Skull and Cross Spoons

Palunky-thunk.
"Ferme ta gaule," I insisted the instant that I saw the nervous young yob's* lips tremble open.
Our first words exchanged will forever be a commanding curse on my part, but one of my favorite variety. I nuzzle to my breast that special brand of French, even Parisian, execration that's foul enough not to make sense in English.
The jittery little malik before me was the result of a few good weeks of scholar scouting, which means his malenky mien, the sheer pale skin and thin divinity, were more likely the fault of starvation and street shuffling than a gift from an oligarchy of any Parisian or, worse, Versailles-born crest. Bon. I'd demanded that the one they sit across from me be of Paris blood, as I'd never accept my script being taken by some Northie Colonist come back to the call of the ‘Paris promise' for writers, players and all the other doomed souls attempting to enrich them cross the pond. Any French faculty these days will tell you that the world is, as we suspected, flat, for if you fly or sail west from France for too very long then you run ashore in Hell. He also had a street-child's dustiness ingrained even to his hair. It was a grubby tawny and cut short unevenly by some urban acquaintance who was likely simply instructed to make it so that he could see his own scribblings once again. Baggy clothes, darting ratty eyes and a look over him like he could already feel my weapon-of-choice making his life slip steadily away.
I might have gotten on with this boy.
"Do you know who I am?" he was asked firmly by the handsome red-head sitting, slop-haggard (the haggard of the trained hawk not the wrinkled who squawk), behind the desk across from him.
Mais oui, up in my best I was. The incarnidine zoot suit that is my trademark and even in the office of mine I disrespected myself enough to wear my hat. I'd let me slide, this office really did not deserve very much respect. My least favorite of all my dens, this was little more than a rose wood room. Floor panels, though carefully selected, uninteresting and so every other of the wall's panels, which stood vertically, had a vine of lilies crawling up it. Engraved of course. The mahogany desk in this room was too chunky, thick, and authoritative I've thought. Something a militaristic school master would approve of and the drawers were deep, made me feel like I'd not done enough work when I kept papers here, so I'd refrained. I'd always found the lamp in this office, some stained glass abomination of a sort, to be in bad taste. The chair I was sitting in was alright. A high backed mahogany armchair with the red cushioning and clawed feet reminiscent of a wolf. The yob sat in a light tan popsicle stick looking like a common kitchen chair in the middle of a museum. No windows. No wall decorations. The only door out was behind the yob and had the massive muscle mountain who'd brought him in guarding the other side.
"You're Geoff," he offered into his chest while wringing his hands between his knees, "Don Geoff, of the Full Moon Mafia."
"Tres bon," I mused with the starlight sinister smirking of a wolf who's selected his choice slaughter from the shepherd's flock.
Chardonnay, sweeter than ambrosia, that's what was for me, but business etiquette dictated this yobbish child be shown the hospitality of drink. A small glass of vin ordinare had sat in front of me since I'd given Duke the order to fetch for me, my writer. I hadn't allowed the bottle to stay in the room for spite. Of all things that I've condemned thus far, dear reader, you must understand that I hate yobs the most.
A hand which I had securely gloved in sheer black leather tipped up at the words my own lips spoke and then fingertips gingerly, with expert finesse, propelled glass to slide across the desk. It tinked on a couple of spoons off of te neat pile which had been my focus before the arrival. The boy reached forward to pick up the coruscating Ag agents, but I held up a finger and he quickly withdrew mit back to his lap.
"Mustn't touch," I insisted, reaching forward to collect the small pile in one hand and drawing the bottom drawer of my desk open with the other. I dropped the little scoopers down to wink amongst their brothers, and grinned that the monster drawer was now near to full.
"W-why would y-you be collecting silver, Monsieur?" the childish morsel inquired sloppily.
"It's a game," I assured him, "perhaps someday I'll show it to you."
