When I was a young boy my father took me into the city to see a marching band, one of my few early memories. That day would impact the rest of my life. I lived a few miles away from a very small village, we were poor, we didn’t even have T.V. but then again, this was right after the Tech Crash.
One day, in early spring, when we had the last money of the year, my father up and brought me into the city, something we seldom did, just to watch a marching band. The band was called the Black Parade. It wasn’t very long but it was one of the best days of my life.
Throughout most of the day my father seemed very depressed or morbid but once the Parade ended he seemed to lighten up a bit, we soon left town and traveled back to the house, on the way there my father spoke to me in a quiet, calm, and very uncomfortable voice, he said to me “Son when you grow up would you be the savior of the broken, the Beaten and the damned?” he gazed at me piercingly but continued to speak. “Will you defeat them? your demons and all the non-believers, the plans that they have made.Because one day, I'll leave you a phantom, to lead you in the summer.
To join the black parade.” Then he started to cry, which is something I have never seen him do so I began to cry and told him I would do as he asked.
We were quiet throughout the rest of the walk, although I had a suspicion that this would be the last day I spent with my father. We reached the house at around six pm and I went directly to my room to sleep and cry. I heard my mother talking to my father that night. “Did you talk to him?” she asked.
“Yes, he agreed to it all, I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but it must stay within the family, I cannot trust anyone else.” There was silence after that, complete silence. The silence of a morgue, the silence of death. When I awoke the next morning my fears were confirmed, both of my parents, the only people I had, had passed. That day I spent digging graves and mourning them, as was tradition in those time. But after that day my life drifted into a haze, I don’t remember much of the next five years, the next clear memory I have is from when I was 15…another day that would change my life.