I used to finish the bottle in a single swig, then throw it out of the window into the ditch that ran alongside the road. If it made a clink, that was good. That meant that it was going to be a good day. But if it smashed, that was bad. It meant lost order forms and idiot customers and lectures from the supervisor about turning up to work drunk again.

Then, that May, it stopped making any noise. I even took to slowing down, trying to hear the gin bottle ringing out my future as I drove past. But there was nothing. I wondered what that meant.

Two days later I got fired. It was an acrimonious affair, and in retrospect I’m grateful that nobody pressed charges. At the time, though, I was just pissed. It took me a few days to get around to checking out the ditch, and when I did I saw immediately why the bottle hadn’t been ringing out any more good news. Beneath the grass, the ditch was full of clothes. And I mean, full. They were all women's’ clothes, and the weird thing was that in between all the torn bras and ripped skirts there were valuables. Jewelry, credit cards, purses full of cash, you name it.

I didn’t so much make the decision to stake the place out as end up sitting drunk in the car there one night. I had a bag of lemons and a bottle of gin to keep me company. A typical night out for me. I’d bite a lemon, take a swig. Repeat. Fade to black.

I remember it well because it was the last time I ever took a drink.

When the thing came I was just about gone. Things had started to get so soft and comfortable and blurry that I forgot why I was so angry all the time. A few minutes later and I probably would have passed out. But when it came, I wasn’t passed out. I was awake.

I watched it climb through the briar hedge that ran along the side of the road. It looked left and right, peering through the orange glow of the streetlights to make sure that there was no traffic.There wasn’t any. Then it emerged, bag slung over its shoulder.

It looked human, which surprised me a little. For some reason I’d been expecting aliens. I thought about this as it opened the sack and started throwing the clothes into the ditch. Aliens would have been something. Something interested. I’d brought my camera. Sat up all night. And for what ? For this stinking hobo.

I opened the car door and staggered across the road.The rag man saw me even before I began to remonstrate. His eyes narrowed with a certain cold calculation, then darted up and down the road again. After satisfying himself that we were alone, he dropped his bag and produced a revolver.

Shit, I thought, and flinched as he stepped forward and aimed at me. I tried to say something, but I couldn’t make my throat work properly. For the first time I saw the face beneath the rag man’s wool cap. The most horrible thing about it was the complete lack of expression. He didn’t look any more interested in what he was going to do to me than he would have about stepping on a bug.

He fired, but as he did he slipped on a pair of knickers. One foot flew up into the air and he landed on his back, pure slapstick. I was laughing as he struggled back up to his feet, gun waving dangerously, and then I remembered that he was trying to kill me. So I threw the bottle, a perfect crystal arc that ended by bouncing off of his head.

I can still hear the clink of it now.

I wasn’t sure that I’d killed him until I felt the cold of his skin and the stillness of his heart. I don't know why I took the body with me. Some drunken impulse to remove the evidence, I suppose, although why I would have thought I'd be safer with the body in my garage I don't know. Like I said, I don't drink now, and it's difficult to remember how crazy I was back then.

The next day I woke up. I examined my kill through bloodshot eyes. It didn't make sense. Beneath the rags the limbs were all different. Some were white, ginger haired. Others were brown. The left arm seemed to belong to a man, the left to a woman. But the injury that had killed it was weirdest. Beneath the torn skin of the forehead the skull seemed to have been made of glass.

I threw up for a while, although no more than usual. Then I ate something. When the hang-over had cleared enough to let me walk without difficulty I went to the doctors, then to a clinic.

I ended up being their star pupil. I stopped drinking, and I stayed stopped. I started working out, too. And studying. Studying all kinds of things. Biology. Chemistry. News reports.

Then, when I was ready, I started hunting.