Pitch black

The sun was long gone, the moon presumably out yet nowhere to be seen, hiding somewhere behind the thick blanket of clouds that covered the sky. Leon looked up at it through his sunglasses. He didn't take them off very often nowadays, not even to sleep. He would occasionally catch someone averting their gaze, pretending they hadn't just been staring at him, their dark irises madly zooming in some other random direction, but he preferred that to the judgemental looks he got when he didn't wear the glasses. However, the people he spent most of his time around lately had grown used to them quite quickly, so most of the time he forgot he was wearing them at all.

They were gathered around an old oil drum that had seen better days, several pairs of dirty, calloused hands extending out towards the meek flames that peeked over the rim of the metal container. The smoke coming out of the drum reached his nostrils and filled them with burnt plywood and oil stains, mixing in with the grimy dampness of the alleyway to worsen the constant headache that took up most of his waking hours. No sounds from the bustling city centre reached this far out into the industrial area and none of the people present had the energy to speak at this time of the night, so the snapping and crackling of the flames became the soundtrack of the grim, repetitive hours that went by. Somewhere behind Leon, just outside the circle of light, a bundle of rags that lay next to a dumpster would rustle about every few minutes and erupt into a painful coughing fit. This would go on for about thirty seconds before ending in a phlegmatic expulsion of something that sounded dense enough to dent the dumpster on impact before splotching down its side and onto the thick pool growing in size under it.

The firelight shimmered on the scratched lenses of Leon's sunglasses as his mind wandered in and out of a set of vivid memories that dwelled somewhere in his brain, the context of some of them lying just outside the small circle of clarity that still held him together, beyond the reach of his comprehension. He sometimes spent entire nights trying to wrap his head around one, to figure out where it came from and whether it was of something real or not, but tonight he didn't have the energy for it.

Suddenly, the sound of voices drifted up from the end of the alley, snapping him out of his aimless inner stumble and back into reality. He could tell there was more than once voice, but it was the bravado in one of them that made his pulse quicken. People who took a shortcut through this alley were never comfortable as they rushed through it, especially at this time of the night, and invariably kept a quiet profile, hoping not to attract the attention of those like Leon who lived in it. Not this voice, though. It was loud and confident, which in his mind only spelt trouble.

He looked around at the others. Other than Ruth, who was practically deaf, the others were all stirring in place, glancing around at each other with a numb fear in their blue and green eyes, hoping not to be the target of whatever the owner of the voice had in mind.

The words died down as they got closer, as did the speed of their accompanying footsteps. Between the dark cover of the night and the black tinge his sunglasses imprinted on everything, Leon was unable to distinguish any silhouettes outside of the light afforded by their fire, but he was able to follow the looks of others towards the part of the edge of the circle the men walked in through. One second he was looking blindly at the darkness, the next he was staring at two men ambling towards the group, as if the shadows had all converged to give them shape right in front of him.

The two men were of similar heights, no taller than six feet. The first one wore a brown leather jacket with plain white t-shirt underneath stretching slightly over an impending belly. His jeans were frayed at the bottom, where they were slowly soaking up the dirt and dampness off the ground, the effect not too disimilar from his dark, unkempt head of hair. His companion, who was walking half a foot behind and to his side, seemed fitter, with better posture, which was especially noticeable when compared to the first one's slight slouch. He was wearing a pair of grey sweatpants and a matching hoodie that covered his head, but after a quick look at the group before him he pulled back the hood to reveal thick blond hair greased and scraped tightly back, shining dimly against the lambent light. They were too far away and the light was too dim for Leon to be able to see their eyes clearly, but he could guess what colour they might be.

"Well, well, well," sneered the first man as he made his way to the oil barrel, "what's this? Quite the gathering you have going here. Central heating and all!" He punctuated the last sentence by clanging the container, the sound of wood on metal causing Leon to become utterly still as the fear in him began to rise. He hadn't noticed the baseball bat until then. "What do you think, Dave?" added the man.

