Hey-ho, my faithful readers, it's your boy Captain D! It's been over half a year since I started writing fanfiction now, hasn't it? And you have enjoyed the many (read: three) stories I've told, haven't you? And yet, you hardly know anything about me myself. Who is this mysterious man, you wonder, with the dapper hat, suit, and a question mark for a face? Who is Captain Dodge? Well, mine is a long, tragic tale, fraught with depravity and hopelessness. I am only 22, and yet I feel as though I have seen the true nature of the beast that lurks within mankind's heart. The memories are painful to recall even now, so forgive me if I spare you the finer details. Now, if you are willing to hear it, here is the story of my life.

I was born Adam David Dodge on February 1st, 1996, in a small town in the Bay Area. I don't know who my father is, or was, but there is one thing I can be certain of: he was definitely not white. My mother was a socialist protestant – I mean, prostitute – who had no healthcare and thus delivered me at home with zero assistance.

My childhood was a sheltered one – my mother kept me confined to the house until I was fifteen, telling me that she wanted to protect me from the bourgeoisie seeking to exploit my labor. I didn't know what the hell she was talking about, but she was my mother, so I trusted her. To this day, I don't know my mother's true intentions in keeping me secluded within the house, and I don't believe I ever will.

I came to believe that the house and the views from its windows were the entire world – and what a small world it was. It was not long until, starved of all other human contact, I began to construct both friends and enemies within my imagination.

My shadow was my evil twin, following me wherever I went – watching me, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. I slept with a flashlight to ward him off – when I slept at all.

Visitors to my mother, whether they were customers or servants of the capitalist machine, were as aliens from another world to me. I longed to ask them questions about the outside, but I never got the chance, as my mother would lock me in my room to spare my mind from being tainted. Of course, she was blind (perhaps willfully so) to the fact that that ship had sailed.

The ants that invaded our home and raided our food stores were the legions of the damned, seeking to torment us with a slow and painful death from starvation. I took great pleasure in exterminating them by the hundreds, thousands, even – crushing them, burning them, eating them. Fighting them was the closest thing I had to a purpose in those early days.

The moths that occasionally flew out of my closet were horrible winged demons. I was never brave enough to face them myself, fearing that they would steal my soul if I tried, and so I called upon my mother to kill them. Without her, I am still defenseless against the moths, and flee if I should ever see one.

The television was the closest thing I had to a friend, telling me bedtime stories to lull me into complacency where my mother would not. She restricted my television access to a few select channels, not wanting me to learn anything about the outside world besides that which was fictional. And so, my only companions in my childhood were the heroes of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network – cartoons like Spongebob Squarepants, Hey Arnold, CatDog, the Rugrats, the Fairly Oddparents, and the Powerpuff Girls. They wove such fantastical stories – stories that I could not believe were real, and very often doubted were. In those days, the line between what was real and what was not blurred terribly – I often wondered whether I myself was real.

And it was fortunate that the TV loved me, for my mother did not. At least she had the decency to feed me – she was otherwise absent, either working the streets or drinking heavily in seedy bars, or so I was told. I believe that she was ashamed that she allowed herself to bear progeny into this cruel, uncaring world, and so disposed of any further children that she had. At least we had plenty of food.

When I reached age twelve, my mother took note of my emerging masculinity, and punished me for it. For three years, she prostituted me to the mothers of the neighborhood looking for exciting and pleasurable departures from their dull husbands. Before long, they were inviting their daughters to join in. I was never given a choice in any of this – in fact, for one three-month period, I was chained up in a closet that my mother dubbed the "sex dungeon". I never knew why she did this to her only son. Again, I don't believe I ever will.

It was at this time that my illegitimate children began to be conceived by these various women. First was Josephine, my pride and joy. Then came Ezekiel, the dimwitted; Harmony and Deliverance, the prophesied saviors; Hamilton, the effeminate; and Derek, the heroic one. My mother was disgusted at the idea of being a grandmother, but she still took the children in to prevent them from being raised to be capitalist pigs. At my insistence, she spared their lives, but held no love for them in her heart.

Josephine was always a bright girl – she was so curious, so eager to learn. She was sadly disappointed by my lack of knowledge about the world outside the house, and so asked my mother. Every answer was the same – a hard backhand that left her spiraling to the floor. I, weak coward that I was, was powerless to defend her from my mother's rage. One day, she managed to smash a window and escape. She didn't get far, going only as far as a neighbor's garbage can, but that brief taste of freedom was all that was needed to convince her that we had to share in it. Derek, bless his selfless soul, suggested that everyone work together to escape my mother, and Josephine hatched a plan. While Derek unlocked the front door, Josephine and the others stopped my mother from blocking the exit by attacking her ankles with their pointy teeth. Before I crossed the threshold into a brave new world, Josephine told me: "Go, Daddy, and do not forget us." I held those words close to my heart for years.

