Inspired by Welcome to the Black Parade (My Chemical Romance)

All the city folk crowded the sidewalk of the main street. Children pressed their way to the front and stared with wide eyes. Buckets of black paint were stacked in the gutters.

The Superheroes were there, too, masked in bright colors with capes flowing from their shoulders.

I stood beside my father, dressed in a smaller version of his costume. Skin tight white cloth, with a silver lightening bolt emblazoned across the chest: god’s incarnate smite for those who sin, according to my father..

I was to grow up and be the lightening bolt that he hurled to those who blasphemed, who stole, who spoke words that were not fitting for the ears of the ever present god.

My father gripped my hand. “There they are!”

I followed his gaze. A group of men and women turned onto the street. Some of them had been villains once, villains who used to dress in costumes that were sometimes ridiculous, sometimes horrifying.

They must have been fearsome once, with their faces hidden behind masks so that they weren’t people anymore, but avatars of fear and death.

I had seen some of them in the paper, but never face to face. They had been caught, conquered, defeated. My father had brought many to justice, had torn the masks from their faces and forced them to their knees.

They were naked now. That was how they were to us — nothing but their own selves. They weren’t that person in the mask anymore, that name that caused people to pale and look over their shoulder to make sure they were not the next victim.

Their legs looked like mine. They used their feet to walk just like I did. Their genitals looked like the same as mine.

There were a few women — Femme Fatale as my father called them. They were naked too. Some of the people along the line whistled at them and I wished they hadn’t.

Some children accompanied them too. I wondered what they had done — the apprentices of the villains? Their children?

The crowd watched them silently at first, but then the people they had hurt called out to them.

“Remember my husband? You beat him, thrashed him, let him bleed to death in the gutter!”

“Remember my daughter! You thought her pretty, you wanted her and you took her…”

“Remember me! You tore me down with your words, you cut my soul…!”

Remember, remember, remember.

I wanted to puke.

The accusations grew more numerous as others cried out to the line of villains, their voices and words melded together until it was just a cacophony of noise and tears and heartbreak.

I never saw who did it first, who knocked the lid off the first bucket of paint, or who poured its contents over the villains.

People clambered to the buckets so that they, too, could cover the villains’ body with black paint.

Soon, their hair dripped with blackness, their mouths were stained with it.

I felt my father’s hand on my shoulder. “What do you think, son?”

I looked over the crowd, and I looked into their eyes. Some of them were so young, others were grey with age. Sometimes their eyes looked sad, but otherwise their expression was empty of remorse, of anger, of anything.

The black paint slipped across their skin, puddled underneath their feet.

Words like “bastards” and “whores” echoed in the street.

“I don’t know,” I said. “What’s going to happen to them?”

“They’ll be sent back to the jails, where they will continue their sentence. But don’t think of that — look at the people in front of you. The people who rape, who steal, who murder. The people who value their own hearts above another’s, those who tear down instead of build up, those who bring unhappiness instead of happiness. Look at them!”

I did, and I saw people naked in the cool evening, with black paint on their skin.

“Their hearts are black, son. But these are just a handful of the villains who are still out there.”

He touched his hand to my chin and forced my head ’round to look at him. His hair was grey, his eyes tired, but still firm.

“There are so few of us, not many left,” he said. He gripped my hand. “You’ll carry on, won’t you?”

“I’m not grown up yet, Dad,” I said. I didn’t want to be my father. I didn’t want to be god’s incarnate lightening bolt. I didn’t know how. I was just me, just a boy.

“But you will be, some day.”

One of them stumbled on the paint slicked streets, and fell face first to the ground. Another fall of paint washed over her as she tried to stand. I couldn’t see her face because of the paint.

She fell again as she threw up her hands to avoid another cascade of paint.

I held my hand out to her to help her up. I don’t know why I did. Maybe it was the fact that she was naked, alone and was going back to a cell where nobody would set eyes on her again.

Maybe it was because I saw just a girl, not a femme fatale.

She took my hand, and I pulled her to her feet. Her mouth moved but I didn’t hear what she said.

My white gloved hand was stained with globs of black paint.

“Why did you do that?” my father asked.

“They would have trampled her. She couldn’t get up.”

“She’s a villain, a femme fatale. She’s done worse to others.”

“What did she do?” I asked. She hadn’t looked much older than myself — it was hard imagining that she had done anything.

My father shrugged. “Their faces are all one and the same to me, I don’t remember.”

We watched in silence, after that.

The sun became hot and I wanted to take off my suit, stand naked like the rest of them, but I was the son of a superhero.

And still the Black Parade carried on.

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