I first met Shirt guy when I was six. A friend of my mum's or something like that. I'd ask my dad, but he left. Shirt guy came into the living room, all shirt tails waving in the breeze. Sickly looking animal prints all up his joint.

"Wanna sweetie?" He said, dumping his calloused hands into denim jeans faded by the sun.

I was six? What did you think I was gonna do? So I took the gummy lion off his sweaty palm and chewed away.

Five minutes later, he came back out of my mum's room, tucking that shirt into his pants. He had a hard time too, it was like the thing was alive.

He winked at me as he was leaving. A sly, I just fucked your mother kinda wink. The kind a six year old doesn't know about.

I had a fleeting glimpse of the back of his shirt when he went out. Those weird looking animals, all lying about like they were dying, moved suddenly, like they had life in them. Six year old imaginations, am I right?

Only, I don't think it was, not now. Mum was dead. Sucked out. Like a drinks carton after a friday night at soccer.

I won't bore you with my fucked up childhood, boucing around foster homes. But I will tell you about the second time I met Shirt guy.

I was at a bar getting down in the deep end, when I saw him hanging off a young girl in the corner. I knew it was him when he looked up at me and winked that wink again. The 'I'm gonna fuck her,' wink.

I had questions. Shit, I had hundreds of them, and it was time to pay the piper. So, when he and the girl made a move for the toilets, I was a belt unbuckling time behind them.

She was moaning. Joyous? Maybe, but that soon faded to gulping sounds, and not the throat type. I kicked the door in, and wished I hadn't. Shirt guy was stock still, eyes rolling, against the partition wall. Shirtless.

The girl was threshing on the floor. Withering like a rose in acid. That's when I noticed the prints. All of them moving. Wiggling like leeches. Undulating the flesh of the girl underneath it.

I puked. What was I supposed to do?

Those prints, what I thought were animals? Na… they weren't animals. There were people. Or the souls of people. Or something… Fuck.

I ran out. Not a single question answered and all of them answered at once. By the time I made it to the bar and tried shouting above the music to the barman, Shirt guy was coming out of the bathroom, straightening his shirt.

Then he gave me that wink again. You know. The one that said, 'if I told anyone, I would get fucked.'