Davey Stoker (deceased). The luckiest man alive. Short story.

Davey Stoker was not a well-liked man.

I don’t necessarily mean he was hated, but he was the kind of guy whose funeral you could guarantee would not be that well attended.

That’s not to say he wouldn’t be missed.

There’s no doubt in my mind that folks would, after a suitable period of Davey Stoker-free time, wonder where the hell he’d gone and upon being told he was dead would say, ‘Oh…shame’. 

The thing is, they wouldn’t really care.

His was a personality that you could take or leave. And to be truthful, if you had that kind of choice, you would more than likely, leave, you know what I mean.

And just to continue with the ‘dead’ theme for a moment, if you did happen to find yourself at the cemetery to see him laid to rest then you’d be there out of curiosity and not because you were grieving a whole lot. Actually, and in all truth, you’d be there because you wanted to make sure he would stay down.

In his time Davey Stoker was called many things, stupid being one of the more frequent.

Yet despite this, in our neighbourhood he was somewhat of a living legend.

He had what is sometimes referred to as a, ‘claim to fame’.

Davey Stoker was renowned far and wide for his ability to ingest an enormous variety and number of illegal substances, and… remain upright.

One of his other er, ‘qualities’ was his extreme arrogance.

He’d take to roaming the streets of the borough with what can only be called, an air of smug self-satisfaction and an attitude that said out loud, ‘Look at me I’m invincible’. 

And this is the strange thing, no matter what your personal feelings as to Davey Stoker’s right to life, you couldn’t help wondering if this aggressive self-assessment didn’t have the ring of truth about it.

If you knew Davey like I knew Davey, then you’d know he did appear bombproof, bullet-proof and it wouldn’t surprise me to discover, immune to all diseases known to man.

Davey Stoker was in many ways, a very lucky guy.

I and many others would have to say… Davey Stoker appeared the original ‘man they couldn’t kill’, although and this also has to be said, not through want of trying.

Think on this.

If I were to supply you with the necessary and relevant information and then ask you to ponder awhile on Davey Stoker’s whole existence, it would only take you a moment or two to come to some valuable conclusions.

Conclusions that I shall now attempt to list below.

In no particular order…

Conclusion Number One.

Someone of Davey Stoker’s ilk and lifestyle must have a whole barrel-load of enemies.

This would be correct.

Conclusion Number Two.

Davey’s substance consumption, especially at his level of abuse, must cost much money.

Also correct.

So let me deal with the money thing first.

It goes like this.

Davey’s logic.

If Davey Stoker was taking time out from injecting, (which he sometimes did, in an effort to let his arms and other parts of his body er…heal), then you could guarantee that he was at the same time, exploring other means to get high that were just as destructive and deadly. For Davey there could be no respite. No stopping.

He would find other ways to be introducing massive amounts of brown or white powder/crystals etc into his body.  ‘Stuff’ of various descriptions and prescriptions, would be finding any way possible into his slight frame. Through, as one might expect, most of his orifices and other routes that normal mortals would have found impossible. Not just to bear, but to have the imagination to conjure up.

And check this out, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year.

Such were the levels of chemicals in his blood, that I have personally witnessed flies landing on him and keeling over almost immediately.

Back to the money.

It would not take a mathematics/chemist (?) professor too long to work out that for Davey to remain at his preferred level of toxicity, i.e. high, then he would have to be living off a fair-sized inheritance or have the borrowing capacity of a small third world country.

So how did Davey manage it?

Easy.

Davey Stoker’s World Bank was the Morelli Brothers.

The Morelli Brothers.

Vince and Quince (true) Morelli were gangsters. And it was the brothers that bankrolled Davy to continue his unsavoury habits in return for the odd piece of dirty work.

As the Morelli brothers had their grubby little fingers in most pies, you could be sure that this ‘dirty work’ took the form of anything from the wallpapering of an old lady’s front room to the dispatching of said old lady for not paying the fee for the wallpapering of said room.

The Morelli’s were like that. No mercy.

