Gritty, the terrifying hellion
PHILADELPHIA
– Yesterday the Philadelphia
Flyers unveiled their brand new mascot, a creature of unimaginable
horror lovingly named Gritty. The gruesome troll
stands at a menacing eight feet tall, towering over
the
children who will be visiting the
Wells Fargo Center throughout the month to
have their photo taken with the terrifying
fiend only to burst into tears the
very instant their eyes lay upon the vicious orange goblin.
The
monstrous muppet is appropriately orange in color, the only trait
that it shares with the Philadelphia ice hockey team. Instead of
skin, the demonic entity has scraggly reddish-orange fur, thought to
have once been a bright, full orange prior to being stained with the
blood of virgins. Its head is shrouded in the orange mane of a slaughtered lion, with only Gritty's evil face emerging through
all the hair. Two massive white lazy eyes bulge from the barbaric
CHUD’s face, each dotted with orange irises whose pupils are little black
endless voids. The godless cretin appears to have a sticky blood-red
liquid smeared across its top lip, which stretches above a
thirteen-inch wide smile whose open mouth is believed to be a gateway
to Hell itself.
When
asked how such a foul Lovecraftian beast could have possibly come
into existence, Flyers spokesman Roy McKinley explained, “We didn’t
want it to happen this way. I swear.” According to McKinley, a
group of biology majors from Temple University spent all of Saturday
evening in a dark, forgotten fallout shelter located hundreds of feet
below the Wells Fargo Center. “We told them to give us a mascot.
That’s all we wanted,” McKinley continued. “But we didn’t
want this.”
“We
found a lab down there, complete with like a dozen beakers and flasks
all filled with strange, multicolored liquids,” Robert Hathaway, a
third year bio major at Temple U told us on Monday. According to
Hathaway, shelves lining the walls of the strange laboratory held
unusual items ranging from human skulls, mason jars filled with
moth-like creatures bathed in pickle juice, a dismembered monkey’s
paw, and a Tesla coil. “There were four large glass
chambers toward the back – maybe like ten feet tall,”
Hathaway continued describing the room, “and they all had a bunch
of tubes sticking out of them. Three of them were cracked open and
empty, but in the fourth chamber was what looked like a huge human
skeleton. Possibly cro-magnon.”
According
to Hathaway, an old '80s-era computer system sat on a desk against the back
wall, with an array of glowing buttons spanning its surface and
several rusted levers covered in cobwebs. One of Hathaway’s peers, who has
asked to remain anonymous, pulled on one of these levers and a
machine beside the unbroken ten-foot chamber whirred to life. “In
hindsight, that may have been a mistake,” the anonymous bio major
told us, referring to her decision to pull the unknown lever which,
for all she knew, could have launched a nuclear strike on Korea or
flooded the entire room with corrosive acid. Instead, a bright blue
light emitted from within the occupied glass chamber.
“That’s
when we noticed that all those beakers and flasks were attached to
the tubes leading to the chambers,” explained Hathaway. “Some
sort of neon orange liquid was sucked out and emptied into the
last one, which started shaking, like, real bad.”
According
to some of the Temple students who were lucky enough to survive the
ensuing incident, the glass chamber began shaking violently until an
agonized, inhuman shriek came from inside it, and then the chamber
exploded, hurling shards of glass everywhere.
“I
got my arm cut,” Hathaway told us as he showed off a near-microscopic nick on
his left wrist.
After
the chamber exploded, a sopping wet figure stepped out, growling and
hissing. Hathaway and the others immediately took notice of the
creature’s glowing white eyes, which were as large as baseballs. When one of the loathsome brute’s lazy eyes drifted slowly
to look at the students, things took a turn for the worse.
“It
just charged at us,” the anonymous bio major explained through
tears. “It tore Phillip and Kurt to shreds. I saw it open my best
friend. I saw Morgan beg for her life as it scarfed down her intestines. She was going to be a marine biologist, you know. Why did
we have to drag her to that nightmare?”
The
surviving students pursued the creature, which had left the lab and
proceeded up the long spiral staircase, eventually exiting the Wells
Fargo Center and taking off into the night. Authorities were
contacted immediately, leading to a citywide manhunt which lasted
well over five hours and resulted in at least fifteen casualties, including the ruthless murders of two police officers and a cat. After
being shot with twelve horse tranquilizers, the brutish hellspawn
finally went down.
“It’s
bad, but if we keep little Gritty sedated, everything will be okay,”
Roy McKinley assured us.
Regardless,
Flyers fans of all ages have taken to rallying against the
nightmarish troglodyte, wielding protest signs and dropping slam
poetry in front of the Wells Fargo Center. One particularly irate
fan, a 42-year-old Philadelphia native named Andy Giannotti, stopped protesting for a moment to speak with us. “How
can they just put a jersey on that fucking thing and call it our
mascot?”
“That
harrowing monstrosity will not speak for my city,” said local
sports fan Kelly Gallagher, age 28, who had been participating in the
anti-Gritty protest all day Monday. “We will not stand for this.
It’s time to euthanize the beast.”
You
can have your photo taken with the unholy abomination all month long
at the Wells Fargo Center, where the hideous affront against nature
will be heavily sedated and safely chained to the stadium’s
concrete floor.
Gritty, chained for your safety
