5:06pm, February 5th, 2017
Patriot’s Locker room, NRG Stadium, Houston TX
Already, they were calling it an upset.
On the way to the locker room the Pats mustered a few hurrahs, but once the cameras peeled away to cover Gaga, the team let the façade drop. Coaches yelled encouraging platitudes, promised it wasn’t over yet, that Brady was gonna turn it around, do his patented fourth quarter comeback, “Right Brady?” They looked over their shoulder, expecting that knowing smile, but couldn’t find him. Now the first growls of Poker Face played through the air vents and into the silent locker room.
A field door slapped open and he strode in, Number 12, helmet still on. Didn’t say anything. Just walked over to his locker and untacked the family vacation photo, the one of him and the kids on the beach in Maui, the one he’d stuck in every locker, in every stadium, on every road game, since he and the muskrats had posed in the surf four years ago. This picture, he said, was his good luck charm, the only thing that kept him going.
Brady carried the photo to the front of the room, the guys closest took a knee, but Brady didn’t say a word, only held up the picture, panned it around so everybody could get a look, then slowly ripped it in half. You could have heard a pin drop.
Brady stood there, hands trembling. He crumpled up the pieces and stuffed them into his mouth. Then made everyone watch in silence as he chewed the photo paper into a thick paste and swallowed it.
Gronkowski threw up all over the carpet. Amendola went to comfort him but the kicker, Gostkowski, stayed the receiver with a twitchy grip, he’d seen that look in Brady’s eyes before, he knew they shouldn’t make any sudden movements. Puke smell filled the room.
That’s when Belichick kicked in the door.
The head coach marched to the front of the circle, grabbed the whiteboard and smashed it into the wall. Wielding one of its legs like a club, he bashed in all the flat screen TVs installed in the players lockers. Soaking wet, huffing and puffing, he looked insane. He cocked back the sharp stick, ready to lay into some folding chairs, when Josh McDaniels stepped in to try and stop him.
Tom Brady had Belichick's back. He'd slipped on all four of his Super Bowl rings and lit Josh McDaniels up with the brass knuckles of a champion, shattered the poor bastards jaw. Anybody else who thought they’d interfere changed their mind.
Belichick swung until the club disintegrated in his hands. He couldn’t breathe. He was an old man, and looked it, wheezing, he coughed up blood and spat it at Gronkowski, then kicked him in the knee. Gronk tried to get away but Brady grabbed him from behind so Belichick could get in a few good licks.
The team didn’t know what to do.
Gronk took two more to the gut and puked again, all over himself and Belichick. But Belichick just smiled for the first time in fifteen years, and cuffed him on the ear. Gronk was unconscious when Belichick and Brady traded places so the Quarterback could lay into him with the rings.
But the stadium door came flying off its hinges and landed in the middle of the floor. A dead field correspondent, neck snapped so bad his head was on backwards, press badge jammed into his mouth, bounced off the wall and landed in a heap. Brady and Belichick froze.
Julian Edelman burst into the room.
Crazed, pads half destroyed or missing, uniform covered in blood. He pulled his beard and gnashed his teeth and yelled, “Hoola voodoo muga jaga! Maka WAKA DINGA!” Black magic coursed through Edelman. “Drakon esparsay rejuloo Voodoo!”
A Naga warrior erupted out of Edelman’s mouth. The half-snake, half-man, clawed into the huddle of terrified Patriots and scattered them. The running backs screamed, the line backers fought to escape, but the doors were locked, the handles fused with skull shaped locks and purple energy from Edelman’s hoodoo. The snake demon sussed out LeGarette Blount and wrestled him back to Edelman.
Edelman hissed and plunged his hand into Blounts chest and ripped out his heart.
The team watched Edelman hold the heart above his head and holler, “Maka Drakon Voodoo! Maka Drakon Voodoo!”
But Blount didn’t die.
Instead, he vibrated and howled an otherworldly howl and for a split second they saw it: The Grey Patriot; their team deity. They saw the undead forefather inside of Blount and understood. They formed a circle around Edelman and chanted with him, “Maka Drakon Voodoo! Maka Drakon Voodoo!”
White smoke billowed out of Blount’s chest wound. Brady and Belichick joined Edelman in the center, wearing crowns made of Falcon bones, and they tasted the blood of the running back, licked the still beating heart one by one. Edelman shoved the organ back into Blount’s chest. The smoke, the purple energies, the snake demon, even the zombie patriot, sucked back into the wound and it cauterized itself. The team swayed silently in the aftermath of the ritual, synchronizing their breath, practicing the steps to mindfulness, just like the mixtape Brady had gifted them last Christmas said to do.
A few minutes later, when the half-time finale roared out the air vents, Amendola gasped, “I love this song!”
“This is your song,” Gronk said, waking from his coma. “This is so your song!”
Gaga was just wrapping up a tight set and they heard Ro-ma, ro-mama, Ga-ga ooh la la, want your bad romance! as they piled back onto the field.
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