Welcome to the Black Parade

Both men walked down the staircase and into the kitchen. This was going to be horrifically hard to explain to Mikey. How would he accomplish such a thing? Both of them sat at the kitchen table.

“That kid who was climbing the counters of the kitchen was our neighbor,” Gerard explained.

“What’s she doing in our house?”

“Well, her house was burnt down, and she has no where to go. She’s staying with us until we can find her another place to stay.”

“She’s not some kind of stray cat or something. She’s a human! She could be dangerous!”

“Well, she has no choice. Would you rather throw her out and make her live on the streets like a ‘cat or something?’”

Mikey just froze. He had no clue of what he was to say. “What was she doing on the counters?”

“She is a cutter. I locked all of the things she would be capable of slicing her arm up with in the cabinet that locks shut. She has to fight a horrific addiction, and that’s the only way she’ll be able to do it.”

Mikey looked at Gerard as if he were ludicrous. Then, the reality of the poor girl’s pain pounded into his mind. His jaw dropped open.

“That reminds me,” said Gerard, “The key fell down the drain. We have to get it out of there, or we won’t be capable of shaving in the morning.”

If the look Mikey gave him was bad, this one was almost deadly. How were they to retrieve the key from the pipe? If they were incapable of retrieving it, Mikey would have a beard longer than the hair that lied on Gerard’s head! Fans would abhor him for that!

They worked throughout the night and finally had it out by midnight. They were both relieved as they sat on the kitchen floor and stared at the cold key in Gerard’s palm right after Gerard had rescued it form the drain. They were lethargic after that, so Gerard placed the key on top of the counter. Then, they both went to bed.

Cheyenne woke up at ten the next morning. The two men were both asleep and encased in their cozy, flannel blankets. Cheyenne tip-toed down the stairs and walked into the kitchen. Her eye caught the key as she glanced around. She clutched the key and stared at its silvery appearance as if it were a treasure. Then, she thought to herself, “No, I can’t disappoint Gerard by cutting up my arm! But I HAVE to!” The urge to cut nearly drove her mad. She finally gave in and climbed on top of the counter. She inserted the key into the cupboard’s hole and turned it. The door flung open. She gazed upon the shiny objects with their sharp edges. She gripped onto a pair of scissors’ handles and clicked them in and out. Then, she opened them up, and they collided with her skin. They were soon shearing through her arm. She started with one wound but ended up with ten. Beads of blood soon followed the scissors like rubies. Those rubies streamed a pool into the kitchen sink. She then ripped off a piece of paper towel and pushed it against her skin so tightly to prohibit her arm from bleeding any more than it already did. After it stopped, she placed the pair of scissors carefully back into the cabinet and locked them up. She placed the key in the exact position it was in the previous night and began to cook breakfast.

For breakfast, she was baking a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. She used food-coloring to dye the frosting red. She placed the cake inside the oven and waited a while for it to cook. In the meantime, she used Mikey’s computer to contact her Internet friends.

The first website she went on was a MCR forum. She didn’t think anyone there would believe her if she told them who she was living with, so she didn’t even bother telling them a tiny particle of what happened. She just browsed the forum to read the replies that were created on her threads.

The next website she used was the website for her e-mail provider. She had a plethora of messages to read through, so it took her a while to read them all. Many of the messages were spam, though, so she barely had to do anything further than discovering what they were about.

The last website she used was a fan fiction website. She was creating some MCR fanfics and had to update them. She brought out a piece of paper and pencil and began writing.

She only wrote up to two paragraphs when she heard someone desperately shriek her name. She crumbled up the piece of paper and fled into the kitchen.

“Cheyenne!” said Gerard. Then, he saw the magenta lines all over her arms. He froze up and just stared at her.

She just froze, too. They stared into each other’s eyes in shock. Nobody said a word for five minutes. They all just stood there. Well, not all of them. Mikey was absconding away with the key.

“I, I, I, I I I, I’m sorry!” said Cheyenne in an anxious voice. Her mind only focused on what she thought Gerard was thinking of her right then and forgot all about those fanfics on the computer.

“It’s okay, kid,” he said in a shaken voice. He then embraced her tight. Tears fell down onto Cheyenne’s shoulders and back. Gerard tried to be as silent as possible, though.

