Carl the Death Driver / Ch-2 / Pt-1

His heart was forever stopped, and his breathing had come to an end. Oxygen no longer flowed through his body to feed the miraculous functioning of individual cells. These cells once orchestrated together in the tens of trillions to deliver the live performance of a single human being. The show had truly come to an end under the medical terminology headliner, Cessation of Vital Functions. Losing electrical activity, portions of the brain may technically live on for a few minutes longer to reflect upon what a great performance it all was. Hardly anything close to a conscious state, the brain tissue retains a small amount of residual fuel to continue a chaotic last finale. Then, it follows the other organs of the body on an irreversible path toward permanent shutdown of operations.

This is the first act of the Fresh Stage, one of five stages of human decomposition. As Carl’s body lay awkwardly sprawled on the wet linoleum of his dining nook, blood had ceased to circulate. Gravity tugged at the once vital fluid within tens of millions of small blood vessels found across his skin surface. Carl’s body turned pale and began to cool. At about the four-hour mark after his last breath, Carl entered the moderate rigor mortis stage. Muscles stiffened throughout his body and a rigid appearance became more pronounced. Goosebumps were visible on the back of his neck. Carl’s mouth had opened during the initial muscle relaxation phase in the early post-mortem minutes. At the peak of complete rigor mortis, the jaw muscles stiffened along with eyelids and other facial muscles. The contraction of these muscles brought about a cruel smile on Carl’s ashen face. His half-closed cloudy eyes sank inside their sockets with a sightline fixed upon a dead dwarf gourami fish.

While Carl’s dead eyes thanked the fish that once calmed him and once offered relief to his high blood pressure, his car left its stall in the detached garage behind his home. The vehicle crept along the narrow driveway on the east side of Carl’s house. It moved in reverse with only dim parking lights revealing the edges of the concrete path to the street. Passing over cracked sidewalk and then down a steep sloping apron, the rear bumper scraped asphalt as the vehicle plunged into the street. No one witnessed the car’s departure as it entered the early evening twilight of Carl’s neighborhood.

Slowly feeling its way along the road, headlights turned on and illuminated rear plates. This was no ordinary vehicle. There was an interesting contrast between the weathered vintage exterior and an updated interior, which appeared more experimental than modern. Also, this car had a name. The name was displayed on the embossed aluminum of The Golden State license plates. This optional design, first issued in December 1982, featured California’s name over a yellow rising sun graphic in red Capone Medium typeface. Raised blue letters on a white background spelled out the name, “LUVCARL”. Carl lived on through his namesake car and now that car cruised the neighborhood. Slowly, the vehicle circled Carl’s block over two dozen times in an unrecognizable ritual to mourn the man referenced on the registration.

The neighborhood was eclectic in appearance due to changes in city zoning of residential developments over the years and the various periods of home rebuilding, home refurbishments, and community revivals. Carl’s street was a mishmash of homes mostly built in the 1970s with a few leftovers from the late 1930s. Other nearby streets had double lots with duplexes or front and back units on a subdivided single lot. Along one of the main boulevards that encased the large grid of uniform residential lots stood two-story multi-family complexes intermixed with retail shops. Again, there were a few leftover single-family cottages from the 1930s, and some older than that.

LUVCARL broke away from the circular pattern of the single block. The hour or so of grieving was over. He started to progress from the crawling pace of uncertainty to align with the posted speeds. The tar and asphalt landscape was a rectangular framework of numbered streets running into the forties intersecting with wider avenues named after indigenous flowers of the state. Carl’s home was near the center of this roadway matrix comprised of figures and flora, one house in from 20^th and Hollyhock.

LUVCARL patrolled five blocks of 22^nd Street from Fiddleneck to Primrose. He eventually came to rest at a stop sign next to a row of neatly organized waste receptacles. Monday was trash day, and the curbsides were packed with the city’s standard issue tri-color high-density polyethylene containers. A grey receptacle for regular refuse. A green one for green waste. And a third for materials intended for recycling with about 68% of the contents of that container eventually joining 100% of the grey container in a landfill. LUVCARL turned left on Primrose, then made another left on 21^st Street, and drove all the way back to Fiddleneck where he completed the loop to revisit 22^nd Street once again.

This time, heading up 22^nd Street, LUVCARL followed a different path. He explored the mischievous possibilities of making light contact with the wheeled plastic trash containers. First, pushing one mobile container closer to another. Then, maneuvering to push multiple containers against parked cars; essentially pinning in these cars front and back. No witnesses and no one on the streets to hear the base of these plastic bins scraping along the blacktop road. Moving further down the block toward Sunflower Avenue, LUVCARL lost the light touch and began to smash into trash containers at low speed. This went on from Sunflower to Hyacinth and for three more blocks. Some tipped and spilled their contents on street lawns and sidewalks. Other bins toppled and trash flew onto overnight cars. A spectrum of food cans and plastic refuse bounced about along LUVCARL’s trail, leaving behind a sound wake of overlapping hollow high-pitched clinking, low-end thuds, and an occasional glass jar rolling to a shattering finish.