"Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror, stared into your own eyes, and not recognised the person looking back at you?" he said to me as I entered. He was looking into a mirror hanging on the wall. The mirror gave the impression the room was twice the size it actually was. He took his seat on the opposite side of the desk and looked across, waiting for me to start.

It was not the way I had imagined this conversation starting. I thought about it for much of the last ten years. Every year requesting the interview, every year rejected, until now, "Why now after all these years Dr Marques?"

He stared at me for another moment before speaking, "I do not recognise the person who looks back. I was a young man, and then I wasn't. I do not think you will understand. Not yet." I did in some small sense understand though, in the stories he was a good-looking man with slicked hair who oozed charm. The man sat before me looked nothing of those great tales. He was old and what was left of his hair was greying and receding.

We live in a world of monsters. Even so, we felt safe with one man protecting us, Dr Marques. For thirty years he was the last barricade between monsters and civilisation. Then he disappeared. No one knew why. "What have you been doing for the past ten years?"

He again stared at me and took a moment before responding, "I have tried to forget the man I once was."

His answer surprised me, I asked, "Surely though Doctor the man you were, and the man you are now is a great person? Our protector from the monsters."

I had to grow accustomed to the pause before he answered any question, as though some of what he said was too unbearable to think, let alone speak aloud.

"The stories are not as they seem, young man," he leant back in his chair and picked up an old clay pipe. He took in a deep inhale of the smoke before talking, "the public doesn't want to know the facts, they think they do but what they really want is a story. They want something to look up to, something not quite real. They all know it, but no one dare speak out, for the fragile lie it sits upon would break and they would be confronted with the truth."

"What is the truth?"

He took another inhale through his pipe and smiled, "The truth is that I am a lie. I have killed 'monsters', as you call them, but not nearly as many as is claimed, or in the great ways told. The 'monsters' live on instinct, they are no different to bears or dears in the wild."

He puffed again on his pipe, he talked through the smoke, "I am a killer and should be judged as such. There are few things in my life of which I am proud, there are many more of which I am ashamed." He stood up, instinctively I did the same. He started to walk out of the room. He did not speak as I followed him. He led me outside to a large barn at the back of the property. He slid open the doors and hit the light switch. Slowly the hanging lights came to life and revealed rows and rows of cages the length of the building.

"What is this?" I asked him.

He did not answer, he stood there and watched me. I wandered down the central corridor created by the placement of the cages. In them were werewolves, hellhounds, a Sasquatch, fairies, several variations of great snakes and others I am not ashamed to admit I didn't recognise.

"I do not understand," I said as I turned to face him.

"Ten years ago I was tracking a Yeti who was terrorising a local village. It had been a long time since I had hunted in the mountains and I was keen to go back. I tracked the Yeti for two days before I found its cave. It wasn't alone, though.

'It was a mother and child. I killed them both, with two shots. I looked down at them.

'They were the last two yetis...
'I had committed genocide with two bullets...
'Imagine that..."

He was silent for a long time. He sat on a stool at the side of the barn door and smoked his pipe. I walked around the barn and looked into each cage. They were big enough for the creatures to be comfortable. After twenty minutes I had walked around the entire building. He sat still smoking his pipe, "I'm afraid I still do not understand Doctor."

His gaze broke from looking at the floor and snapped up to look at me, "When you look down at the last corpse of a species, you cannot continue to be the killer. Here before you are all the 'monsters' of the world."

It seemed improbable that no matter how large this barn is that it could hold all of the monsters of our world. He answered before I had a chance to ask the question, "There are not as many as people think. The public relations firm who was in my employ made sure the stories were told in such a way that I was in almost constant demand."

"You must be mistaken though Doctor, I have looked at all of the cages and can see no vampires."

"In that cage did live the last vampire," he pointed to an empty cell in the corner, "three months ago, it escaped." He emptied the ash from his pipe onto the floor. "There is a small town some ten miles from here. I tracked it, but I was too late. It had killed a little girl.

'There are fundamental questions we as a race ask ourselves, can you kill to save lives?

'I killed the last vampire. For once more in my forsaken life I looked down at the last corpse of a species. At that moment I came to terms with the truth..."

He trailed off and did not speak again for more than an hour. He walked back to the house, I followed him. He finally seemed to remember I was there, "I am an old man now and no matter how fragile the lie we tell ourselves the public should know the truth. I am a killer, I am the ender of species but we can be more than a race of killers. We can be a race of protectors."

I did not see the Doctor again after our interview. Though I have been back to his house since. The creatures in the barn are still there. Still protected from us, for now. So in his memory, I write this; We have a duty to protect this world and all the creatures who live upon it. We should not become killers. As he was. This killer we held as a hero. We can be more, we should be more.