That’s when the cooking timer went off. Gerard opened the over and out came the chocolate cake. He told Cheyenne to sit down as he iced it. The icing was almost pink instead of the red it was meant to be. The cake was so dark it was almost blank.

It took about ten minutes to cool off, so all three of them sat down around the table and conversed about Cheyenne’s addiction.

“How did it start?” Mikey aasked as he sipped on some blazing-hot coffee.

“Well,” said Cheyenne as she recalled the tragic, agony-filled day it happened,” I was having an exorbitantly bad day at school. Well, it first started out with my parents. They were fighting since 3 A.M. I woke up at four and heard them, so I had trouble falling back to sleep. At about 5 A.M., my father came into my room drunk and punched holes in my walls. He also smashed up all of my CD’s except for Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. I grasped onto it for my life. Without it, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here with you guys. Anyways, he beat me up, because I wouldn’t hand it over to him.”

Then, Cheyenne said, “After about an hour of protecting my precious CD, it was time to go to school. Before the bell rang that allowed us to go to our lockers and home rooms, some guy came up to me and asked for my lunch money. I didn’t have any lunch money, because my parents never gave me any. I was still grasping onto my CD, because my father would’ve taken it out of my room and destroyed it if I left it at home. Then, the kid tackled me to the ground and stole my CD. It wasn’t his type of music, so he sold it to a bunch of other kids. In my home room, someone stuck glue to my chair. In second period, a kid squished gum into my hair. Then, at lunch, some kid had started a food-fight, and my shirt was ruined with pizza, mashed potatoes, gravy, spaghetti sauce, and some puke-green gross crap. The last few periods happened similarly like the periods before it. Ninth period in my school is the last period of the school-day. It is also when I had home-ec. We were sewing that day, so I secretly threw some scissors into my purse and absconded into the bathroom. I picked a stall far away from the door. As the jet-black stall-door closed behind me, I thought things over for a minute. I thought things like, “What if it turns into an addiction,” “What will everyone else think,” and “What if I get sent to the hospital for it?” Them, I promised myself that I’d be able to control it, so I sliced through my skin with the pair of scissors I stole from Home-Ec. I flushed the blood down the toilet and put my sleeve back down once my arm stopped bleeding. Unfortunately, I’ve broken my promise.”

“Aww,” said Mikey. Then, both guys gave her a bear-hug. These mean sure loved hugs! They began to love her. There’s an extremely fine line between loving someone and being in love with someone, however.

All three of them devoured the cake with its rich chocolaty flavor and vanilla frosting.

Then, Gerard said, “Let’s go to the mall! Someone needs new clothes.”

Cheyenne had not a penny but agreed, anyway, to explore the mall. She wondered how she was going to pay for anything. She doubted any of the men would give her any money.

All three of them ventured to the mall. The first stoer they explored had some extraordinary t-shirts on sale for $5. Cheyenne spotted a few nice ones and tried them on. After she added those to the cart, she stumbled upon a whole rack of MCR shirts. There must’ve been thirty different kinds there! She put the rest back and grabbed all of the varieties they had. She then darted into the dressing room. She liked them all! She couldn’t just pick a few! She wanted them all, even if that meant her wardrobe was made entirely of MCR shirts. She put them all in the cart.

After she walked out of the dressing room, she caught a glance of Gerard. That’s when she remembered that she had no money whatsoever. Her heart nearly sank all the way down to the ground. She had about $200 worth of clothing, including pants and MCR shirts, in her cart. She then saw Mikey looking at the socks.

Gerard came to her and asked, “Are you done shopping, yet?”

“Well, uh, yeah, but.”

“Then go with Mikey and pick some socks out while I pay for this.”

She was elated! Nobody had ever paid for anything for her in years! Her parents had even left her to pay for her own food ever since she started her job as a papergirl.

When she got over to Mikey, he asked, “Is this color alright?” He was holding up a pair of socks.

“Uh, sure.” They were white. What could be wrong with that color of socks?

“Pick yourself out a bag, kid. The girls’ are over there.” He pointed to the girls’ section of the socks.

She picked out a bag of black socks with red zig-zags above the ankle. They then bought the socks and joined Gerard.

When they finally returned home, it was already six. Gerard had to use the computer. When he went to use the computer, he discovered a webpage titled FAN FICTION WORLD- “A Tale of Two Ways.” He thought to himself, “Uh, oh,” and began to read.