The pool of milk on the kitchen grew around the overturned glass, and the little boy stared in horror, unsure of just what to do. The milk circled around his cereal bowl, threatening to drip onto the floor.
The boy looked up at his father, and felt that familiar pang of fear. “I’m sorry, daddy, it was an accident. It just fell over. I’ll never do it again, I promise.”
His father stood near the sink, a cigarette hanging from one side of his mouth, a can of beer latched into his hairy right hand. His glare alone could cut stone. “Well, go grab a fucking towel! Hurry!”
The little boy stood and rushed to the living room doorway. His terror confused him. “What kind of towel, daddy?” He was even terrified of grabbing the wrong kind of towel, so strong was his fright and puzzlement.
“Anything, Timmy! Hurry up, it’s gonna drip on the fuckin’ floor!”
Timothy ran off to the linen closet.
“Hurry up, you little fuckin’ retard!” Wendell Shade called after him. “God damnit!”
Timothy came running in with a large, bright orange towel with a print of the sun hanging over the ocean. “I got one daddy! I’ll clean it up!”
But before the boy could move another step, Wendell called out, “Not that one, fuck! That’s my big beach towel! Go get another piece of shit towel, Timmy! Jesus Christ, it’s drippin’ on the floor!” He made no move to resolve the situation, only stood in his grungy white tank top swigging his cheap beer.
“What’s goin’ on in there, Wendell?” Mary Shade called out from a repulsive smelling bedroom down the hall. She lie on the unmade bed, adorned in a spotted blue nightgown amidst stained sheets and blankets, a can of beer sitting on the nightstand among an epidemic of prescription bottles. “Bring me another beer, Wendell,” she called out in a shaky voice.
Then she turned her attention to the digital clock on the nightstand. She stared at it through thick lensed glasses, and started tapping the various buttons atop the clock. She leaned back on her pillow and closed her eyes, her fingers tapping the buttons at super-sonic speed.
Mary Shade was talking to Jesus. Whenever Wendell saw her, he rolled his eyes. Timothy would see her, oftentimes sitting on the bed and talking to his mother, and he was just old enough to realize that the woman was nuts. Yet, he wasn’t quite at that age when he had thoughts of a genetic nature. Mommy was nuts, therefore, I am nuts.
In the kitchen, Wendell was tapping a foot and watching milk drip onto a floor that had remained unmopped for a forgotten amount of time. Timothy came running in with a smaller, plain towel, and he held it up for his father’s approval.
“That’s fine, now clean the shit up!”
“Ok, daddy!”
Timothy knelt down and began wiping the floor.
“Not there, you little turd, the table first, or else more will just drip on the floor.” He took a long guzzle from his beer, and with his last cigarette still smoldering in the ash tray on the counter, he fired up another and took a nice long drag.
Timothy struggled with the milk that was still threatening to drip off the table. He rushed the glass and bowl to the sink, and returned to the table, swirling the towel around in the pool of milk, which was rapidly absorbing into the towel. “Daddy, I think I need another towel,” the frightened little boy said.
His father sighed disgustedly, and said, “Hang on.” He set his beer on the counter and went out the kitchen door to the back patio, and returned with an old plastic laundry basket. He tossed it onto the floor next to his son. “Throw it in there and go fetch another towel.”
Timothy dropped the milk-soaked towel into the basket (the basket was spotted with dirt from being left out in the rain), and ran to the linen closet for another towel. There were not many towels left, and to Timothy, they all looked as if too good for his father’s approval. He paused, contemplating the kitchen doorway; he knew on the other side his father was waiting, and would not wait long. He hurried back to the kitchen, almost in tears; feeling like the retard that his father so frequently liked to called him.
“Daddy, all the towels look too good to use,” he said, his bottom lip quivering. He looked at his father’s angry countenance, and tears filled his eyes. At that moment, he wished he could have run away, very far away, or better yet, beat him up – beat his father up and make him clean up the darned milk. The frustration of knowing this to be impossibility generated another all too familiar feeling – anger. His tiny fists clenched, little vice clamps threatening to pierce his palms with fingernails; but they unclenched abruptly before his father could see them. That would have meant trouble for sure.
“Oh, now you’re gonna cry,” Wendell said. He leaned toward the boy. “Is it my fault you spilled the fucking milk? Huh?”
Timothy stood silent.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you!”
