That's how the dragons get in and out. My cousin told me so.

I think I was 9 at the time. He was older than me. 16 and loving scaring his younger protégé. Of course I believed him. I also believed in Santa and the Tooth Fairy.

Even now, an adult, I can't sit in the bath with my back to the taps. I have to be facing it. I have to be able to keep watch on it.

At the sink, it's the same - though I don't get a bath in the basin. But, when I'm brushing my teeth or washing my face, I'm always a little wary.

The overflow. A little hole (or group of holes with the grill on the bath). An innocent aperture happily guzzling the excess water from when you fill up the sink or bath too much.

The overflow. Dragon swallowing entrance to the Underworld.

You'd think that, now I'm all grown up, it wouldn't worry me. You'd think I'd be fine. Technically, it's just a hole to prevent the water overflowing. It kind of does what it says on the tin - or the ceramic. It's nothing. A rather ingeniously simple method of ensuring you didn't have to swim out of your bathroom.

What is there to be afraid of, hmmm?

Well. There's the voices, of course.

Low. Not much more than a whisper. Just enough to be able to understand what they say.

Voices that tell me I'm going to die. Voices that tell me my world is going to end. Not the world. My world.

Subtle, yet significant, difference there.

I'm not paranoid. I don't hear voices. OK, perhaps I do. But I mean, I am not one of these fruit-loops who say the voices in their head are telling them to take a knife to their wife. Or a gun to the local shopping centre. I'm not a lunatic.

Besides, the voices are not in my head, so I can't be crazy.

They're in the overflow.

No, really.

Of course, I don't really believe there be dragons in that there overflow. Not at all. I told you, I'm not crazy. That'd be silly. Besides, it's too small to fit a fully grown, fire breathing dragon in there. But there ARE voices.

The first time I heard them was about three weeks ago. It was morning. I was brushing my teeth, probably wondering if the cup of tea I'd already made was going to be too cold. I often did that. Made a cuppa and got so tied up in doing 'stuff' that it wouldn't be warm enough to drink by the time I got back to it.

I was spitting and rinsing. Leaned over. There was no 'Hello, how are you?' or any such introduction.

"You're going to die."

Succinct, don't you think? Why use ten words or more, when a snappy little phrase would do just as well.

I almost hit my head on the tap, I stood so fast. I looked around. I was alone in my house. My wife had taken the children to school and I didn't have to leave for a good twenty minutes. Still, I looked out onto the landing.

"Hello?"

There was no answer. There wouldn't be. I'd imagined it.

Two days passed. Two silent days of normality, when I realised my mind had been playing tricks and was just trying to scare me, the little tinker.

Then.

"You're going to die."

It was evening. I was washing my hands after a particularly long stretch on the loo. Well, I will take my phone in there and jump between Facebook, Twitter and whichever book I'm reading at the time.

I froze, my eyes staring into my reflection's. Had I heard that? Again? Or was it a trick of the running water hitting the ceramic bowl? Sure. That was it.

I laughed to myself. Daft old bugger. Not that I'm particularly old, nor am I known to be daft, but I can admonish myself with the best of them. My mind was wandering and the spill from tap to sink had tripped it up as it went, that was all.

"You are going to die."

No amount of water sprinkling and tinkling on any surface is going to make sounds like that. It's not like a load of monkeys got together and, in lieu of some typewriters, decided to urinate in the sink, the resultant splatterings eventually forming actual words.

Not exactly Shakespeare.

Right. I wasn't home alone that time. My wife, Olivia, must have been messing about. Or one of the children. A bit of fun. Yeah, so funny I could die...

I grabbed the towel and walked out of the bathroom, drying my hands as I poked my head into each of the bedrooms.

All empty.

I frowned. Was I losing my marbles? Were they spilling out of my ears and bouncing across the floor? No. All faculties were in order, front and centre, standing to attention.

I went downstairs.

My children were watching television.

"Hi dad," they chimed in unison. I smiled. It was clearly neither of them

"Ollie," I said.

She turned. She was making the packed lunches for the next day. In one hand was the butter knife and in the other the half empty tub. Again, it couldn't have been her.

She must have seen there was something wrong as her expression changed to one of concern.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

Rather than say anything in front of my children - to worry them or have them think their dad was weirder than they already did - I nodded my head towards the door. She put the butter tub down and slid the knife into it. I watched it enter, wondering if it could enter my own flesh as easily.

What? Where did that come from?

I shook my head and went through into the hall, my wife following.

"Have the children been upstairs?"

Ollie smiled. "You know what they're like once they're lost in the TV. They only get up for food or toilet breaks. They haven't shifted since tea time."

She was right. The 'Hi dad' was more than I would normally have expected.

"Have you?" I asked, knowing she hadn't but needing an answer.

"No, love. I've been sorting the pack up."

I chewed my bottom lip. It was a nervous habit I thought I'd grown out of. Along with thinking dragons inhabited the bowels of my basin.

