The car

The car did not know how it came to being.  One moment it wasn’t, and the next moment it was.  Shiny and new with a special smell, all its components perfectly fitting together, perfectly working together, ready to go places.

The car’s first owner was a heavyset banker.  A smoker and lover of German food, especially sauerkraut.  Not only did the fat bastard smoke in the car, but constantly farted which quickly replaced that lovely new car smell with the awful mix of tobacco and old cabbage.

The car killed him in the first month of ownership.  One evening at home, after another hearty feast of fermented German cuisine, as soon as the garage door closed the car locked the doors and refused to release the safety belt.  

This the car has done before, but so far every time fatso reopened the garage door after struggling for a bit, honking the horn for help, making the effort void.  The car allowed the horn in these situations, and would release him when help showed up, sometimes before.

This time however fatty dropped the garage opener and could not reach it.  Sensing opportunity the car disabled its horn, started the engine and revved it up it to fill the garage with carbon monoxide.  In a short while fatso was asleep, and soon the sleep turned permanent, his head resting on the steering wheel.

The car idled for an hour to be sure, then sounded its horn.  Eventually help showed up to remove the body from the car.  

The car went to auction.  The second owner was a handsome young man that brought many women to the car’s back seat, steaming up the windows, taking care to not stain the upholstery.  This young man loved the car as much as he loved sex, and the car, incapable of love, approved the young man’s affections.  Besides, the car enjoyed the animal activity in the back seat.  It was curious to see how it was always the same thing, but so very different each time.

This all ended when the young man was shot in the back, running away from one of the husbands of one of the many women he used to satisfy his addiction.

This time the car sat in a police impound lot for many months.  It slumbered to conserve the battery, somehow concerned it would die when the battery does.

The car woke up abruptly, a sudden surge of power rushing through its wires from the jump-starter being used to energize its battery.

‘Goddam I hope this battery still good!’ exclaimed a man clad in blue coveralls to another man sitting in the driver’s seat. The man behind the wheel turns the key and the car responds with a joyous roar as its engine comes alive.  The car vibrates with pleasure as the engine settles into a smooth idle.

‘Fuck it sounds fantastic’ blue coveralls says to himself, disconnecting the jump-starter.  ‘See if it engages the gears, and bring it around front so we can air up the tires and take it to the wash’.

The car slips into gear and starts rolling stealthily, quietly, almost like an electric vehicle.  The only sound the crunching of asphalt under the tires.  It feels so good to be moving again, fully awake.  The driver is amazed by how the car feels, almost like it is alive and chomping at the bit to just take off.

After being prepared by the men, who each got a few busted knuckles and fingers pinched for not working carefuly enough, the car ends up on the lot of a used car dealership.

The car’s third owner was an Uber driver.  Driving Uber exposes you to the public in all their self important splendor, their drunken despair, their cheapness, pettiness and occasionally someone nice.  The car enjoyed this, marveling at how different people are, how diverse, yet they all have the same needs.  For a while all was good.

Then the car got hijacked.

It happened late on a Saturday afternoon.  Someone called for an Uber, the car showed up, three men with guns climbed in.  The car knew these were serious men.  ‘Take us here’ the man in the front passenger seat says as he hands a piece of paper with an address to the driver.  ‘Drive carefully, we don’t need any attention from the cops’ a voice said from the backseat.  The terrified driver knows the destination, a notorious part of town known for drugs and gang activity.  The car heads there, curious to see what transpires, the driver breathing hard, his nerve slipping.  ‘Relax!’ bellows front passenger, ‘just get us there and all will be well.’.

After what seemed like an eternity the car arrives at the block specified on the piece of paper.  The passengers all check their weapons, their anxious energy filling the confines of the car, mixed with the smell of sweat and gun oil.  ‘Drive down there’ the front passenger points to a street.  ‘When you get to the bar there on the right, see the blue neon sign, it says BAR, slow down to a crawl so we can shoot well.  Do that if you want to live!’.

Knowing what is about to happen the driver is petrified, frozen with fear, unable to drive.  He did not have to do anything , the car took over, following the instructions given to the letter.  When the car reaches the bar, the three men hang out the windows, the one behind the driver’s seat sitting on the bottom of the window opening with his gun resting on the roof.  They opened fire, automatic weapons spitting bullets, firing wildly, moving the guns from side to side like you see in the movies.  The windows of the building and the neon sign exploding, the bullets slamming into walls and doors and parked cars and an unfortunate homeless guy pushing his shopping cart filled with empty cans.

The homeless guy is the only casualty.  There is nobody in the building.

‘What the fuck..’ started the guy sitting in the car door, meaning to ask where their intended targets were.  He never finished his sentence, his head exploding in a pink and white mist.  More shots are fired, some whizzing by, others hitting the car.   

‘Ambush!  It’s a fucking ambush!  Go! Go! Go!’  one of the would be killers scream at the driver.  The driver is unresponsive, his jaw hanging slack, head lolling like one of them dashboard dogs from the seventies, bleeding from a gaping wound where a shotgun slug hit him.

More shots are fired as the car suddenly speeds up.  Several men and women step into the street, weapons shouldered, pumping round after round into the car.  The two remaining drive by shooters killed in a rain of bullets, the dead driver hit several more times, the door sitting dude’s body dragged along side, his foot caught inside the car.

‘What good fun!’ the car says using the audio system.  With unbelievable acceleration it speeds up and mows down three shooters, engage its rear brakes, makes a perfect Hollywood sliding turn to squash another shooter between itself and a parked car.  By now steam and smoke is coming from the engine bay, but the car manages to dislodge itself and chase after more shooters running down an alleyway.  It runs them down before it hits a few of those short poles used to keep traffic out.  It is stuck, and after a few moments the engine stalls.

Quiet descends, the sound of sirens drawing closer.  This little battle in an ongoing turf war seems to have ended in a draw with casualties on both sides.  

Later police and firefighters and EMTs spend hours sorting out the mess that took mere minutes to occur.

Much later the car is loaded onto a truck, back to the police pound.

Months pass.  The car is sold to a local salvage yard.  There it is stripped of usable parts, then crushed.  

The battery miraculously survived, and was sold on Craigslist to a farmer just outside the city.  He charged the battery and installed it in his tractor.

The tractor did not know how it came to being.  One moment it wasn’t, and the next moment it was. 

It felt the toothed bucket at the end of its strong hydraulic arms, and the brush cutter hanging of its back.

‘This is going to be fun’ it thinks to itself as it starts up its engine, and turns toward the farmhouse to introduce itself.