there_is_a_me | Recent Entries

CHARACTER NAME: 'Spoon' Witherspoon
CHARACTER SERIES: Dog Soldiers (AU)

[OOC]

Backtagging: Yes!
Threadhopping: Yes!
Fourthwalling: Oh hell no!
Offensive subjects (elaborate): Excrement, rape

[IC]

Hugging this character: He'll be freaked out.
Kissing this character: He'll be freaked out.
Flirting with this character: He'll be freaked out.
Fighting with this character: Yes!
Injuring this character (include limits and severity): Hell, cut bits off.
Killing this character: Only for plot reasons.
Using telepathy/mind reading abilities on this character: Yes, but contact me. It ain't pretty in there.

Warnings:
• Spoon is not sane. He's dependant on anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety drugs to keep himself from freaking out and going werewolf.
• He's stupidly infectious.

Get your own copy of the IC/OOC Permissions meme!

Player's Name: Madb
Contact info: AIM twintailmadb, plurk Madbkitty
DW: madb.dreamwidth.org (not used)

Character: Ronald 'Spoon' Witherspoon
Canon: Dog Soldiers
Version: AU film.
Canon Point: Post!
Age: 33
Gender: Male
( So this bloke walks into a bar... )

The truth is that memory doesn’t come back in a flood. You don’t wake up one morning and suddenly remember everything. It’s more subtle than that; you’re talking and you say something that makes sense, but isn’t something you knew. Maybe you and your conversational partner don’t even realize it, but you hadn’t relearned it. That’s important.

Then, later, thinking about the conversation you realize; hey! Wait! I knew that and with it you realize that you know bits around it. Darth Sarge, you’d said, and you remember sitting on the floor with some bird’s ankle on your shoulder while your bird leaned up against your side and some of your mates sprawled on the couch, the lot of you tossing crisps at the screen and bemoaning the lousy sword work of the people on screen.

Maybe there's nothing new for a day, or two, or a week. Long enough that you start thinking that was it, it's over, I've got what I'm going to get. But, creeping in on silent feet, there's more. Just a hint. It's unpredictable when it's going to come up. A little, and a bit more.

It’s like that with other things, too. You’re cursing your way through the first two chapters of a book, and then you hit the first major plot twist and you know what’s coming up. You look up hours later, the light’s died and your head is aching from the strain of making the words stay still, and you still only looked up because you’d closed the back cover of the book. The book that you remembered, every page telling you what was on the next one.

You’re afraid, at that point. You set the book down with shaking hands not because you remembered, but what if this is it? What if all you get back from your life are these little hints and teasing flirtations with fiction? Is that better than nothing? Is it worse?

So you put it aside and don’t think about it. You do evening chores, and have supper with your family, and curl up in your.

A telephone rings. This, of itself, is not a common thing in the Witherspoon household. Mr. Jonathon and Mrs. Ellen Witherspoon keep to themselves, mostly. They are very self-contained people who have everything they need between the two of them.

Once upon a time there was more. Two parents and a son, but he's been gone for years. The quiet, genteel Witherspoons were never quite sure how to deal with a son as wild as Ronald. He smoked too much, drank too much, and generally ran about. Good in his classes, yes, and never one to get in trouble...but he didn't fit in with his parents.

They loved him fiercely, though, for all the distance between them. It was never awkward when he'd come home on leave, no more than it was when he left again. Once upon a time there were three. Now there are two, and Mr. and Mrs. Witherspoon have no need for a large circle of acquaintances. They are content.

A telephone rings. Jonathon isn't home, he'll be out late finishing a commissioned piece of furniture for a proud set of first-time grandparents. He won't talk about it when he gets home. He won't talk about it and she won't ask, they'll simply sit in the parlor and spend the evening quietly under the portrait of their son which graces the mantel.

He'll read, and she'll do what sewing she can with cataracts stealing her sight from her. They may talk about their plans for the next day. Ellen is cooking, pots and pans simmering on the stove as she picks this or that herb to give a delicate flavor to her work.

A telephone rings. Ellen picks it up, and her voice is strong when she says, "Hello?"

Ellen Witherspoon is a strong woman. She lost her parents young; her brother raised her. He was lost too, and she raised a husband and a son to honor the lives of the dead with an empty seat at the table. She survived the loss of her son in much the same manner. Her hand shakes when the quiet, frightened voice says, "I'm...speaking to Mrs. Ellen Witherspoon, right?"

Her hand shakes because she knows the voice. She knew it when it was a gentle babble, and when it was a child informing her that he'd learn, one way or another, how to swing a sword. She knew it when it was a teenager standing on the porch talking about some bird he'd hooked up with. She knew it when it was talking about the woman he'd proposed to. "This is the Witherspoon residence?" the voice asks, shaking, and Ellen Witherspoon whispers "Ronald?"