He looked up at the horrid man, his vision blurred by tears.
“Well? Is it my fault?”
“No, daddy.”
“Stop your fucking blubbering, and go grab a dirty towel out of the hamper in the bathroom.”
Timothy ran off and returned with a damp towel he had retrieved from a hamper that reeked of mold and other unknown odors. He immediately finished wiping up the milk, and was about to toss the towel in the basket with the other when his father chimed up. “Rinse that out in the sink. Try to get most of the milk out of it, and wipe up where the milk was with the damp towel. It’ll get sticky if you don’t.”
With tears running down his face, Timothy removed the dishes from the kitchen sink and set them on the counter. He ran the warm water, rinsing and wring out the towel with all the strength his hands would tolerate.
Wendell walked out onto the back patio and took a long swig from his beer and an equally long drag from his cigarette. He looked up at the burning sun and decided it was too hot to be outside at the moment. He went back inside, letting the screen door slap against the frame.
Timothy was just finishing up – he dropped the towel in the basket on top of the other one. “You stay right here,” Wendell said, and snatched up the basket before taking it outside and dropping it on the cement. Once back inside, he set his beer on the table (now that it was all cleaned up and ready for more) and put his hands on his hips.
“You do this all the time boy, and every time you have to clean it up. I thought it would -he produced a loud burp-teach you some kind of lesson. But you don’t learn. So, I guess it’s time for a little time out.”
“No, daddy, please. I won’t do it again, I promise!”
“Nope. You say that every time, Timmy, and look what you do. Some time out will give you time to think about it. Maybe you’ll figure out why you keep fucking up. Let’s go!”
“No, daddy!” He clung to the table, but Wendell grabbed one of his arms and pulled him along, out of the kitchen, past the living room and down the hall to his small bedroom. He pushed him into the dim room.
“Now you just sit here and think about it for a while. And no lights! If I catch you with that light on, I’ll whoop your ass. And don’t open those curtains, either! If you’re a good boy, I’ll come and let you out in just a little while.”
He slammed the door shut, and Timothy sat on his bed. He knew he would be there a long time. There were even times when his father would fall asleep on the living room couch for hours, while his mother sat on her bed sipping her beer, even getting up long enough to fetch her own, for her calls to Wendell went unheeded by a man who lay snoring in the living room.
Timothy heard the muffled voices of his parents talking from the master bedroom.
“What did he do, Wendell?”
“Oh, just knocked over his milk again. All over everything. Fucking mess.”
Silence.
“Don’t forget, we have to go to the pharmacy today,” he heard his mother say.
“I know, I know,” Wendell said.
“What are you going to do with Timmy?” Mary Shade asked.
“He can just sit in his room and think about it.”
He heard his mother grunt and the creak of bedsprings. She was getting out of bed. “Is that stupid car of your gonna make it to the store?”
“Oh, shut up, woman! It’ll make it” Wendell didn’t want to be too harsh on the woman – after all he was living off of her welfare money, too. “And we’ll get some beer at the store too,” he said.
“I need smokes, Wendell.”
“We’ll get smokes, don’t worry.”
Timothy listened by the door as his father stomped past toward the kitchen. He ran to the curtains and parted them slightly, just enough to let in enough light for him to see into the closet. He rummaged around through the toys and discarded toys until he found what he was looking for – an artist’s sketch pad with a brown cover. The first few pages were littered with doodles, and he tore them out; he searched around for his small garbage basket, and had to stuff the wad of papers in on top of the rest, for it had not been emptied in quite a while.
Timothy heard heavy footsteps approaching, and he ran over to close the curtains. The door opened, and his father’s head poked in. “Are you being a good boy?”
“Yes, daddy,” Timothy said, sitting on the floor near the window, with his sketch pad and pencil in hand.
“We’re going to the store real quick. I expect you to stay put, you understand?”
“I will, I promise.”
The door slammed shut, and Timothy was engulfed in shadow. Fear was no longer the preponderating factor in his thoughts – it was anger. He started to draw the figures as best as an eight-year-old could, crude figures that represented his father, and then he thought about his comic books; there were all kinds of super heroes, in all shapes and sizes. It was then that he realized how is own name – Shade – correlated exactly with the place in where he was imprisoned. The dark, the shadows, the loneliness. It was not hard for him to draw a ghost, a dark, shadowy figure that came to his rescue.
The Dark Shadow was born.
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