Dancing Shadows

When Donny was asked what he remembered of his parents he would always say they loved to dance. Every night after they'd put him to bed he would sneak out and watch them. He couldn't actually see them, they were blocked by a partition, but he could see their shadows dancing on the wall. There was never any music playing, well he never heard any, but in his head Donny always had them dancing to a song, whatever song fit their rhythm at the time. If they had looked over the partition they would have seen a six-year-old boy crawled up on the floor watching the light cast shadows on the wall. Donny loved watching the shadows dance, he couldn't tell who was who but they were always so passionate in their movements.

On the night before his seventh birthday he snuck out to watch the shadows dance as he did every night. The shadows danced beautifully that night, in the background Donny could make out a shadow of what must be his birthday present but his eyes were always drawn back to his parents, so beautiful that he fell asleep watching them. He didn't see one of the shadows fall down. When Donny awoke there were policemen everywhere and he knew his parents had discovered him sneaking out. He was bustled quickly from his home and he thought they didn't love him anymore. The police tried to talk to him, but he never heard a word, how could he, Donny was born deaf.

He saw his parents dance every night, he never heard his mothers screams, he couldn't know what was happening, how could the police tell him that his father had never danced a day in his life? There was a birthday present on the table near where his mother's body was found. The police never told him that his father had murdered his mother. They never told him that the argument that night was about Donny's birthday present. How could they possibly tell him that what he saw every night was his father beating his mother? They decided that it was better for him to remember how his parents loved to dance, and how he would watch the dancing shadows.