He fell silent. It would have been an intelligent yob that kept his mouth shut now, in the face of his city's greatest criminal mind. Intelligent, but rude. It took him a moment before he realized that this was the introductory portion of our encounter, and he quickly thrust in my direction a quivering, sweaty palm.
"Quintin!" He squeaked out quickly. He cleared his throat, as I laughed malevolently, before continuing. "J-j'm appel Quintin."
"I twiddled my gloved fingers, unsure, before I caught my own hand reaching across the table. Apparently this was satisfactory.
"The pleasure is yours, yob." I reassured him without using his name, I now knew it was all, nothing obligated me to speak it.
"You would probably like to know why you were brought here?" I offered after a period of silence that he'd clearly found more uncomfortable than I.
"M-m-mais oui, monsieur."
"I've sought out someone more proficient with the written word. I've been taking down my own autobiography, but I need someone else to take this most recent passage down. It's a subject set by an anchor into the tenderest part of my cockles."
"Why not, well, one of your own?" this Quintin boy whispered quietly.
"Most of mine who manage in the writing game have received their education, their opportunities, and any renown they've received because of my concealed cohesion. I wouldn't want them to hear about this. They'd be scarred. Blasphemy, Quintin, that's what it would be. Blasphemy from the gob of God himself. A crime of vilification I could not bring myself to."
"What's this about?" He asked softly, flinching back in his chair and flicking his note book open as I motioned for him to do. He'd received it when he was brought into the room.
"Control," I informed him cooly, "The skull and cross spoons was all about control."
"The what?" Quintin questioned.
"Ferme ta bouche," I said quickly. "No questions...write.
"This really is the story of control and fabricated supremacy. The sad fact that two alphas can never co-exist completely, at least not when one of them is yours truly. The alpha I speak of, naturally, is Duke. He's the large garcon with the shaved head that brought you in here. You can describe him, right? He always wears those same oval sunglasses and the big black trench coat. Big cluh-chunky black boots, Duke really just dresses all in black all the time. When this story, non non, these events. When these events take place he dressed very much the same, but he was younger. He still had that body builder look to him, barrel chest and thick legs but no outstanding ‘monstrous moron' gut. Duke worked for his form, and he worked for me. I was somewhere between fourteen and sixteen at the time. Likely very close to fifteen, but my ages always really blur together for me. It takes me hours to pinpoint it. He'd have been twenty-one, oui, if I was fifteen he'd be twenty-one.
"Now get this, him storming down this long black tunnel. There wasn't a tunnel, but it's a mood thing. He's storming down it and he's thinking to himself ‘Since he was six', which is when I figure we met, ‘Since he was six, practically, I've been taking orders from a pup six years younger than I am. He's shorter, he's skinny, he has no muscle and he's no -more- of an alpha than I am.' and he thought that. He thought it over and over as he walked, like a mantra. With the thunder of his clunky-chunk boots like war-drums in this black corridor in his head, with a long little path of light that leads him towards a half circle of light opening at the end. That light's not white, like when you die, but it's red. It doesn't pulse like a heart and it doesn't speak like some great epiphany personified. Not anymore. It has no heart and its voice doesn't reach him, all it does is laugh now. It laughs long and it laughs loud and Duke, er, Sampson (that's his real name) he always thinks it's laughing at him. These days it always seems like it's mocking him. He can feel it's glow pushing him back into the dark, subordinating him.
" ‘A ropey, lanky, petite, bugger. All brain, and he's no -more- of an alpha than I am.'
"He gets to the red light and reaches up to touch it, and so he finds the door knob and he turns it slowly. Sammy had to take a deep breath and then he pushed the door open, and there was his alpha. A red headed petite nut job, just as scrawny and scruffy as Duke had pictured him during his mental preparation for this moment. Save for when he had played this encounter over in his head his ‘brother' and alpha was not rolling on a bed coated in money. Now he was. Duke, the droogies and I had just robbed a bank and cleared out my father's account. I'd decided to celebrate by laying the cash out and then having a good roll in it, and you see that is what I was laughing about. Not the way I'd forced another alpha to tuck tail and tag along behind me.