They never had a relationship that called for nicknames, not really. Sometimes, but only on rare occasions. The voice at the other end of the line half-barks an utterly unamused laugh, "Y-yeh. Yeah. It's, uh. It's me. Uh. I'm not dead?" after that is silence, and she can almost visualize the look of consternation on her son's face (My boy!) as he reacts to the banality of what he said, "It's...it's a long story. Been out of me mind for...for a long time. I, uh. I don't know what to say. I'm sorry."

"Ronald, no. No, don't apologize. You're alive...my God, my God, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, oh." She can't think past that. She can't get past my son is alive. Ellen Witherspoon is a strong woman, and she's weeping into a handkerchief while dinner burns because her son is talking to her on the line. He's saying things, explaining, but all she hears is the voice of her only baby boy.

On the kitchen windowsill the first of the flowering herbs is starting to show color.

Some days are better than others. Some days aren't good at all. Some days he opens and closes the door to his room, quietly, for an hour at a time without actually leaving it. Open, close. Open, close.

He'll sit on the end of the bed until called, at last, to eat. Sit, and wait with that horrible stillness that says things are happening behind his eyes that don't belong in this world of sunlight and rain, bread and swords.

On these days he doesn't talk to anyone. Not Sarge, not mum, not the dogs. On these days the goats huddle in the corner of the pen making soft distressed sounds until the silent, taut presence has left again.

The sword stays untouched on these days, he can't focus enough to pick it up without wanting to see how many times he can swing it through his own neck before he passed out to heal again. Usually his form doesn't shift. Usually.

He smokes constantly when someone is in the house, these days, and when Sarge has left and mum has left he tracks them through the rooms over and over again. Sometimes he wraps himself in a blanket from the couch, to be surrounded by the good smells.

Just as often he leaves the house after walking into each unlocked room. Leaves the house and walks in perfect silence across the property. Some days he ends up catching, and killing, small birds or squirrels. Some days he still can't quite keep from eating them. Those days are the worst, and he doesn't come in until the next night.

Some days are better than others. Some days are worse.

His left temple rests on his knees, face turned so that the stripe of light defined by the door to the room with the cage in it is visible. He flexes a hand, almost confused at the chill. Without moving the rest of his body his eyes flick toward it Fur? and a vague feeling of confusion swamps him. Nothing so complex as a sentence, no. Just vague confusion as he looks at the small and naked thing flexing against the ground.

The quality of light changes, and his head snaps up, teeth bared, when the shadows of feet stop. The door opens Shot! and there is a pinprick that enrages him even as it slows down the surge to his feet and toward the limit of the cage. He doesn't notice the impact of metal into his skin.

The guard steps out again.

Some time later the door opens again. His eyes are dull, the rage locked away where he can't feel it. She sits down, and makes noises. She is the alpha of this place. He hates her. He wants to please her. He hates her for his desire to please her.

She makes noises every day. Every day he hates himself for trying to understand.

"...free..." His head turns again, brows coming close together. She's rubbing her head. She doesn't see him mouth the word. She begins making noises again. He's listening, leaning against the bars.

He'll kill her if she walks too close. He's listening. "-spoon" He makes a noise. It isn't the same noise, it is a barking cough. Her eyes light up and she says it again, gently, "-spoon?", barking cough.

Spoon. I. She's trying to communicate.

He hates her.

But he's listening as hard as he hates her.

"Is he out?"

"Yes, ma'am. He's out."

"Good. Poor bastard." Dr. Rosana Ferguson smooths the hair of the unconscious experiment - fuck that's a nasty habit to break - soldier on the bed, "Poor, poor bastard." The orderlies work with efficient, gentle hands. Not out of kindness but out of fear of waking him up before he's crated and sealed away.

"Ma'am? What makes you think that there's anything to recover?" The nervous guard fingers his rifle, the orderlies ignoring all of them as they strap the payload tighter and test the silver buckles holding the silver-studded straps down.

"What makes me...? Wolves howl, Corporal." The doctor draws her fingers across the cheek of the man now being folded into what is nothing less than a silver-reinforced dog carrier and holds them up so that the guard can see them, "men cry."

( long )

"I want a fucking fag."

"Private...?"

"Spoon. I'm Spoon. I am Spoon, and I want a fucking fag." Six doctors of psychiatry, four doctors of psychology, and Dr. Rosana Ferguson relax and Spoon's hands fly up to cover his nose. The relief and joy that flood the room have him twitchy again, "There's too fucking many people in here. I want a fag."

Days of talking, one or two of them in the room at any given time. Two or three of them at a time walking along the green with him. Taking notes. Recording him. Talking to him.

Talking to him, not at him or about him. They're in a different cottage, somewhere else, where they can talk about him without him being near.

