Douglas wears perfect glass ovals in silver frames. The lenses are bright blue and are not for medical purposes, but when asked, Douglas will mention cryptically that they help him to see in other ways.
He keeps these blue spectacles in a silver case, one of a row of three silver cases lined on a shelf beside his bed. Tomorrow perhaps he may wear the red glasses. And on special occasions he wears the third pair. One lens is blue and the other is red, and they make Douglas appear as if he has emerged from one of those new-fangled theatres with the pop-out pictures, or as if he is making an unfortunate fashion statement.
The true purpose of the glasses is known only to Douglas, and to a tall man, a thin man. A man knifed open and killed some twenty, thirty years ago.
The few of the people retained by Douglas as friends know not to ask about the glasses, in the same way that they know not to bring round their girlfriends and boyfriends, and in the same way that they don't give Douglas sharp objects.
On one particular night in the big city of Somewhere, Douglas comes across an area, down by the docks, cordoned off by a yellow tape. It winds about and around and says rather meekly POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS. There is blood on the wooden planks beyond.
Douglas's curiosity allows him only the smallest pause before he lifts the tape and crosses the barrier.
The first thing he sees is the body. It is thoroughly disembowelled. Douglas stares for a bit.
Every time he comes across scenes such as this one, he can't resist taking a look.
Yellow tape appears blue through blue glass.
The second thing is the man standing over the body. A tall man, a thin man. Douglas's glasses let him know that he is different on the inside.
He moves closer.
They're all like this, all of the not-humans he's seen. Tall, long people characterized by chiaroscuro and sharp angles and sharp eyes. They're all like this on the outside. On the inside, they're different.
The first was Mr Koberman. The second was Leela, the third was a child and the fourth was Dante Elliott.
The one standing over the corpse on the bloody ground will be number nine. His not-human parts will be burned, probably, like most of the others. Numbers three and five were sold to private institutes because Douglas had needed the money. Dante's he'd kept in a big clear glass jar because he had loved him, just a little.
With the not-human is a police officer, who looks normal through the spectacles, though rather bluer.
The world, in fact, is blue when Douglas wears the blue glasses. Sometimes he exchanges the blue world for a red one. Rarely does he stand for more colours than one at a time.
The not-human is now crouching over the body. His long coat drags in the blood on the ground. He says something to the officer, who stands with his arms crossed.
By the time Douglas reaches the body, the not-human is taking long strides away from the scene. Douglas debates following him but stops to ask the officer a few questions.
In answer to the first asked: "He's a consultant. Helping us with the case."
"Oh. So not a suspect, then?" Douglas is mildly irritated and moderately disappointed.
"Nah."
"Know where he's going now?"
"Nuh-uh."
Douglas thanks the officer. Today he doesn't have time to gawk at the dead man and the blood, though he'd much like to.
And then, finally, as Douglas is lifting the strip of tape bounding the area, he hears: "Hey, who the hell are you, anyway?"
Some blocks down, Douglas trails the tall man. The thin man.
He studies him more closely. This not-human is different from the other not-humans. His insides are different, yes, but he's missing some bits, or at least Douglas thinks so. They're all a little different, but this one's only got three or four oddly-shaped not-human parts, unlike the dozen or so in Mr Koberman and the others. Dante'd had fourteen. Douglas counts them, sometimes.
But three — or four! What this could mean is lost on Douglas. He wants to know more. He is a curious creature.
At some point the tall man turns down an alley. Douglas turns, too.
One step in, and his eyes notice that the tall man is gone.
Two steps in, and his brain's thinking about how very dark it is tonight, in this alley.
His feet don't take a third step, because Douglas's been pushed against one of the brick buildings guarding the alleyway.
There is, he discovers, a long, leather-covered hand, roughly shoved over his mouth.
The hand is attached to the thin man facing Douglas.
Douglas mildly notices that the different not-human bits inside of the thin man seem to be moving.