And so, I was suddenly thrust into a world that I never knew was so large, lost and confused. For the better part of a year, I wandered aimlessly throughout the United States, begging, stealing, borrowing, and bartering for what I needed. On occasion, I would sell my body to make ends meet – I was quite used to it. I voraciously devoured all the knowledge I could find – I learned how to read and write, and from there I taught myself basic mathematics, science, and the history of the world. Unfortunately, I never truly learned how to converse with real, living people, and so am to this day shy to those that I do not know well, and uninterested in human contact and the feelings of others. I met many people during my travels, but never anyone caring enough to take in someone as wretched as me. I met caregivers who cared for the less-fortunate out of self-righteousness; I met predators who preyed on those beneath them; and I met preachers who attempted to sell me their kind and loving God. I told them that such a God, if ever He existed, must be dead, for would He otherwise allow a creature such as myself to live?

My travels came to an abrupt end one day, as I hitched a ride with a fellow who happened to be part of a human trafficking ring. Seeing as how I, a homeless, parent-less drifter, was right within his grasp, he seized the opportunity and abducted me. I became an unwilling commodity in the vast underground slave trade, and eventually found myself sold to an African warlord with a taste for multiracial boys.

As a result, I found myself transported halfway across the world to a strange and alien continent, at the mercy of another abusive parent figure. I am grateful to him, at least, for having the decency to teach me the local language in between several rounds of violent lovemaking. All the same, I did not enjoy my captivity, and so seized the opportunity to escape after the warlord was murdered by another love-slave using a knife that he had concealed in his rectum, creating a power vacuum during which I was freed and armed by a former lieutenant seeking to seize power for himself. I instead stole a purse full of blood diamonds and used it to purchase safe transportation to the coast, and from there passage on a ship bound for America.

That had been the plan, but my ship was attacked by pirates, and those not killed were taken prisoner, including myself. Driven half-mad by hunger and desperate not to become a slave again, I broke my own wrist in order to slip out of my bonds and fell upon the first man I came across, tearing out his throat with my teeth. Later, I learned that said man was the leader of the pirates, and when we were shortly thereafter boarded by a patrol boat, I secured my freedom by helping the pirates fight them off, killing three men with a broken pipe and a gouging out a fourth's eyes before breaking his legs and throwing him overboard. The pirates were so impressed and intimidated by my brutality that they named me their new captain.

And thus, my four-year career as a pirate off the coast of Africa began. I try not to think about my time as a pirate captain, for I was a different man then – wild, uninhibited, cruel. I became intoxicated with the power I wielded for the first time in my life, and never missed an opportunity to flaunt it. I seized tankers and set them ablaze, their crews roasting in the infernos; I cannibalized the cooked body parts of captives while forcing them to watch; and I took the prettiest women my men could find and forced them into my personal harem. (Nobody in America heard or really cared about this, because it was not happening in America.)

It was by these captive women that the rest of my bastard children were born. Flush with the new power I possessed, I took agency over their naming, naming them after the only friends I had during my childhood: Spongebob, Patrick, Arnold, Tommy, Timmy, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup.

I could not bring myself to love those children at that time, for I was far more preoccupied with my career as the fearsome "White Terror". I was a monster – and I loved every second of it.

I tell you of these crimes because I never want to forget what I did – what I became. All of my other issues are personal, but my actions as a pirate captain harmed so many. I can never truly atone for my sins, but I can protect my children from them.

My life as a pirate abruptly came to an end one day, when my crew and I seized a ship illegally transporting refugees to America. I went about sorting the captives as I usually did – deciding who to sell, who to kill, who to rape, and who to torture – until I came to an elderly woman, sitting calmly. I decided that an old woman would not be worth much, so I ordered her to be killed. But as my men stood her up, ready to slit her throat, I saw something in her eyes.

It was... pity.

For me.

In only one glance, she conveyed all of her understanding of the pain and suffering that I had endured my entire life – something I never thought anyone could ever possibly possess. I ordered my men to release her, and that night, she allowed me to confide in her about everything I had been through since the day I was born. She sympathized with me, holding me close and telling me that it was okay.

For the first time in my entire life... someone showed me genuine love.

It was confusing, at first, but it quickly became overwhelming. I broke down crying in that old woman's arms, unleashing all the misery I had collected over the years in one broken dam of emotions. Despair filled my entire body, soon being replaced by fear. I was frightened by this new emotion called love, and in a panic, I took my knife to the old woman, stabbing and cutting until she stopped twitching. To this day, killing that old woman remains my greatest regret. I never even knew her name...

I stepped out onto the deck of the ship, gently consigning the old woman's body to a watery grave, and I breathed in the humid night air. I thought about everything I had done as the White Terror – all the people I'd killed, the men I'd eaten, the women I'd violated.