There are gaps. Huge ones. Where he went to school. Who he used to know. "Does the name Helen Stapelton mean anything to you?" "No, should it?" His parents are dim memories, and sometimes he pictures them with fur and fangs. And that's not right, is it Spoon? Not right at all.

There are things crystal clear. Sarge's face. Cooper's. Joe's. Bruce's. Terry's. That fucking cow. Still hysterical. Fuck, poor bastards. Poor, poor bastards.

He smokes more than he used to. He's a fucking chimney of smoke, one burns out and another fag is lit and dragged from.

"Spoon?"

"Yes, Dr. Ferguson?"

"Spoon, we're going to be calling Mrs. Wells. Sergeant Wells' wife? With any luck someone should be here to get you soon."

"Yes, Dr. Ferguson." Poor fucking woman...asked to get her dead husband's cursed squad mate.

Dark
"ate Witherspoon. Private Witherspoon. I need you to listen to me. List"
Dark
"on't think he's going to come ba"
Dark
"ot no choice, if we don't get hi"
Dim
"m you know that Wells"
Sarge
"will hunt us all dow...did he say something?"
Sarge!
"No, it's just a growl."
"It's a word, a word!"

"SARGE!"

The changes have been dramatic. Unfortunately they have also been cosmetic. The werewolf's new home is a sprawling expanse of green with a two story house in the middle of it. There is a bedroom, a perfectly normal bedroom with a recreation of the personal effects of one Ronald Witherspoon, on the second floor with a view of all the green. As often as safe, they put him to bed there. On days that he's calm, he sleeps in the room. Dr. Ferguson likes to hope that it does some good.

On good days four armed guards follow him as he staggers an uneven path across the green. Sometimes he tracks rabbits, moving almost too fast for his guards to follow. He can track them with his eyes closed, sometimes he does.

On good nights he's allowed to wander the cairns in the south and west of the small island, and the guards and scientists sit inside the house and wait. They're ready to recapture him if needed.

On bad days he's shot, and shot, and shot again full of drugs until what little sense is in his eyes fades out again and he sits in a corner not even rocking.

On bad nights he's locked in a cage underground with nervous guards ringing around him fingering the triggers on their rifles.

On good days he can be persuaded to eat a bit of vegetables, some cooked meat, to use a fork.

On bad days he eats only raw things.

On very bad days, he eats only what he kills. Dr. Ferguson used to hate the sound of rabbits dying. Now it's just part of the background noise, like a train that comes by once a week and is then gone.

"He's mostly sticking to human form, Dr. Ferguson. No unexpected changes in four days."

There is a calendar on the wall, three days filled in solid with red. Every room in this building has one, every person here has memorized moon rise and moon set.

"Three days until the full moon." Rosana Ferguson doesn't need to look at the wall. She knows the moon better than anyone here but Private Ronald Witherspoon.

"Look at him! That's no way to treat a man."

"Ma'am, Doctor, that's no man. Maybe you missed the whole giant fucking monster thing?"

"Private Ronald Witherspoon, Sergeant Erickson. Inside that cage is Private Ronald Witherspoon. He's a man, despite what we've done to him. He's no good to us as a ravening monster, and quite frankly I feel that Dr. Pretlow got what he deserved."

"Ma'am, nobody deserves to have his liver eaten by a beast he was trying to help."

"Sergeant, I saw his files. That man was nothing but a butcher. We are fucking well going to see if we can recover anything from Private Witherspoon's humanity, and if we can we are going to nurture that until he's as fucking human as I am.

It's a damn sight more than you seem to be."

"Hour three. All damage has been healed. Fur is growing back. Subject appears to be coming around again. Guard?" Pif, pif "Thank you. Subject is subsiding again. I am now removing the left ear at the base. Subject's blood flow is sluggish."

"Long term effects of wolf's bane added to subject's feeding periods appear to be contributing to the irrationality of subject's reactions."

"Subject no longer responds to the name Private Ronald Witherspoon, however simply Spoon causes minor reaction."

"Subject's muscle mass is denser than normal human in either form. Markedly so in wolf-man form."

"We have made incisions and removed samples of various sizes from subject. A video camera is trained on subject's body to capture the speed of healing. Attempts at using 80 mg intramuscular Haloperidol have proven to successfully keep subject from changing forms, with exception of full moon nights. Subject is expressing lethargy, muscle-stiffness, muscle-cramping, restlessness, tremors. At this time I regret that subject has not spoken in five months, it would be interesting to note if he is experiencing any further symptoms. Continuing on."