" "I'm leaving, brother sir," is what he told me. "I have to leave Lillium Lupus." "
"Wait," Quintin interrupted, "Lillium Lupus?"
"That is my pack," I explained, "He was only leaving my pack, not the mob all together. Not at first.
"So naturally I bounced up off of the bed and right up onto my feet, francs sticking out of my scruffy red crown, and demanded to know what he meant and, then why. We'd been together since the throw-away home. Brothers who bore the same gift, and we understood each other. I hadn't subordinated him by accident, mind you. I did know that I'd be forcing him down and pushing him around a considerable amount, but I'd never figured the big wolf would gather in his grey matter the idea of pushing out from under me and heading off on his own. I thought I strongly instilled in Duke the idea that, despite his strength, he needed my brains to succeed. He'd never second guessed, disagreed or even really questioned before in his life as far as I was concerned, yob. He'd only ever tried to make sense of it and usually that was after he'd done it. When Duke couldn't make sense of it I made an excuse and he bought it, but now he was staring me straight in the face and he said he was leaving. He wanted to start his own pack.
" "Keep your head shaved," I said, "Be that loyal at least." "
"His head shaved?" Quintin asked, and I was surprised he didn't get the reference.
"Sampson," lips in my possession uttered Duke's given name again, "When I decided that I would force him down, that I would lead us and not him I shaved his head. For a while there were others of the droogies, my inner circle, who would dub me Delilah. I put a stop to it before Duke got a chance to learn the reference. He did shave his head when he had his own pack, and still does keep it clean. I assume he hasn't figured it out yet.
"You tried to jinx Duke's pack?" Quintin questioned.
"The SkullDogs they were called. It's when he put that tattoo on the back of his block. A wolf's skull with two cross-bones under it. I should have known, when he first told me of his plan to leave, that it was because of his bitch. This trollop of a lupa that Duke had invited to his side from the gutter, which I had worked so hard to shelp the both of us out of. She convinced him that his muscle work was a bigger help than it even was, you know? I could have warned him that he didn't know defense plans, attack plans, or how to move up in the world. He didn't know how to manipulate the way that I did."
"Obviously," Quintin muttered into his scribbles, as if it was too low for my ears.
"Naturally none of my mob family went with him. Not a one. So the few wolves he did get in the SkullDogs were all his own. Not large in number, by any means, no other sliver of the family was so small. The SkullDogs were monitored closely, I'll admit, but it was in the same manner as you'd closely watch a newborn, not because I was waiting for him to fail. I wanted to make sure, above all the other packs in the family, that his was safe.
He still felt pressured. Duke still felt my eyes upon him everywhere he went. When his daughters were born, I suspect it was his moll who put in his head the fear of my monestrous shadow forever looming over and watching his daughters. Duke may have not wanted my claws to be so deeply sunken into him anymore, but he and I went back farther than anyone, where Duke was concerned, and he trusted me. We call each other brother because we are brothers in every sense but blood. Duke knew that, he's always known that, and it's tied him to me. I can't imagine it being any kind of easy for Duke to declare his pack separate from the family. He knew he was abandoning me, and how it felt. We've all known abandonment and it once united us, now he'd brought the feeling between us. I felt responsible for letting this thing separate us. I had let it take over Duke's mind, his simple, malleable mind, and had let it steer him from my side. Now my brother had been taken from my sight, convinced to leave the family in order to pursue a kind of independence and leadership he couldn't handle. I felt for him, but I also grew furious. I knew that the Skulldogs were doomed."
"Why?" Quintin inquired, his pen's scratch pausing.
"Whites," I stated clearly, and noticed a twitch in the yob, "You know who the whites are, don't you? Mais oui, that long blanc arm of law enforcement specialized for dealing with our sort. Organization for the Eradication of the Inhuman, the dubbed it. Dressed up in white and doing patrols around Paris trying to pick up trouble-makers among us once upon a time. While the Full moon Mafia may have been controlling Paris, the Whites were finally starting to push back."