"Are you ok?"

I looked up, not realising I'd been looking down.

"I'm fine, babe. I thought I heard something. Thought they were messing about. It's OK. Long day."

"OK," she said. "I'll get the pack up finished, then the kids can go watch TV in their room and we can curl up on the sofa."

"Sounds good," I said, smiling.

We kissed and she returned to the kitchen. I stayed where I was for a moment, looking up the stairs. It was my imagination.

Idiot.

Right. Come on. I went back up to the bathroom and finished off. In silence. No voices or threats of death.

And none for another couple of days. In the lull before, I'd put it behind me. Pretended it hadn't happened. I couldn't do that now, though. I couldn't make out all was well when strange voices were foretelling my doom. But neither could I say anything.

"Hey, Ollie. I've been hearing voices from the overflow."

"Voices?"

"Yes, they're telling me I'm going to die."

It wouldn't go down very well. She knew about my problem with overflows and would think my childhood phobia was overflowing into my adulthood. Overwork. Stress. Insanity.

Olivia was a very understanding woman. She would do anything for me and would go out of her way to make sure I was happy. But I would guess she'd draw the line at the dragons.

She would worry. She would fret. She'd get those wrinkles on her forehead. Or she'd tell me to not be a Muppet and get a grip. Either way, I just couldn't figure out how to broach the subject in a reasonably sane way. So I kept as quiet as I hoped the voices would.

And they did. For two days.

I didn't know the deal with the two days. Did a dragon sleep for that long? Or was Pennywise the clown paying me a visit and that was when I fitted into his rota of sewer based scares?

"You're going to dieeeee."

At home, it was ok. Well, not ok, but... contained. The oddity, the fear, the madness. At home it was dealable.

At the cinema, when you go to the toilet after sitting in one place for the best part of three hours, things are a little different. It's more sterile. More space.

More overflows. More dragons.

More voices.

I'd hoped to not be alone in there. I wanted some company. That had to be the first time ever I wanted somebody to be standing at the next urinal. thankfully the dragons waited until I'd finished before voicing their concerns.

"You are going to die."

I stumbled back, my lower back making contact with the row of sinks behind me. I turned, aware that a half dozen overflows would be staring at me.

In a similar way to how my children almost always spoke in harmony, six voices spoke together.

One word.

"Die."

I ran out of there. Out of the cinema. Leaning on my car, panting. My heart threatening to explode in my chest.

Ollie caught up with me.

"What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost!"

<Voices are coming out of the overflows. They're telling me I'm going to die.>

"No, no. I'm fine. The smell in there. Someone hadn't flushed. I thought I was going to be sick."

Ollie put her arms around me.

"You sure you're ok?"

I've never lied to my wife. Honesty had always been a major player in our relationship and we instilled it into our children. You don't get into trouble so much for what you've done as you do for being caught out lying about it.

"I'm sure."

A hug.

"Let's go home."

You'd think you can avoid bathrooms and sinks. Ignoring the fact that there's a sink in the kitchen, you can't. At some point you must brush your teeth. At some point you MUST relieve yourself in one way or another. I happened to hold off for two days.

I walked into the bathroom, forcing each step, pushing myself.

I did what I needed to do, then washed my hands.

I waited.

Silence.

With a breath deeper than my boots, I left the bathroom. Two days passed. Another visit. Another absence recorded on the register from the dragons. Perhaps they'd flown away. They escaped in the night and had found some other prey. I breathed easier. Another couple of days and another absence.

It was over. My senses had reconvened and had voted unanimously to behave themselves.

"You are going to die."

"Change the record, won't you? This is getting boring."

"You're going to dieeee."

"You've been telling me that for ages now. Clearly I'm not as I'm still living."

I'd had enough. Enough of thinking I was spiralling down the plughole of my reason. No more. Whatever these voices were, they'd obviously mixed me up with someone else. I couldn't be going to die or I'd be dead.

And I wasn't. My children and my wife still spoke to me, so I wasn't a ghost. I had become unexpectedly deceased and no-one had told me.

I'm going out. Ollie is picking the children up from their friends. They were going to spend the night, a sleepover, but the friend has suddenly started sprouting chicken pox. I think it's best ours stay there and have a pox party. Catch it now and get it out of the way. Ollie disagrees. She wins. As usual.

A short walk, that's all. It's dark but that's better. I don't have to hide the anger and frustration that must surely line my features. The night will mask it for me. The air hits me as I walk onto the path. Cool. Sharp, even. Blowing through me. It's invigorating. Life giving.

I'll walk along the river opposite. It's a good night to shove two fingers up to the dragons. The flow of water will help wash them away.

I look up just in time to see the headlights bear down on me. Too late to stop. Too late to swerve.

Thought is faster than any car or heartbeat. I have time to wish that, if there were dragons in my overflow, it would be a good time to...