PRESS RELEASE

Ten long years after the Wilson Brothers grew up and began living in the blessed light of the double-smiling eagle, there was another incident of note. It occurred in the ruinous little city of Santa Ninfa, which sat half-propped above the warm depths of the sea on a precipice riddled with the tombs of long-forgotten ancestors, their faces obscured by masks of bright colored clay. To be honest, the place was basically slumping into the sea like some kind of ornate, shredded accordion that couldn’t hold itself up as well as it used to. Salt-frosted windows and creativity were all that seemed to keep it going in that time, and in true creative spirit, it had a lonely opera house named after a favored brand of oat milk ice cream.

The star of the opera house, a young castrati by the name of Clarence Bonaventura, had been discovered slumped in his dressing room chair, frozen solid by his own stagnation. From the day of the dress rehearsal to the evening of the opening night, the opera company tried to thaw him. They held a grease lamp under his feet, steamed his armpits, and even tried to ply him with his little dog, King. It only seemed to make his appearance frostier by the second, so that icicles hung from his nose and an ice zucchini began forming behind his right ear.

Medically, the doctors could only say that Clarence was as good as dead. The last police officer left in that degenerate city was called in by some unknown agent, and the case was made to issue a death certificate. After three days of relenting, the officer forced the issue, and her legal will couldn’t be denied any longer and the opera company relented.

That morning, Dr. Orfeo, a young surgeon of dark mien was the sole patron at the counter of Cafè-Bar Happiness, drinking a pistachio cappuccino as he thought that, of all the roads he traveled, he never expected to be brought back to this place so soon. For a moment, a flicker of humanoid form alighted by the stool next to his before it blinked away. Looking away, his mind stormed with memory and regret until he snapped out of it, noticing the headline on the back of the barista’s newspaper:

“OUT OF COMMISSION: Authorities say Opera Singer will Never Thaw!” Setting his cup down,

After asking the barista about the case and hearing about Clarence Bonaventura’s plight, Dr. Orfeo finished his drink, paid his tab, and made off for the opera house with a swirl of his dark coat, beating the rickety ambulance there by mere minutes.

He strode in past the box office, past the usher that tried halfheartedly to stop him, and stormed all the way to the backstage dressing room, where he found a somber crowd gathered around what seemed to be more popsicle than castrati.

“Hello,” Dr. Orfeo started, “I’m Doctor Orfeo, a surgeon recently arrived in town. I heard about Clarence’s situation and came right away. I know how to help. I’ve seen this problem before, and it isn’t a physical problem; it’s an issue of spiritual architecture.”

After the opera company barricaded the way up to the dressing rooms, Dr. Orfeo got right to work, drawing a chalk circle around Clarence, then withdrawing a vial of a blue quicksilver substance, which he emptied out into the circle. He knelt down near the circle and withdrew a small sheaf of pineapple paper with esoteric symbols written on the front and back, and began singing the code with a soft dirgelike quality.

And what happened next caused noses to bleed all around the doctor; it was so incredible that no one knew if they were coming or going anymore. The pool of strange fluid began to surge with its own light until it took on a galactic quality, and surged, swirling madly until it became a maelstrom. Then, emerging from the whirling force’s eye as a grasping hand, then a sinuous arm, then a gyrating torso, a turning head, and a pair of stomping feet was THE DANCING MACHINE. Steam cooed from its dancing emanations. It snapped its faceless attention on Clarence, and lunged at him with a leaping double-kick, tap-tap-tapping its heels over the ice zucchini and shattering it into a million pieces. The astral form danced all over Clarence in ways no one could figure out how, defying laws of logic and gravity, with the sounds one would normally hear at a chiropractor’s office.

In the blink of an eye, it was all gone. There was nothing left of that spectacle aside from a tiny marble of surging blue, which the Doctor picked up, and swallowed as though it was a mere pill. Wordless, he went to see himself out, leaving behind a completely restored Clarence Bonaventura

Someone from the crowd asked Clarence if he was feeling alright, and if he knew what had happened. He just gave a look in the direction the Doctor went in, and said, “I think someone raw-dog denim dick dialed me.”

by Anthony Giordano