"They've always known about lycans?"
"They've always known about lycans. Before us, wolves always exposed their belly and tucked their tails, taking all the punishment issued to them. When we turned on the Whites it set their fuses ablaze and they slowly evolved, phrenic-like, to try and suit themselves to combating us. They started to actually think some and they found ways to slip some of their patrol parties past mine. They were just looking to devastate me, and they had no way of knowing the SkullDogs were no longer connected to me. What they did know was that Duke and I had always been droogies. Somehow, worst of all, they figured out that he had daughters.
"It was some crescent evening that they hit, so there wasn't anywhere close to a moon in the SkullDog's favor. Duke had his pack of fourteen all together in a basement of a bar for social purposes, and the number included his two year old brood but, being the sort of alpha he was, Duke wasn't there. I like to think, secretly, that on his way to the SkullDogs Duke had found himself walking some of the places that we'd once walked together. His memories would have delayed him. Either way the Whites hit his pack hard. They had a clean twenty and the element of surprise. Duke's blower bride didn't have a chance even to get her girls hidden before she was done away with. They crawled around on the floor, scrambling and squeaking until, with a shriek, they were finally scooped up by Whites. The damnedest this is that Dookie and his simpering devotchka
always kept their beloveds in little white frilly girlie gowns the likes of which the Paris boardwalks still sell in Spring, so against the White's clothes they blended in. Even with our kind's eye sight, none of the SkullDogs the two called to could even see them to make a grab at them. Certainly their daddy couldn't answer their pleas. He wasn't there."
"If he wasn't there, then how do you know all of this, Monsieur?" The yobbish scholar invaded.
I paused for a moment, attempting to recall how exactly it was I came by these details. I'm sure I almost had it before he tried to interrupt again.
"You helpe-"
"Ferme ta gaule!" I insisted again. I knew what he meant to imply, but not that it would make me so mad as to smash my fist on the desk the way that I did. "What did I say about asking questions?!"
When he winced back I was somewhat satisfied, and soothed.
"They were al dead when Duke arrived," I explained, "some clutched white fabrics, made bloody, but no Whites lay dead. The note they sent they sent to me. Not because I was any sort of assistance, yob, but because they thought he worked for me still. The note assured me Duke's girls had not been harmed, but that they had been relocated outside of France where we could never find them to bite and make like us. You know that we aren't born, can't be born, this way, correct? The very youngest age to be bitten and mentally make it through is three, and so they were still yobs when taken.
"I didn't have to find Duke to bring this message to him. I recieved that note in the afternoon and by the sunset of that day, Duke had begged a private audience with me.
" ‘I was wrong,' he admitted to me on bended knee, ‘I was wrong brother. I am not the alpha you are. You are the keeper, the defender and the life blood of your family. I couldn't even save mine.'
"Nothing is more shameful than an alpha whose pack is dead. Nothing."
"So you didn't even take him back then," Quintin assumed, almost forgetting that this individual stood on the other side of the door. Duke seemed like such a distant being to those of us locked here in the room of long lost secrets.
"Of course I did! We'd been as close as litter mates since we were pups, as I've mentioned I'm sure, and he'd just suffered a massive loss. He'd had forfeited his fledgling and his fetching floozy. Such a wonderful girl. I swept Duke back under my sheltering wings as soon as he proved that his loyalty could be believed once again."
"How was he to do that?" the yob queried, recoiling when he recieved the evil eye for asking another of those oh-so forbidden questions.
"He helped me to play a game of Spoons. The first game of Spoons. That is where the skull and cross spoons symbol that the Full Moon Mafia sported for a brief while came from. It was a parody of the wolf skull and cross bones that had been Dookie's trademark."
"You mocked you friend's loss?" Quintin asked with a note of horror.
