When I Was a Young Boy

Captain ArcadiaCaptain Arcadia, Promo

Do you remember the parades? The ones that used to go through Arcadia during the holidays, where everyone seemed to come out. Those brilliant days that celebrated who we were, and how we could all come together. Streamers in the air, color dancing around.

The earliest one I can remember was when I was real little, before I became an orphan. I remember watching it with my father, whose face I’ve forgotten but his words still haunt my actions. We watched the parade, and he spoke with a weight that you could feel.

“Will you watch over them? Even the broken, the beaten and the damned?”

And that stuck with me, even when I was just another punk running around in the gutter. I kept an eye out for the other kids on the street, those that normally couldn’t get to see such beautiful things. Then I donned the Python, and did the best that I could.

For even in a broken and twisted world, I chose to bring the salvation to those that needed it. I fought the monsters when no one else would, I clashed with the boogeyman that the rest of the world ignored, and I did it for them. The broken, the beaten, and the damned. The forgotten in the conflict, every single one.

I did it for the fathers who’ve lost their families to bloodshed beyond their control.

I did it for the sons who’ve lost their fathers, embracing the bitterness over a world that seems to not care for them.

I did it for those that stared down a long, dark tunnel, embracing monsters and beasts when being just who they were wasn’t enough.

I did it for the poor little kid who stood in the face of loss and grief again and again, and said to himself I will never let another feel like this.

Because in a time and a place like this? There’s not a single person that hasn’t felt that weight of Arcadia breaking down. Beating them into the dirt. Threatening to turn them into shadows of who they were, and make them into monsters. Turn the broken boy into a bitter man, the beaten father into a ruthless killer, and the damned into the demons they once hunted.

It takes a special kind of person to get over that. Someone who faced down this black parade of pain and misery and go “I’ll stand up for them.” Be the lead that they need to get themselves out of a pit of misery and despair to become something more than what Arcadia made them.

For in the darkest of days, one has to be the light to bring forth a future worth fighting for. And with every step I take in the march of Arcadia, I choose to be stronger than the world would say in that black parade.

A march in darkness can only ever lead into the light. And I am that light to break the shadows that hold us down.