning had filled her holy water vial with a type of clear alcohol before setting off from her flat. When she entered the cathedral she was the only worshipper. A maintenance man labored in the background at the opening of the church office, and the nuns who ran the bakery across the street were milling about within Matilde’s eyeline. As was her custom, she positioned herself to the left of the altar, standing plainly in front of the Virgin with her arms by her sides. The baby seemed particularly irrelevant in the dim light of Thursday morning, his smirk smudged by shadow. The Madonna caught the light perfectly, in fact, the faint sun rays dappled on her lips so delicately that it appeared as if her mouth was twitching. Matilde reached into her skirt pocket and grasped the tiny alcoholic vial. Without looking behind her toward the maintenance man or the flurry of nuns, she hitched up her skirt, much higher above the knee than she had ever dared. With her mouth she dexterously unstoppered the small bottle and sucked down its contents, gagging softly as the isopropyl burned her narrow esophagus. She smiled encumbered but grandly at the Madonna, that unchanging minx. Matilde kept her lips in a little O shape around the bottle’s neck and with her skirt held up by her left hand, she began to furiously masturbate with her right. Matilde rubbed her clitoris raw as her throat raged. She quickly began to choke as she spluttered the alcohol up as reflux and still held tight to the vial between her lips. The choking became a cough became a climax, and a door closed somewhere in the behindness. Matilde bit down. The bottle shattered, coating her inner cheeks with jagged, stinging glass. A low voice called out. The closer the voice got, the worse it sounded. Matilde’s tongue began to bleed. Her genitals were still exposed. The blood from her face and mouth began to pool in the little basket of her billowing skirt, clenched by her tiny left paw. The voice was directly behind her now. A man! A man at nine forty three. He was swearing as Matilde fell to her knees at the feet of the Virgin. Matilde didn’t care, the rapid bruising of her kneecaps sustained her orgasm. She screamed with a tongue full of glass, a happy scream. She choked and choked and still her bulging eyes laid on the Madonna, whose lips had parted almost imperceptibly.