"I made him play Spoons," I explained, as if he hadn't gotten the joke.


I watched Quintin personally for days after we set him free to write my work from the notes he'd taken. I grew nervous that I saw him constantly with the note pad in his pocket, but never working any more on it. What kind of notes he had taken had never even crossed my mind before I'd let him free from my office, but what he did with them began to weigh more heavily on my mind than it had when I'd initially nursed the idea. Finally, I caught him talking to Whites. Not Whites on duty, but Whites who lived in Paris and who had special deals with me allowing them to enter and exit my city. It was unfortunate that this, involvement with the Whites, was the decision he made.
The droogies, Duke included, abducted the yobbish child in the middle of the night. They wrapped him up in a sheet and brought him to the bathroom where I waited patiently. A gold spoon was clenched in my teeth and around me were massive white plastic buckets filled to their brim. The laughter of the spoons reminded me of the loonish laughter I remembered being at the end of duke's thought tunnel. I didn't know whether to be frightened or amused, so I just sat in the room grinning. I stood when they brought young Quintin into the room. To my wolf ears his pleas and desperate demands to know what was going on became no more than a low and irritating buzz. I smiled and held my hands behind my back as the first two droogies ripped the sheet off of Quintin. Duke lifted him up and thumped him down into the porcelain tub with the brass claw-feet.
Duke held Quintin's hands together so that they could be bound, and another of the droogs held his feet for the other to bind. I simply stood and zippered up my long, full length black leather gloves that would protect my skin. Quintin still begged something in the background, I believe, but my mind's eye saw him speaking to the Whites right in the palm of my hand before I clenched my fist to test the dexterity the gloves still granted me. The leather made a sound like crunching and I felt that I had crushed them, and soon the outbreak of Skull and Cross Spoons would be controlled.
I didn't chose to bring myself to the level of biting Quintin. Duke was the one who sunk his massive canines into the shoulder of the yob. A soft squish sounding along with a the snap of a splintering shoulder bone and the distant yowl of primal, primate pain. He thrashed wildly from side to side, but I stepped up to the side of the tub. A long, ominous shadow cast Quintin into silence, and the yob looked up at me pleading as I held a bucket of spoons.
"I told you I'd show you," I explained sweetly before dumping the spoons into the tub.
Yob-tastic philosophers, alchemists and shmucks through out the years associate the sheen and shine of silver with cool, calm, flexible, and emotional intelligence. Well, to a lycanthrope, those who actually know something about the lunar influences that sobby saparazzi, or poets, have synced up so thoughtfully with the sterling gleam of a substance capable of a burning sensation which all of yobbish nature does not even know. Mais oui! It is a fact that yobs are not even capable of feeling the pain that a wolf feels from silver. Though they have substances, acids, which can produce the same effect when they touch the skin, there is nothing that one son of God has managed to create that produces the same agonizing, Hell-on-earth feeling that we get from something out of which the entire yob species makes its dinner wear.
"Welcome to the family," I offered as the second and third buckets of spoons were poured in on the new wolf. He emitted noises which were, truly, inhuman. Once the tub was filled with spoons, Quintin was lost bellow them. Smoke, steam, of a sick and slightly green color rose out from a puzzle of Ag implements. It reeked of flesh simmering away and the top twitched terribly, though it did sound marvelously like wind chimes.
We all stood around watching the shimmering flash of dancing lights, none of us coughing at the rising odor, for this was the third time we'd all smelled it. The first and second time a couple of us had coughed, this time it was like a farmer standing in a field of crops with cow manure, it was just part of the family business. Even the screams had died out by now and we were just watching nerves firing off rapidly as they were being burned out of existence.
"Zut," I concluded. "I hadn't wanted to kill him before he wrote it up."
"That's always ben something about you, brother sir," Duke muttered from where he sat, shade-like, on the throne, "Of all the things that you control, yourself has never been one of them."
"I'll have to write this up myself," I said with a long sigh.

So I have.