Dave, who had been eyeing the bat uneasily, snapped his head up in surprise at the sound of his name, managing to regain his composure before the other man noticed. "I, uh... I think it's quite..." He swallowed. "...pathetic. Yeah, it's quite pathetic, Al."

Without ever looking at Dave, Al began to chuckle out loud, turning his head to look at the people around him one by one. "Pathetic. Now that's an accurate description if I've ever heard one, Dave. Pathetic. Pathetic," he spat on the ground, "and disgusting. Because last I checked, this was a country founded by great people, every one of them proud men, able to stare anyone down until they knew their place, until they knew who was in charge. And you know what colour that stare was, Dave?"

"Black?"

Al smiled. "Quite right you are, Dave. Black. Dark brown too, I must add. Do you know what colours were not present among those brilliant pairs of eyes, Dave?" Before Dave could reply, however, Al lifted the bat up in the air horizontally, like an extension of his arm, and pointed at Sky, who was sitting almost opposite from Leon. "Blue, Dave, blue. Not a set of blue eyes among them." He turned towards Olive, arm still stretched out, bat flat in the air. "Nor green, I can tell you that. Yet here we are, in the heart of this great country, coming across all kinds of light-coloured eyes every single day, working in our offices, living in our houses, eating at our TABLES!"

He slammed the bat against the oil drum, the bang echoing down the street, causing everyone other than himself to flinch, Dave included.

"But people don't seem to notice, don't seem to care, that this is happening around them, that these people think they can just waltz in and behave like us, pretend like they are somehow equal to us when they are most definitely NOT." He spat out again, a thread of saliva getting caught in his lower lip and dribbling down over his t-shirt.

As he raised his hand to wipe off the spit, he laid his oak brown eyes on Leon's sunglasses. He frowned slightly and let his arm fall back down to his side, the head of the bat grinding on the ground as he approached Leon, who dared not move. Al snorted as he stared at the sunglasses. "See, this is what REALLY makes me mad, Dave. Those who do know their place, who are aware of how inferior they are to us, but try to hide it and still live among us, as if we were that STUPID!" With that last word his arm swung up and the bat connected with Leon's jaw, right next to his ear, sending him sprawling to the ground.

He rolled around and looked back up at the man, trying to predict the next swing before it hit him, but his vision was too blurry after the whack and he was unable to focus his eyes. He raised his arms around his head as a last resort in an attempt to deflect any further attacks, but none came. His ears were ringing, dampening any words that may come from either of the men, but after what he perceived as a minute or so he recovered the use of both sight and sound to find the two men staring down at him in confusion, dumbstruck by what they were seeing.

After another minute of silence, Dave finally found the words. "But... your eyes..." he said. "They're... black. That, that doesn't make any sense. Al, his eyes, they're black."

Al said nothing. His lip was trembling, one of his eyes twitching slightly. He was still holding the bat, his fingers gripping it like he was trying to snap it in two as the veins on the back of his hand threatened to pop out.

"Al?"

"Shut up, Dave."

"But you hit him, Al. You hit him, and he has eyes darker than mine. Darker than yours."

"I told you to shut up!" He took a step towards Leon. "This doesn't make sense. He's probably some kind of freak of nature, the son of light-eyed filth who somehow got these eyes out of some absurd coincidence." He kicked Leon in the leg, but with nowhere near as much strength as he'd put into the swing. "You freak! You disgust me, pretending to be what you aren't!" He let out a spray of spit over Leon, shouting out further insults.

Dave, who was hanging behind Al, had a scared look of desperation on him as his eyes alternated between Leon and his friend, when a cold blue light shone on his face, causing him to blink. He looked around in confusion until he found the source of the new light and quickly turned back towards Al.

"Al! Al! It's the cops! Come on, Al, let's get out of here!"

Al looked down at Leon and kicked him one last time. "Filth," he muttered, and ran off after his friend into the cover of the night, back towards the civility of the city.