Songfacts®:

• Mark Collie wrote this with the singer-songwriter Coley McCabe, who he was married to at the time, for the 2004 movie The Punisher starring Thomas Jane. Collie was cast as an assassin - a "rockabilly hitman" - named Harry Heck and performed this song in a diner, where he sings it to the character Frank Castle, making it eerily clear that he plans to kill him. "You know your days are numbered. Count 'em one by one," he sings, before telling him, "I can hear what you're thinkin'." >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Charlie - Louisville, KY
• Collie got the gig working on The Punisher after becoming friends with Jonathan Hensleigh, who wrote and directed the film. The plan was to use Collie's song "On the Day I Die" in the film, which he wrote for his 2001 performance at Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Tennessee. The planned live album from that performance got shelved (it was finally released in 2012), so Collie couldn't use that song. He started working on "In Time" right on the set, and played Hensleigh and his crew what he had. They approved, so he and McCabe finished the song that night and Collie shot his scene where he sang it the next day.
• Collie's time meeting with and performing for prisoners instructed this song. "The character I played is Harry Heck, and he certainly carried some of the influence from my reckless companions who I came to know during my interviews at Brushy Mountain State prison," he said in his Songfacts interview. "You'll see a little Harry Heck in some of the guys when you watch it."