Chance Madonna

by David Alan Jones

On the road to St. Petersburg Michel was stopped by a white light spilling from heaven. His horse, normally an even-tempered beast, reared, throwing the young man from the saddle. It galloped away into a nearby orchard as light filled Michel's world.

He raised a hand, uttering a cry as the light became too much to bear. Then it was gone, and the quiet, late summer evening was as before.

A woman stood in the muddy road. She wore a white dress, skirted at the thigh, with a top that covered only her left breast. Her golden hair hung in rivulets below her slim, pale shoulders and massed on her head like a glowing crown. Upon her feet she wore strange sandals with leather thongs crisscrossing upwards to her knees. She was the cleanest, purest thing he had ever seen.

This toothsome vixen looked into Michel's eyes and smiled.

"Who are you? Are you a goddess?" asked the stunned man.

The woman laughed.

"No, honey. I'm Gladys Brown from Atlanta. Isn't this Athens? Where's the Parthenon?"

"I don't understand you, goddess. What language do you speak?"

"That stupid travel agent," said Gladys. "She didn't even give me a reverse translator. And this sure isn't Greece." She fiddled with a strange bracelet on her wrist. "BF'ing Russia! That's the last time I use Tara's Temporal Tours. I knew I should have listened to my sister. She said, 'Gladys, go see Christ born, you'll have wonderful time', but no, I had to see the orgies."

The strange goddess stamped her foot and tinkered with her bracelet again. The heavenly light returned for a moment, and just as suddenly, was gone.

Michel kneeled in the dirt to pray that God might reveal the meaning of this vision.

Twenty five years later, as Arch Bishop of Her Holiness the Blessed Madonna Church, Michel still knelt at the alter every day to pray for revelation about that long ago vision. For some reason, the meaning never came.

Find more by David Alan Jones in the Author Index.

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