The Black Parade

When I was a young boy, my father would tell me stories. Every night, after I’d brushed my teeth and was comfy in my single bed, he would sit on the edge of it, a hand placed on my shoulder. I would ask him to tell me the story. The story of The Black Parade.
“Again?” He would ask. “It’s a wonder you haven’t gotten bored with it yet”

I would always say “no sir! I would never ever get bored!”

He would reply with a “well, if you insist...” and his voice would suddenly become low and quiet. His words would turn to clockwork, rythemic and well practiced. “Everyone knows that when you die you go to either heaven or hell, yes?” I would nod my head. “Well, it takes a long time for that sort of decision to be made, so what if you died before it had been made? Where would you go?” I would shrug, even though I knew exactly where. I preferred him to tell me. “You would be stuck between, in a place called Imperfectus. A place where souls who have not been told they can go to heaven or hell are sent to. However, this is also the place where demons who have lost their way from hell lurk. The demons feed on souls, and would eat those of the people who lived there, So, a group of people got together and formed ‘The Black Parade.’ They would kill demons who entered the city all of the souls had built, protecting them from harm and protecting the place from getting overrun. The leader and his brother were the most powerful, they were called...”
And I would never get to hear the rest, as I would have fallen asleep.

-


 When I was seven, father would sit down a lot and wouldn’t remember most of the story I would get him to tell me every night. He was always tired and slept a lot. Until, suddenly...he never woke up.
Mother wouldn’t talk about him after he was taken away in a box and buried. Her eyes got duller and she would be more irritable and short tempered.

I would always look up when there was a knock on the door in slight anticipation, visualising my father walking through and calling us two idiots for burying him alive. That day never came.
I would always walk in the park with mother on a weekend, then as we head home we walked past the church. We would head in there to see father buried under the old oak tree. He loves sitting under trees to read, so he would like it there. I insisted on putting his unfinished book in with him because he hated never finishing a book, and as a 7 year old I thought he could finish it. Even if it was the most boring book ever known to man, he would still want to finish it. Mother didn’t like me to talk about him. She used to disappear upstairs for hours and come back down with bloodshot eyes. She wore black all the time and cleared all his stuff out...even his spare pare of reading glasses. The only thing she had kept was a book he wrote. She never let me read it though. I would still try though, and every time she would catch me. 
“God almighty Jack! I swear if you touch that book one more time I will thump you on the head with it!” She would yell, then smile and give me a hug. “Be patient, Jack. You’ll be able to read it when I say so.”

But that made me more determined.

Whenever I came home from school, I would set to work trying to get the cupboard she had locked it in open. However she would come home just before I did so. I felt like she was a witch sometimes.

A few weeks later, just before I had started sixth form, I had given up on the concept of the book. I would walk home with Benji, my friend. His little brother had died so we had a small connection. His name was Frank and he got seriously ill. That was the same as what happened to my father, so on the way home we’d visit their graves together and pay our respects, before heading home.

One day though, I struggled to get out of bed. I was soon taken to hospital and was diagnosed with the same illness as my father, however they said it was not hereditory and I couldn’t have possibly caught it. It destroyed me throughout, I lost all hope, and I could tell it was tearing my mother apart. She would tell me that I had to get through this, that she couldn’t loose both of the most important men in her life. I told her I was trying, and I really was. It was my body that wasn’t. It would bring up the food I would force myself to eat, it gave up on my hair and tried to drown away my spirits with the chemicals.

The best days were when Benji visited. What I loved about Benji was that he didn’t treat me like I was dying, he treated me like I was just lying in bed all day, and that made me smile. He would sigh and say ‘another excuse for a day off, eh?’ or ‘get up lazy bones, you don’t expect to get any girls like that do you?’ He would visit my mother from time to time like I had asked him to, checking on her and charming her to death so that she could worry about something else for once.

One day, she had walked in, holding the book I had spent my young childhood trying to get my hands on.

“This was the right time” she told me, handing it to me. “I have to go to work now sweety. Goodye, and remember that I love you” She kissed me on the forehead, looking chocked and ready to cry. She said it as if she was never going to see me again. She left me without looking back, like she always does. I opened the book, inside it read in scrawled writing:

Dear Jack
I’m sorry I will never be able to give you this in person, but I wanted you to have this when you come near the end. To read more about The Black Parade and their battles. As you go, more chapters will appear, some signifying victories, others will prove death.
I hope you stay strong. I believe in you with all my heart. 
Your father.

I opened the book. The first chapter was written on the contents.

The Beggining Of The End

I turned the page, but the rest was blank. What kind of game was my father playing at?



It was ten o’clock. The nurse had come in to check me over as they usually do, but something was seriously wrong. They stood in the corner of the room, whispering.

“There’s nothing we can do” The blonde one whispered. Her blue eyes were dull and sad.

“We have to do something!” The black haired one hissed. Her reen eyes filled with despair. I knew that nurse, she was Marie, she was the nicest there and we would talk sometimes.

“There is nothing. Call his mother” the woman told Marie. They were still unaware that I could hear them. A sick feeling came in my stomach when I realised what they meant by ‘there is nothing we can do’.

“I...want Marie...to be here...” It was a struggle to talk, as it had been for a while now. Instead the blonde woman walked out, and Marie walked over. 
“So Jack, I know you’ll want this straight. Your bodys shutting down, but we can’t help it. We’ll give you medicine to stop the pain, and you’ll fall asleep, okay? Just...” She took a deep, shaky breath “you won’t wake up again”

“I’m scared” I whispered like a little child. 
“You shouldn’t be, I think there’s something after death”

She held my frail hand reassuringly. Something came into my head.

“Do you know the story...of The Black Parade?” She nodded. “Can you tell it to me...please? Until I fall...asleep?” She nodded again. The other nurse walked in, setting up things that I didn’t know what they were. 
“Well, everyone knows that when you die, you go to either heaven or hell, but if you die young, before the decision has been made, you’ll get sent to a world imbetween” The other nurse put a mask over me. I breathed in the sickly gas shallowly. “However, demons also lurk there. So they needed someone to protect the souls that live there, and so The Black Parade was formed. The
leader was strong, cunning and quick. He had a brother too, their names were-”

Her voice no longer made sense, and soon I found mysekf asleep.

I never did get to hear their names.