Sharp eyes of no particular colour examine Douglas. They freeze a bit when they find the round blue glasses on his face.
Douglas inches his hand behind his back. He opens his eyes wide. Douglas knows how to look convincingly harmless when it suits him.
"Please, please, I've not done anything—"
"You're the child who killed Klaus," the not-human says, eyes narrowing in recognition.
Douglas's hand freezes. "What?" This time his confusion is genuine.
"Klaus Koberman. The German-Turkish man who walked into your granny's boarding-house and was carried out. You're the boy with the silver coins."
"Not a boy any longer," Douglas growls before making to stab at the thin man with the silver knife now in his hand.
He doesn't meet his mark. His wrist is slapped sharply, like he's being admonished for being a naughty child. The knife flies out of his hand.
The not-human slams Douglas back into the wall and sits him on the ground, hard.
Douglas watches with some detachment as his spectacles are plucked from his face and ground underfoot. By now it is dark enough that things are most almost the same colour, anyway.
He can't see inside the not-human anymore.
From the outside, he looks almost normal. Douglas realizes that the last not-human he'd seen without the aid of his glasses had been Mr Koberman.
This one looks a bit like him on the outside, too, only quite a bit paler.
Even with the glasses off, Douglas can't tell what colour his eyes are.
"Why were you following me?" the not-human demands.
Douglas slows his breathing and looks calmly up at him. Before he can answer, the not-human waves his hand absently before jabbing a finger in Douglas's face.
"No. Wait. Don't tell me." He peers down at Douglas, who hadn't been about to speak, anyway.
Douglas feels abruptly like a specimen under a microscope.
He refuses to look down. He locks eyes with the tall man leaning over him.
"You killed Klaus Koberman when you were eleven years old, yes?" And then, without waiting for an answer, "You cut him open with that knife your gran used to cut open chickens. You liked it. You wanted to do some more. So you had those glasses made and hoped you'd come across more of us." The not-human starts slow, but speeds up as his eyes flicker across Douglas's face.
"You're the one who's been murdering my people over the last few decades. You don't do it out of a sense of justice. You do it because you're curious. You use a silver knife because it hurts. You take the organs with you when you're finished and dispose of them elsewhere from the body, cleanly, because you don't want anyone else becoming curious and getting in the way of your work." He clicks the 'k' sound at the end of the sentence.
Does Douglas detect a note of respect in the not-human's voice?
"That's not all, though. You're not very well liked among normal people, so you don't have any real friends. It doesn't bother you. You don't care what people think. You don't care about people at all. That's why you practised on ordinary people before you started working on my Family. Who was the first? A stranger?" The tall man watches Douglas's eyes. "Not a stranger," he breathes in conclusion.
"Someone you knew. Someone you knew well. You aren't in contact with your parents. You never have been. Orphaned at an early age? You lived with your grandmother. What about her?"
Douglas thinks he's suppressed his reaction but apparently this is not true, as the tall man steps back and rubs his gloved hands together.
"Oh, this is good. You murdered your own grandmother for practice. You thought you'd loved her but it turned out that you really didn't. You didn't feel anything when you cut her open, did you? You haven't ever felt much."
Douglas has fairly caught his breath by now. He's not spoken for a while yet, but he's not afraid.
"You don't know anything," he says calmly.
The thin man's face splits with a grin. "I know lots of things."
Douglas glares. "Get out of my head."
The grin stays. "I'm not in your head. I don't have that power. You people are all so easy to read."
"Really? Read this," says Douglas as he slides his other knife between the not-human's ribs.
If Douglas is expecting the tall man to collapse in pain, he's disappointed.
He gets a laugh, instead, and the words "You are a total psychopath."
That note of mild admiration again.
Douglas is out of knives. He sits down again very slowly while the not-human, still standing, extracts the blade from his front side.
Douglas is never frightened. He doesn't think he's frightened now, either.
"I prefer the term 'high-functioning sociopath'," he says, chin up.
There's another laugh. Says the tall man, grinning, "High-functioning sociopath. I like that."