They saw themselves as an unholy cross between Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham, ruling over an area the size of a Religious Parish with an iron fist inside a brass knuckle-duster. Spawn of Satan but with a mother who loved them, they took no prisoners as they rode roughshod over anything and anyone who got in their way.

Davey Stoker worked for the Morells as ‘Arson Man’. Everyone knew this as fact. It was not disputed.

There were too many occasions when Davey was seen running from the scene of a small explosion with smouldering hair and his pants on fire to think otherwise.

And then there’s the fact that Davey Stoker was regularly detained by the police on suspicion of shall we say, causing ‘small explosions. Evidence was plentiful. However, one swift visit from the Morelli family lawyer and Davey held on to his unbroken record of never being charred-sorry-charged.

In short, it was no secret Davey Stoker did jobs for the Morelli’s. And it worked well for him.

He was the Morelli’s ‘chosen one’ and therefore a force to be reckoned with. He was a man with dangerous connections. Ergo. If you had occasion to talk with Davey Stoker, no matter how stupid you knew he was, you made sure you laughed at all of his pathetic jokes.

Nobody was sure what actually happened to turn things around. 

But turn around they did.

Some say Davey got religion.

Personally, I find that hard to believe, as a few weeks previous Davey had given Father Delaney a severe beating as a reminder that he owed money to the Morelli’s ‘collection’ box. So, a Damascus Road experience was out of the question.

Whatever it was that had caused the change to Davey Stoker, it was a major surprise. Nay – major shock to everyone.

People pondered.

Had Davy had discovered a new drug?

A bravery drug maybe?

Whatever it was, something gave Davey the push to quit the Morelli camp.

One morning Davey Stoker woke up and just said, NO.

 No to anything of a dubious nature and perhaps more shockingly, NO to the Morellis.

It goes without saying that from that day forth, things took their inevitable course.

As is the Morelli’s wont, especially when they’re upset, they shot guns at Davey. They missed.

They bombed Davey. He wasn’t in but his mother was. (It was a nice funeral).

They cut the brake cables on Davey’s car. Unfortunately for them, Davey didn’t own a car (that was a nice funeral too). And so on, and so on.

No matter how hard they tried, a catalogue of bungled attempts at ending Davey’s life followed one after another.

All in all, the community lost count of the number of times the mad brothers Morelli tried sending Davey to meet Jesus. None of which were successful. (Some say they could hear Jesus breathing a sigh of relief).

If it had not been so serious it would have been funny because so bad were the Morelli brothers at doing their own dirty work, that Vince Morelli lost three fingers off his right hand when a small parcel bomb he was keeping in his jacket pocket, ‘for later’, exploded prematurely.

Quince fared no better, suffering a lapse of memory and drinking a concoction (during a ravenous lunch break), he had prepared earlier to aid Davey’s demise. Luckily the stomach pump worked.

Anyway, to cut a long story of disaster after disaster short, for Davey Stoker these numerous and bloody accidents that befell the Morellis worked out to be blessings in disguise.

Vince Morelli’s disfigurement and Quince’s poisonous mishap was the end of line.

For what was probably the only instance in the Morelli’s grisly family history, they gave up on a vendetta and let Davey Stoker Walk.

They never spoke of it again, and apart from spitting on the pavement every time they passed a member of Davey’s household, it seemed like it was really, actually over.

It looked like Davey Stoker could and would live out his remaining years in his normal luck-filled fashion.

Wrong.

It was such a tiny object.

So small to be almost invisible to the naked eye.

It was amazing to think that such a small thing had probably been twice around the Universe and then back again.

That the last time it passed the planet Earth, Jesus was living it up with his mother at a party in Canaan and the time before that my ancestor was chewing at a dinosaur bone.

If only it could talk.

The sights it must have seen.

Round and round.

Star system to star system.

Light year to light year.

Amazing.

And here it was again, but this time, its long journey was finally over.

Snug and cosy the baby meteorite had found a home, a final resting place.

Embedded three inches into Davey Stoker’s mashed up brain.

And you know, he never felt a thing.

Lucky swine.

Lucky Davey Stoker.