And then, out of nowhere, I remembered Josephine's last words to me:

"Go, Daddy, and do not forget us."

I realized that, in the turbulent life of a pirate that I led, I had forgotten about them. And I wept bitter tears once again.

It was at that moment that I realized that I had become the same as the people I hated – the people who made me the way I was.

The next day, I gathered all of my men on the deck, then called my first mate forward. I pointed to him.

"Look at him," I said. "He's the captain now."

My men were shocked that I was giving up my life of piracy and begged me to stay, but I wouldn't hear of it. Eventually, they relented, and my first mate tearfully told me that, in his eyes, I would always be the captain. Where once this statement would have filled me with pride, it now only filled me with shame.

I pulled into port, released my love-slaves, gave most of my swag to the needy, and sold the rest to buy passage to America for myself and my children.

And wouldn't you know it? Our ship was attacked by pirates again. This time, however, I revealed myself as the White Terror and that the people on the ship were under my protection. That scared them off. Of course, the refugees aboard the ship wanted to kill me after they found out who I was, but I managed to persuade them that I was leaving that life behind and wanted to dedicate the rest of my life to providing a better life for my children. I was allowed to live, for my children's sake, but no-one came near me for the rest of the voyage.

I returned to America after five years, under an assumed name and with fake passports for my children. We found our way back to California where, to my surprise, my first batch of illegitimate children were still living in my old house. They had long since thrown my mother out of the house, and she died on the streets penniless and hopelessly addicted to crack cocaine. I asked who was taking care of them, and the answer was, "No-one." When I came back to the house, I learned that Josephine had been taking care of the younger ones in the absence of me and my mother, gathering money from whatever sources she could find. She had always been a bright one, Josephine.

I'll never forget the first time I saw her when I walked through the door. She was sitting on the couch, watching TV.

"Hey, Dad," she said casually, not looking away from the screen. "Where have you been?"

I shrugged. "Africa."

"Okay." She changed the channel. I sat down next to her.

And just like that, I was part of the family again.

Over the following months, I reconnected with my estranged children, learning how they had grown and learned. They now went into the outside world regularly, and now had a semblance of what it was like to be "normal". They welcomed my youngest children with open arms, and before long, we were one big, happy family. We would scrounge for dinner, gather around the TV, and watch cartoons, together.

The kids' favorite channel was (and still is) Nickelodeon. It had changed much since my youth. Spongebob had dug himself out of his rut, and the kids enjoyed watching his whimsical adventures (especially my son, Spongebob). There were many live-action series, which Josephine especially disliked, as she found their humor to be stale and uninspired.

And there was one show that stood out from all the rest – one show that the kids loved more than all the others.

It was called The Loud House.

The Loud House centered around a boy named Lincoln Loud, who lives in a household with ten sisters. Josephine and the others love it because they can relate to it – so many siblings crammed into one space, so chaotic! I myself was drawn in by the witty humor and likable, relatable characters – a worthy product of Nickelodeon.

But the fun times passed, and I was soon confronted with a harsh reality once again. I had no education, no true skills – and above all, no purpose. The future was uncertain for me, and I didn't know what I would do to provide for my many children. For a while, I even considered ending it all, believing that my children could care for themselves, and that they deserved a future without me in it.

But it was Josephine, bright Josephine, who gave me an idea of what to do.

It happened one night, when I was lulling my children to sleep with their favorite bedtime story, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. (They simply adore the illustrations. My little angels...) When I was finished, I kissed each of them goodnight, ending with Josephine. Before she drifted off to sleep, she asked me if I could tell a different story next time – one that I made up myself.

That inspired me. What better way to bring joy to my children than to make up stories myself and tell them to them?

And so, I went to work, scouring this incredible repository of information called the "Internet" that I had recently discovered to learn everything I needed to know about writing and fiction. Eventually, I gathered enough knowledge on the subject, sat down, and cranked out a novel and published it. My kids loved the story, but it received no attention. Even now, it languishes in obscurity.

I began to lose hope. The suicidal thoughts began to return. Then, Josephine came to the rescue again, asking me to tell a Loud House story. Another moment of brilliance from my dear Josephine – I could use preexisting characters and settings and create new stories out of them!

I went back to my research, and learned everything there was to know about "fanfiction". Then, drawing upon my own life experiences, I began to weave tales of a boy betrayed by his family, overcome by lust; tales of a bitter, jaded boy living in a broken family; tales of a boy and his family fighting to survive against a homicidal psychopath.

And from these stories came my saving grace:

You, my faithful readers.

Who knows what the future holds?

All I know is, if I can allow my children to lead more normal lives than I have... then I will be content.

And there you have it – my life story. So remember: the next time you're feeling down about how much your life sucks, and you feel like it's going nowhere, just tell yourself, "Hey – at least I'm not Captain Dodge!"

I'm Captain Dodge – thank you, and have a nice April Fools' Day!