Douglas bares his teeth at him.
The grin is replaced by a frown. "You're rather stupid, though, aren't you?"
This, more than anything that's happened, shocks Douglas.
"No, no, don't say anything. Just listen," the not-human instructs. His tone drops. There is no longer any note of joviality. "You will not follow any of my Family in the future. You will not kill any of my Family, and you will most of all not come across my path again."
Douglas's response is either very brave or very idiotic. "Or what?" he says.
The not-human levels at Douglas a glare that is the ridiculous mixture of severe and condescending.
"Or else," he says before producing a syringe and plunging it deftly into Douglas's neck.
A few minutes later, the thin man leaves the alleyway, wiping his mouth. The streets are unusually quiet, even for this time of night.
The few people nearby are almost conspicuously not looking at the opening to the side street that the thin man emerges from. When he steps fully out, though, everybody within twenty feet turns towards him, simultaneously. Their eyes are quite blank, improbably so.
The tall man looks up, eyes narrow.
"Go away, Mycroft," he says before walking away.
The blank faces slacken and turn away. The people behind them resume going about their businesses.
Douglas wakes up rather later. The backstreet he sits in is imperceptibly lightening.
Halfway up from his sitting position, he thumps back down, hard, suddenly dizzy.
He becomes aware of a dull pain in the side of his neck. He recalls the needle the tall man had used to drug him.
On manual examination of the spot, Douglas realizes that his skin has been broken in two places. The first is where the needle had entered cleanly. The second is a long slice, caked messily with blood.
There is not sufficient blood present to account for Douglas's present light-headedness.
His silver knives lie on the ground in front of him, nicely aligned by the hand of the tall man. The first blade is clean. The second is not.
Douglas suspects that the blood is not solely that of the not-human.
Where the rest of the blood has gone — for the amount of the stuff caked on Douglas's knife is certainly not enough to affect him in this manner — is a mystery.
Douglas unfolds a spare pair of glasses from a pocket. The cheaper lenses have survived the night, surprisingly enough.
He goes home, intending to get some real sleep before the sun is fully up.
Douglas's home is a little flat situated on the outskirts of the city. The rent is rather high for a single resident, but even if Douglas had wanted a flatmate, he'd have been hard-pressed to find someone to live with him.
Upon entering the apartment, should any person wish to do so, he or she should find the place rather impersonal and empty. This is largely due to Douglas's rather nomadic lifestyle. He rarely stays in the same city for longer than a year.
The first room serves few purposes. The majority of the floor is open, partially covered in a scraggly rug. Douglas uses this surface for meditation.
The only other thing in this windowless room is a shelf on which rests a large transparent jar. It is not empty.
Every night, when Douglas returns from his city-wanderings, he nods to the jar and says, "Hi, Dante," before proceeding to the kitchen.
Tonight, however, after another day of roving the streets, he doesn't make it inside. This is because there is a sleek black automobile idling on the street in front of his door. Scarcely has Douglas noticed this before he is smoothly bundled into the car by the man he hadn't seen lurking in the shadows.
Douglas slides warily into the centre of the back seat. The thug drops down onto his right side. On the left is a dark-haired young woman toying with some kind of electronic device, but when Douglas contemplates escape, he decides that neither of his captors will be very easy to get past, despite appearances. He sits quietly for what he thinks is almost an hour.
Douglas watches the windows and quickly finds that the vehicle is heading out of the city.
The driver applies the brake outside of a warehouse that appears abandoned.
The woman, in a rather bored voice, indicates that Douglas should exit the vehicle.
Two not-humans in as many days. It can't be luck, thinks Douglas.
This thin man reads silently from a small notebook as Douglas approaches. The suit worn by the man is made of some sort of material that conceals its wearer's insides from Douglas's eyes, hidden behind red glass.
"Douglas. Please sit."
Author's note: I'm not certain if I want to add anything after this or leave it open-ended, as is. Any comments appreciated.