“Holy shit balls!” he said.

The picture on top of the pile was of a young man who, to Derek, seemed to be posing for his autopsy pictures. The man in the picture stood over six feet tall and was standing against a wall. As he stared at the photograph of the man standing naked against the off-white wall, Derek was captured by his eyes.

Baby blue, yet dimmed, surrounded by yellowish-gray skin where white should have been. Eyes too large for a man, and too blue. If not for the spark of something in them, Derek would take these eyes for those of a dead man.

Lifeless. Cold. Vacant.

The man’s eyes were they only bit of life’s color in the picture. The man’s skin was a horrible shade of death; gray mixed with hints of purplish blue. He was completely bald, and though the photograph was obviously taken from a digital camera then printed out on an ink jet printer, Derek could make out whispers of eyebrows, so faint as to remind him of an infants. Soft brown and stretched to a point of comical sparseness. Above each eyebrow were two, nearly perfect circles of much darker skin. They looked like old, healed burn marks and made Derek think of the pictures of electrodes he’d seen pictures of before.

The shade of death the man wore on his face was a theme carried throughout the rest of his body. Though some areas of the man’s body- his elbows, back of his hands, and knees - were a darker shade of death, the man was colorless.

There was very little fat on the man. Muscles, seemingly defying the death motif, were visible. A classic and envied six-pack was clear in the man’s abdominals. Biceps and deltoids both well developed and prominent. Muscles lined the man’s thighs and appeared to have been carefully carved to show each of their assigned functions. His genitals hung softly and assumed a much darker variation of gray. Unlike the rest of the photo subject’s body, his genitals appeared to have never developed.

“I see what you mean, Ralph,” Derek said out loud, somewhat hoping Ralph was still awake and within ear shot. “This guy showing up in an airport would certainly be remembered.” Derek received no report back from Ralph.

As Derek scanned the photograph again, he paused when his eyes met the man’s smile. The thin lips curled just slightly at their corners, parting enough for Derek to that they hid nothing. Though he couldn’t be certain, the way the lips fell inward and the lack of anything white behind them, suggested that the man was toothless.

As he flipped through the remaining pictures, each of the same subject, Derek noticed that each picture was dated and each date marked the same day of the year. June 30th. There were twenty-two pictures in the stack, each taken on June 30th of the last twenty-two years. The only picture that broke the sequence was the very first picture that was dated July 4, 1992.

This picture showed a baby wearing the same alarming shade of death-gray. He was lying in a crib. His eyes, baby blue then, held an unsettling gaze back at the camera.

“This is not a good-looking baby,” Derek said.

Derek quickly scanned the printed photographs again and noticed that the first thirteen were taken in a different place than the last nine. In those, the subject stood, naked and gray against a painted concrete blocked wall. In the remaining nine, the person stood against an off-white and typical-looking sheet-rocked wall.

Derek collected the photographs into a neat pile and set them aside. He wanted to see what else of interest was in the over-stuffed folder that sat in front of him. As he began to thumb through, Derek noticed several smaller pictures, all black and white, bound together by a rubber band that was showing its age with cracks and a visible loss of elasticity.

Derek removed the tired rubber band and thumbed through the twelve or thirteen pictures that the band faithfully bound. Each was of an attractively shaped woman and was obviously taken without her being aware that a camera’s lens was trained on her. The woman was captured in many positions; bending over what looked like a crib, standing with folding arms looking at something in the non-captured distance, sitting at a small desk writing notes. Each picture of the same woman dressed in a white nurses uniform and each taken from what Derek assumed to be a hazy window.

The pictures were not dated, but all seemed to have been taken the same day, for the subject’s uniform and hairstyle remained consistent. The last picture in the lot was of the nurse holding the gray baby. Her backside was the obvious target of the photograph, but the eyes of the baby as the nurse held it over her left shoulder were what sent a disturbing shiver through Derek’s soul.

The eyes were certainly the same eyes of the subject of the other pictures, but they seemed different in this one picture. They seemed aware that they were being watched. To Derek, the eyes looked angry about an interruption. A presence that, though seemingly unnoticed by the nurse holding him, was clearly known by the baby.

“Michelle Pettingall, I assume?” Derek thought and began to wonder what kind of man Straus was to have taken these secret pictures and to have kept them in a file for over twenty years. The thought of what Straus may have been doing while looking at the pictures caused Derek to drop them and then to rub his hands clean on his jeans.

“Sick bastard,” he thought of Straus.

Next to review were the hundred or so medical notes, Some were printed and many were handwritten in a journalized format. As his eyes were growing weary, Derek flipped through the notes and only paused to read a few. Those he read continued to affirm his client’s story and to affirm Derek’s initial impression of Doctor William Straus.

Patient arrived today. Initial examination confirmed diagnosis of Dr. Adams et al – No heart. No breathing. Skin color=gray. Reflexes very sharp. Dr. Lucietta to run lab tests on pooled blood, skin cells, and muscle tissue. Results in two days. 7/4 1992 DWS

Patient slept 14 hours. Lung activates upon sleep. Cell regeneration tests inconclusive. Cell transfer ability noted 7/8/92 DWS

Patient displaying unusual levels of awareness for age. Eye tracking and environment awareness remarkable 7/10/12 DWS

Derek thumbed through the stack of notes and reached one that explained the dark patches above the eyes of Alexander. He assumed that the initials after the notes were to indicate which doctor was doing the note taking.

Patient did not respond as expected to shock. Small voltage caused extreme reaction. Highly sensitive to electricity. 2/5/2002 DBL

Derek continued reading notes that seemed to stand out from the rest.

Patient displaying unusual strength. Electricity continues to be the best method to subdue. Highly effective, but need to send low dosage only! 5/17/2003 DBL

Patient move complete. Suite secured. Memory tests to resume in two weeks. 9/3/2005 DTC