This week, magic was proven real to the Emory students lucky enough to walk by Asbury Circle on the morning of Halloween. Witnesses reported that a sudden gust of wind smelling of baked pumpkin made its way through campus, tinkling like a small bell, before finally swirling wildly around the statue of the beloved mascot, Dooley. When the magical wind dissipated, the newly-fleshed Lord Dooley stepped down from his statue for the first time, in awe at his transformation.
After finding some clothes, Dooley spent the entire day wandering through campus, singing jaunty improvised songs with students and teaching them important lessons on the true meaning of Halloween. As the night drew to an end, the students were all in tears: “It was just so sad,” said one student. “To think about not seeing him again until next Halloween. I mean, who’s gonna teach me not to throw people’s pumpkins off Cox Bridge? Who’s gonna hold my hand when the movie gets too scary? Who’s gonna hold a keg stand for a full minute and a half?” When the clock struck midnight, however, Dooley did not return to his skeletal form as expected.
This has created something of a conundrum for Emory officials. “It’s not that we don’t appreciate the whimsy of it all,” they said in an email addressed to the student body, “but Dooley being a skeleton and not a regular fellow with organs and skin and the like is so important to the brand.” As the days pass, it seems like Dooley’s miraculous return to the living may be permanent.
According to Dooley, this should be good news. “Why? Are people upset?” he responded when questioned about the backlash, still caressing his newly-fleshed arms. “Not that upset though, right? Like, no one’s going to do anything crazy.”
Emory has since dedicated half of its 7 billion dollar endowment towards building a militia dedicated to taking the living Dooley down. Cooperation, though, is still the goal. Dooley agreed to meet with a group of Emory officials to determine if they could reach an understanding. Fenves, who is naturally pro-skeletonization, had this to say: “We’re trying to work something out with him. We explained that the whole point of him as a mascot is that he’s a dead skeleton, but he just panicked and started pitching all these alternate ideas about how he could remain our mascot and still be alive.” Apparently, this included a hastily-prepared PowerPoint presentation by Dooley on various living human mascots. Fenves was unconvinced: “Yeah, we might just have to kill him. We’re in talks with the Philosophy department about whether that still counts as murder.”
The meeting has apparently sent the previously-jolly Dooley into a panic. “I have a great-great-great-granddaughter. Did you know that? A family. And she’s an orphan. She’s eight years old and wants to sing on Broadway. Bless her. But doggone it, she just might make it. She can tap dance like they’ve never seen. And there must be a reason I was brought back, right? I think…I think I’m meant to watch over her. If I go back to being a skeleton, she won’t have anyone. She’ll never make it to that stage. Emory’s a good place. They wouldn’t take that away, right? Not for a silly secondary mascot.”
Upon hearing this news, Emory reached out to the young Penny Dooley and offered her a leftover Swoopin’ Through the Decades shirt in exchange for the whereabouts of her only living guardian.
Even students previously excited by Dooley’s miraculous resurrection have started to change their tune, calling him a “buzzkill” who “hardly ever sings songs about Halloween anymore.”
Updates will follow when Dooley is killed again and his corpse is returned to its rightful place in Asbury Circle.
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