This room smells of antiseptics and cleansers. This place is nearly spotless. Grey-green tiles on the floor, darker tiles along the lower half of the wall, white paint above. Air-freshener dispensers mounted every fifteen feet along the walls, the sort that give off a spray every half hour or so by the look of them. There's an anatomical chart of the human body hanging on one wall, just next to the medical exam table. You know. The table with the thick leather straps just where the wrists and feet and head and midsection would be. It's right in front of the caged-off area with the chains hanging from the wall, each chain formed of links a good inch thick or more.

He’s crouched in the cage, no longer pacing. Too many times pacing makes the dispensers go off. Sometimes he forgets. He forgets lots of things. He stares at the anatomical charts, the one bought from some company, the ones made by months of painstaking vivisection. He knows the inside of his body better than his mind.

Her name is Helen. his thoughts go, Helen. Helen is alive. his fingers walk a pattern across his knees, nicotine fits kept to just the ends of his fingers. No more. No more. Can’t pace. Cooper is dead. Joe is dead. Sarge is dead. Ryan is dead. Megan is dead, the bitch. Spoon is dead. No, that’s me. Isn’t it? Terry is dead. His face when he saw that fucking cow, that was a blast. Bruce is dead.

The rattle of the chains drives him crazy, but not as bad as the ticking of the clock. Tick tock tick fucking tock. Months ago he decided he’d never own another ticking clock if he ever gets out of here. Weeks ago he realized that he’s never getting out.

The door swings open, he can’t help but jerk back against the wall. Silver sends screaming agony across his bare back. They’re trying to see how much silver he can take, for how long.

“It’s the dark of the moon. According to legends, he should be at his weakest now. I truly think that we need to remove the silver, at least for a few nights.” The voice of the other one, the one that sometimes doesn’t slice deeper than he has to, is clear.

Pretlow snorts, “I think not. We’re going to continue the experiment until it is clear that we have to stop it.” He walks toward the werewolf in the cell, and when the other one can’t see him anymore Pretlow grins. White teeth, pink flesh, and Ronald Witherspoon sees the threat that isn’t hidden at all.

Not in the slightest. There isn’t any thought there, no consideration, no decision. Just one man lunging to his feet and snapping a jaw which elongates as his eyes go golden and the screams are sweet to his ears as the running food floods the room with terror. Pretlow stumbles, and on his face is promise that he will get revenge for the loss of pride. The wolf doesn’t understand that, the wolf doesn’t care.

Guards in facemasks run in, firing even as they come, giving the doctors the chance to get loose and safe.

Then the air fresheners on the walls go off.

Good night, Spoon.

The first few weeks weren't that bad. Except for the full moons. Those started bad and didn't get any better.

Tests, they said, of him running and him breathing, pissing, eating. Like a physical, the longest and hardest of his life but by God he worked at it. Gave them all the data that they wanted and offered up other things. His blood pressure before he was bit ("We know, Private Witherspoon"), his eyesight, his parent's medical history.

Then they started pushing him. Run faster. Lift more. Identify things by scent when you're blindfolded. Track men through the woods. Track the one man who has a gun.

And they kept taking blood. Kept taking piss. Saliva. Grumbled about being unable to isolate what they wanted.

The first full moon in November he woke up feeling almost as badly as he did in September, with over-sized bandages where he'd been shot several times so that they could keep him down long enough to take blood, piss, and saliva from the wolf.

The second full moon in November he dimly remembered being shot over and over while someone hacked a hunk of flesh out so that they could run more tests.

He hasn't been out of the room in a couple of days. The walls are closing in, getting closer and closer. Someone brings food, and smokes, at regular intervals.

The door opens again, and yet another doctor enters with an orderly. "Good evening, Private Witherspoon. Roll up your sleeve, if you would, and settle into the chair."

He lifts his face, sniffing, "Who's out in the hallway?"

"No need to worry about that, Private. Roll up your sleeve." After a moment he does so, still sniffing. Fear, pleasure, it's a strange mixture. He closes his eyes and turns away. After months of this he's sick of the sight of needles entering his flesh.

He doesn't, obviously, expect the burning agony that sears his arm when they rip out a chunk and put it in a specimen jar. His head snaps around and his teeth pull back as he sees the doctor's silver scalpel going back into a pocket.

"What the fuck?" He starts to stand, to swing his hand over the bleeding hole in his arm. Tranquilizer guns make noises that sound like pif, pif. He hears at least five shots as he hits the ground.

Then things are dark.

The last thing he remembered was a blinding fucking light and a shit load of pain. That would have been sometime after the bloody werewolves had mauled him, gotten in each other's way, and somehow (he didn't remember how, just Sarge's watch being torn from his arm along with far too much skin) he'd ended up wedged inside a cupboard with life draining out of more places than he'd wants to think about.

Then he passed out.

Then there was the light, and the pain.

Now there's more light, and not nearly as much pain, and men in black uniforms saying quite clearly "No, no survivors." while looking straight into his blearily blinking eyes. Fuck.