PRESS RELEASE:

The Wilson brothers would often look back on the day when they heard the knock at their window. For them, nothing came closer in that moment to helping the two of them realize that life could be all smiles and buried treasure. As soon as they looked through the dusty venetian blinds above their shared dresser, the former home to their mummified treasures, they saw something that would make their heads spin.

             It was a giant double eagle, radiant in the light. It turned its yellow dagger beaks to regard them straight in the eye, and in that moment history began to course through the boys’ skulls. The boys saw so many things that they knew they would forget about in the morning, but what stood out to them most was being fed a vision of a giant rotten mango in a foggy plastic vitrine, stewing in its own juices. They saw scores of students clashing over it using homemade weapons made out of rulers, impaling each other over the lunch tables that would become their collective gurneys.

            Then they saw a dark sea cave off of Pomene Bay, shot through with sea cucumbers, and their field of vision followed a lone diver as she found her way into a sinkhole that was lit only by the light of a pile of brass coins and a pair of lamp-like eyes in the half-darkness. A swirl of silt revealed a serpent the size of a log, its belly smooth from polishing metal for years.

            Then the vision caused them to surface above the water to a drained riverbed. A team of researchers pulled out a long cylinder of black material, and drew out a checkered sword of arsenic bronze, perfectly preserved for thousands of years. The boys realized that the ones who stood closest to the sword were red-bearded mummies from the Steppes, their mouths dry and full of sand and crooked teeth, cackling silently at their new treasure.

            That was the last of what the boys saw. Their knuckles were white from gripping the blinds, so much that the thick material began to buckle within their grasp. But soon a relief washed over them, and the feeling of knowledge began to run out the fear in their bellies. Before the eagle left them, it seemed to double smile, and said, “Even cowboys get caught in the rain.”

by Anthony Giordano