Today is the first day of the end of my life.

That's not how that line is meant to go, is it? Shouldn't it be 'Today is the first day of the rest of my life'?

Oh well. I'm not entirely traditional. Being normal was always boring.

Well, I thought so, anyway.

I had a life. A normal life. A job I actually enjoyed, which probably was weird in itself. How many people wake up in the morning and don't mind going to work? How many, instead, want to throw the alarm across the room? To turn over and go back to sleep rather than face the same drones doing the same drudge? Not me. I liked my job. My colleagues were my friends.

It was... normal.

I watched TV. Listened to music. Lots of music. All sorts of music. I ate food. Usual things. Curry. Chilli. Roast beef or chicken with roast potatoes, vegetables and Yorkshire puddings. I liked chocolate. Probably a little too much.

It wasn't the mundane life it sounds, honestly. It just wasn't spectacular. I wasn't a secret agent or a high flyer. I was me. I liked me.

Like. I like me. Eat. Watch. Listen.

Present tense, not past. At least for now.

I said I wasn't traditional. Not entirely, anyway. I like quirky. Dark. Unusual. My sense of humour dances on the edge of a blade and can be cutting at times, but, because I'm generally a laid back, easy going, decent enough person, I tend to get away with it. I mean no malice in my jokes and I stay tip-toeing on the sliver of steel, never quite slicing all the way down to leave streaks of bloody offence on the surface.

If you knew when you were going to die, what would you do? If the exact time and date were marked on a calendar or programmed into your phone's alarm, set to play The Macarena or some similarly annoying tune when the clock ticks to the ultimate moment?

Well, why would you set a song you like as your alarm? You'd lay there and listen to it. If it's something you dislike, you're more likely to move and turn it off. Unless, of course, you like The Macarena and are one to be singing alone and crossing and uncrossing your arms whilst twisting your hips, snuggled down under the duvet...

Anywho. Death. What if you knew, when the doorbell dinged it's dong, that the Grim Reaper had come to call and you had forgotten to pack your toothbrush?

What would you do?

Cry? Spend the days leading up to that moment in a mire of misery that sucked at your spirit, dragging you down until only your tear stained face could be seen above the despair?

Celebrate? Ensure your final moments were spent with a smile and a dance and a two fingered salute to the Collector of Souls? Would you eat, drink and be Mary, though your name was actually Martin?

Would you, perhaps, do something illegal? Steal a car, something flash and shiny and fast. Rob a bank, then throw the money off a tall building. It's not as if you'll be needing it.

Kill someone? Maybe to try and swap their life for yours?

It doesn't work like that. It's your time. You're not the one to pick and choose who goes and who stays. I reckon the Reaper would see it as an act of arrogance for those that try.

So many questions. I sound like one of those kids who question everything. But why is the sky blue? But why does the sun go to sleep? But why can't I 'Go Large'? I'm not. Never have been.

Really, I was just wondering. What would you do? And how would you feel when you saw the clock ticking towards zero hour?

I think I'd just remove every clock in the house. That'd be difficult. The oven has a clock. My phone. The TV guide onscreen. Still, I wouldn't want to know. I'd want it to just happen.

Luckily, we don't know. We don't have the specific time marked anywhere. There's no countdown or big red 'X' or pop-up notification. It happens when it's meant to. When it is your time. Even if you seen that car approaching, taking the corner too fast. Even if you put the gun to your own head. It's not predefined. Or, at least, we don't know that it is.

The sand slips through the hourglass in the hand of Death, and he isn't one to advertise his agenda. He keeps it private. Secret. Hidden.

So how do I know? Yes, another question. How do I know that this is the first day of the end of my life?

I suppose we could say that the day we're born is actually the first day of the end of our lives. From our first breath, we're on a rollercoaster ride to our last. It's inevitable but we just don't think about it. We live whilst we're alive.

I do too. Perhaps that's the problem.

What would I do if I knew I was going to die? What am I doing, knowing I am going to die?

I'm sitting on my sofa. It's one of those sofas that divides opinion. You like it or you don't. It's a colourful patchwork of colours and prints, looking more like a swatch for the other sofa designs than one of itself. Comfy though. I thought it'd be too firm. I thought I'd be sitting as if I had a pole up my backside. I'm not. It moulds. It sinks. I like.

I have a beer. It's one of those 'stumpies' that you can get for less than a fiver from the supermarket in packs of 10. Cheap and cheerful. Nowt wrong with that.

The television was on, but I couldn't concentrate. I turned it off. I don't normally like silence, but tonight, the lack of sound is louder than anything I could possibly use to drown it out. The air feels as if it's shouting out - not to me, just to the room. Maybe it's calling the Reaper to me. A landing strip of noise so my location couldn't be missed.

I'm writing this. Don't ask me why as that's one question I can't answer. It's not a memoir, and I don't think the words herein would be believed anyway.

But what's to believe, or not? It's just been a discussion regarding death and Death. A monologue on mortality. Perhaps I'm afraid to get to it. Perhaps that means admitting it's happening.

It was a good idea. A good idea to cancel out a bad one. A bit of pain for a lot of gain.

