Spider Dunstan's Teeth

By Shane C Curran

Stolen cars, illicit drugs, George Michael, excessive alcohol, turquoise trousers, a yellowing set of false teeth and a black AMT handgun all feature in this romp through Melbourne's western suburbs in 1983 (or maybe 1984).

Micky and Leroy, two long time ne'er do wells, meet up at their local pub and embark on a night that sees them stealing cars, crashing parties and having a run in with their local drug lords. Along with Wendy and their new friend, Spider Dunstan they try to keep out of trouble an end the night in front. History tells them that they were born to lose, but maybe it will be their night after all.

“Of Mice and Men meets Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. A sometimes hilarious, fast moving story that will have you engrossed to the very end.”
— S. Smith

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shane C Curran
• Release date: Sep 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370946419

Shane C Curran

At 51, Shane C Curran is the world’s oldest Promising Young Author. He has spent most of his life working for large corporations in small cubicles and attempting to resist the urge to write fiction. He has largely failed in this attempt. He is planning to release his first novel early in 2017. Follow his blog for updates.

Book preview

Spider Dunstan’s Teeth

A novella by Shane C Curran

Distributed by Smashwords

Copyright 2016 Shane Curran

Roppongi, Minato

Tokyo JAPAN 106-0032

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Dedication

To Micky, Leroy, Spider and Wendy. You know who you are.

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Charlie

Chapter 2 - Transportation

Chapter 3 - The Party

Chapter 4 - Drugs, Guns and Money

Chapter 5 - Some Background Information

Chapter 6 - The Albion

Chapter 7 - Pinky’s

Chapter 8 - Spider Dunstan’s False Teeth

Afterword - The Truth About Spider Dunstan’s Teeth

About the Author

The Charlie

Gidday.

I’m not much chop at telling stories, but this one’s a beaut. I know they say it’s the teller not the tale, but this tale tickled my fancy and I reckon even I couldn’t mess it up. The bloke who told me the story was really good at telling stories, but he used lots of long words and I got a bit confused, but I wrote some of them down and I’ll tell you when he told them.

So get comfortable and grab a beer because this might take a little while to tell. See it’s the story of Spider Dunstan's Teeth. Well really it’s the story of The Night of Spider Dunstan’s Teeth and it takes place in 1983 (or maybe it was 1984, I really can't remember now and it’s not that important anyway) so you have to remember that when I tell it.

Right, where was I?

Yeah, the bloke that told me this story, well he was there at the time, so I can confirm that it's a completely true story except for the parts that he made up. And I guess any parts that I make up.

But those made-up parts are completely made up and the story’s still true in the parts that we didn’t make up. So it’s a true story in that sense. See, I’ve told this story before, so it’s hard to remember now which parts are made up and which parts are true, so you just make your own judgement on that count.

Anyway, the story starts with a fellow by the name of Arthur William Grenfell Sloane.

As names go, it’s a bit of a mouthful and you’d think that a fellow with that sort of name would have considered himself adequately served in the naming department, but in fact he eschewed (that’s one of the long words, I think it means he didn’t use them) all four of the names he got given at birth and went by the name of Micky.

Everyone knew him as Micky, well everyone who knew him well enough to call him anything at all knew him as Micky, except his mum and his grandmum, both of them called him Arthur or sometimes, when there was trouble, shithead.

Micky’s only brother William (who everybody called ‘Tonga’) was 14 years older than Micky and Tonga didn’t call Micky anything at all on account of it not being necessary to call a person anything at all when you never actually speak to that person. Tonga still had 3 years to serve and was unlikely to speak with Micky at least until then.

Micky used to be called ‘Skinny.’ I suppose on account of not being fat. Micky didn’t like that name, but it kind of stuck and was easy to remember. Still, he was pretty happy when ‘Skinny’ gave way to ‘Micky’ about a year before the story starts.

Now that probably deserves a story all by itself - the whole business about how he became Micky instead of Skinny. Absolute rib tickler that one, remind to tell you about it another day.

I’ll summarise by saying it involved an unattractive and overweight young lady at a party. She claimed that she had been drugged (she probably hadn't, she just couldn't handle her drink) and suspicion fell on Skinny, as he was then known. The suspicion was founded on the fact that Skinny had woken up next to the young lady and the young lady had protested that she would never enjoy conjugal relations (that means shagging) with a young man of Skinny’s demeanour and physique. Something like that.

Over the next week or so, Skinny became known as the bloke that pulled a Micky Finn on the fat bird. You know what a Micky Finn is don’t you? It’s when you slip something in someone’s drink that makes them go sleepy times, you know, drugs or something.

Anyway, first of all Skinny said he never done it, but after a while he kind of liked the idea that he was a bit of a bad boy and decided to just let it go. Didn’t take long before The man that pulled the Micky Finn on the fat bird got reduced to simply Micky and from there the name Skinny was lost forever.

I’m not sure that you really need to know about that but I can’t tell what you need to know until I’ve told you and what I already told you I can’t untell you if you know what I mean, so you’ve got it now and it stays. Still, I reckon it tells you something about Micky when you know that part of the story, so I’m glad I told it.

Micky’s circle of friends changed regularly — he didn’t have a lot of long-term friends — and at any given time there weren’t many folks that he’d known for more than a year or so. As a result, his current group simply knew him as Micky and thought little more of it — when you're introduced as Micky Sloane (or more often just Micky) it rarely occurs to anyone to ask Why Micky? Especially when your circle of friends comes and goes as often as Micky’s does. And even more especially when your circle