Courting Death

“Johnny’s always running around …” sang Alex as he ran along. In and out of traffic, through the racing lines of cars. His body was controlling him: leap this way, spring that way, terrify the drivers. Alex was lucky the busy A road was so close to his home. He lived on the outskirts of town, and it was literally just the other side of the motorway. A couple of years ago, it had all been very different. It had been a small road with slow-moving queues full of people waiting for their turn at the lights, all striving to get to work on time. Alex had spent some of his mornings there even then, just watching the cars. He had never been able to explain the fascination he had felt at that time. There had been no adrenaline rush, no passion, just an unquenchable thirst to gaze on the vehicles unendingly. Now he spent all his mornings there, or most of them anyway, and he wondered whether it was the years of taking in cars, their movement, their speed, and drivers’ reactions that made him so good at this sport. Death looked on silently and smiled. Yes, yes. Alex was always running around! He grinned as he watched Alex nearly kill himself and then escape just in time. Yes, Alex was getting very good at this, and he would have to be rewarded in some way. He watched for a few more minutes, casting a dark cloud and a chill over the road; then he turned his attention to planning the reward and poking his nose into Mischief’s business.