On my upper right arm, I had a tattoo. Some think tattoos are a form of art. They're a way to express yourself and use your body as a canvas for the parts of you usually kept hidden or those that you want to be loud'n'proud about. Or, tattoos are a desecration of the work of art that is the human body. Graffiti on the wall of your soul.

Or just ugly and something you'll regret when you're old and wrinkly and that dove looks more like a squashed tomato.

The tattoo wasn't great. The person who did it, though supposedly professional and with his own shop full of posters that you could pick outlines from, wasn't great either. He was less an artist and more a copier with a needle. And it wasn't central. It was off to the side, hanging a little to the left.

First, was the Kanji, the Japanese motif that was meant to read 'Freedom' and apparently means 'Love'. Then a fox. Well, it's meant to be a fox. It's meant to signify the same as the Kanji was intended to, but it looks more like a dog. A dog drawn by a four year old that's only just learning to stay within the lines.

It had been there, clinging to my arm, laughing at me, for around ten years or so. I decided I wanted it gone. Covered up. I didn't mind having a tattoo, so having laser treatment to remove it or some such wasn't important. I wanted another design. One that meant something.

So I looked around. I had no idea what I was after, but anything would be better than this. Well, almost. The first place I actually went into wanted to cover my arm in flowers, saying how masculine they'd look and how meaningful they'd be.

No thank you.

I'm sure many of the other, smaller shops that sit between off-licenses and on back streets would have been perfect, the proprietors being skilled and imaginative and not confined to a stencil from a book that they'd drawn countless times before. But I needed to be sure.

Eventually, I found him. He was on Facebook. A friend of a friend of an acquaintance had commented on one of his photos. He designed everything himself, working freehand. He was partial to odd, unusual, dark. He was, almost, the Tim Burton of the tattoo world.

He would work his magic on my arm. He would turn trash in to triumph. We would talk, he would see who I was and what I liked and he would reveal a masterpiece.

He worked from home. He didn't need a shop. Word of mouth of his talent meant he was busy enough without the need for a sign proclaiming his wares. He had no need for books of imps and dolphins and stars. His needle was an extension of his warped mind and the ink his blood.

The room would, I think, have been a simple dining room in any other house, but here it was more. It was a cave, a lair and a gallery all in one. A row of short candles were lit along the skirting of one wall. The curtains were drawn. Antique furniture was favoured in place of IKEA best-sellers. A pull-down chandelier, all crystals and shattered light, hung over a reclining chair and a stool.

We spoke. His name was Drew. Appropriate, I thought. I wanted it to look as if it was alive, I told him. As if it moved of its own accord, not simply from the flexing of my arm.

I'm not one for pain. I wasn't looking forward to it. Well, I was, but I wasn't. The first tattoo I had needed to be paused half way through because the blood had drained from my face and my vision began to fog. It wasn't the pain, it was the anticipation and the nerves and the adrenalin. I'd taken, this time, painkillers before I went. Had a beer. Told myself it was just a scratch.

He was, to be fair, gentle. As gentle as someone jabbing your arm hundreds of times a minute can be, anyway. Hardly a word was uttered as he worked. His brow was furrowed, his hand steady. It didn't hurt. Not at all. I felt the pressure, heard the rattle, anticipated the sharpness, but there was no pain.

I asked him about it. He just smiled.

It took two hours. I was dozing by the end. The near silence and the hypnotic sway of light shards across the walls carried me away to a feeling of floating above myself. I jolted when he told me he'd finished, almost as if I was actually falling back into the chair.

I looked at my arm in the mirror. For a moment, it seemed out of focus, but I put that down to being a little sleepy. Once I could see properly, I knew I'd come to the right man. A steampunk clock, gears and cogs, outline and shadow, told the time of my birth, and indistinct figures stepped from behind, walking down towards a graveyard in which a single headstone bore my name. The figures were ghostly without being ghosts. Shades rather than comical Caspers. Blurred as they were, they held... not menace, but intent. As if they were waiting. There to lead when the time was come.

Of the mutilated dog there was no sign. Maybe they'd taken it away and sacrificed it on an alter at the back of the cemetery.

I thanked Drew and told him I'd probably be back for more. I might have meant it too.

He said he was sorry, but that was the last tattoo he'd be doing. He was laying down his tools. He'd done enough. I asked him why. I asked what he meant by 'enough'. He wouldn't say. He just repeated that he was sorry.

Regrets, I've had a few. Not many, though. Life makes you who you are. What you choose to do and what is done to you shapes the person inside and out. Deal with it or don't, but that's the way it is. as such, I can't really say that I regret this. It's done, so there's no point.

I can feel the darkness closing. The air has lost its voice. I'm sitting in a gathering vacuum of nothing.

I feel a tingle in my arm. It's not the first time. I try not to look, but I know I must.

The shades have moved. They no longer hide behind the clock. The clock no longer shows the time of my birth. The headstone is no longer inscribed with just my name. It now has a date. Today's date. The clock, a timepiece from another era that should never have ticked with hands that should never have moved, now tells a different hour.

I look up. On my windowsill is a clock, a battery powered, supposedly silent one that I can still hear whirring in the still of the night. Any other night, at least.

In thirty seconds, the real clock will be telling the same time as the one on my arm. Thirty seconds.

I wonder if there'll be a knock at the door?