#ok but their witnesses being thomas' relatives very interesting

[acheronist]

thomas armitage wedding certificate from 1826 btw if you even care

[blogplacecommon]

The Oath

The elevator shakes violently.

Oxygen.

They are running out of oxygen.

He counts the occupants in the small compartment. One bailiff, who may or may not have an anxiety disorder. Himself, a successful defence attorney. His son, just a fourth grade boy. He is concerned about the bailiff and his son for entirely different reasons: How the bailiff might choose to act in this situation and how that may affect his son.

He remembers gunshots, a scream. He remembers an earthquake. He remembers the world going black and what was his darling, angel boy doing with a gun? He remembers fleeting thrums of adrenaline, fear. He remembers pain, burning, white hot, agonizing pain mingling in with the strained face of Prosecutor Oliver Twright.

He doesn’t remember much after that.

He wakes up in a hospital bed. He tries to feel for the bed sheets, reach out for the boy – my son? – sitting in the worn seat beside him. He moves but he can’t feel anything. It’s cold, absent of any feeling. He looks around, finds that the world is moving around him in snap shots. The light blends with the shadows and every sound around him is muffled. Even the steady beeping from the machine is faint.

He decides that this room is too sad, dreary. Everything around him has taken on a faded quality, like the old photographs abandoned in the shoebox hidden under the linens.

A small sniffle beside him, the boy again. He has the sudden urge to comfort him. He gets off the bed, feeling oddly light, like a piece of him is missing. He doesn’t realize that there’s still a body in the bed.

He gets to the boy, tries to sooth him by stroking his hair. His hand passes through the boy’s head and the boy looks around wildly as he tries to supress a shiver. He tries again and once more his hand passes through the boy’s head.

He feels hopeless, more than sad. He feels as if he’s just lost his only son – yes this boy is his son. He wants nothing more than to hold his boy again, sooth his hair. He decides the only thing to do now is to watch his boy, make sure he is taken care of and protected.

No harm will come to his boy.

He leans in, certain that his boy won’t hear him, and says anyway, “I am always here for you. You are my son, I will protect you.”

His heart is jerked sideways as his boy turns to face him, his eyes – puffy from crying – seeing through him, like he isn’t even there.

And then suddenly the machines start going off. His boy jumps out of the chair, yelling for a doctor, running to the bedside. His boy is crying, loud, soaking sobs, holding the hand of the body in the bed.

The doctors swarm in, they take his boy away – he’s kicking and screaming. They surround the bed, start yelling out procedures, commence CPR. He ignores the commotion to follow the nurse who has his son.

They are halfway down a sterile, white hallway when the world is swept up around him. The walls fold in on themselves, the people around him disappear.

He finds himself in another hospital room. A lady in a bed is holding a child, a proud father standing by her side. He recognizes this couple. They are – were –

His parents.

(Look dear, he’s got your eyes.)

The gravity of the situation dawns on and promptly crushes him. In that moment he understands what is happening.

The elevator, the earthquake, the gunshots, the scream, the prosecutor, the monitors, the deranged eyes of his son.

He is dying.

He is dying and his life is literally flashing before his eyes.

He sees the parts of his childhood he can no longer remember. Himself swinging across the monkey bars of the rusted jungle gym at age 5. Himself in grade school taking fast interest in history and literature at age 11. Himself navigating the confusing waters of high school, confidently stepping foot onto his university campus, taking instant flame to a lovely lady named Linda.

He is in yet another hospital room as he hears the first startled cries of his baby boy. He feels that swelling pride of a new father as he watches himself gingerly cradle his newborn son in his arms.

There are snapshots of him, Linda, his boy, friends and colleagues throughout the ages. They are a rainbow of emotions, sometimes alone with him, sometimes all together.

He sees moments of the courtroom, the opposing prosecutors coming and going as he looses to some and wins against others.

He blinks and suddenly he feels anguish as he watches his Linda get wrenched from his life. Feels the panic at the prospect of managing his firm and single handedly taking care of his boy. He sees himself sitting alone in front of half-filled adoption papers for many nights only to toss the pages into the fireplace several days later.

He sees himself drop his boy off on his first day of school. Watches his boy grow all over again. Observes his best moments and not so best moments. He relives the joy of finding out his son wanted to become a defence attorney just like his old man. He witnesses his son’s interesting spread of friends and peers from school.

He blinks again and suddenly he is in the courtroom. The leering face of Prosecutor Oliver Tright standing across from him. His son watching from the spectator’s bench. Something cold settles around him as he finds himself in that accursed elevator. He watches the bailiff struggling to keep calm in the situation, hears the scared undertones in his son’s voice, feels the earthquake thrum through the small chamber.

Two gun shots, a scream and Tright.

He is in an ambulance, transported to hospital along with the bailiff and his son. And then he is in the hospital room he woke up in. The heart monitor flat-lines, his boy begins to panic and the doctors surround him.

He is helpless to watch as they fail to revive him.

Strong wind passes through him as he is brought back to the present, his boy and the nurse slowly making their way to the waiting room.

Heavily, he settles his weightless soul in the empty chair next to the one his son is occupying. He had died on his boy. There was his son, only twelve-years-old, helpless and without a guide to make sure he didn’t fall when he stumbled. He imagines dreary orphanages, his son a prison to a system that would drag him down, turn his dreams to dust.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Around him the nurses begin to bustle. A social worker is called in – some blond lady who speaks in a fake voice – to talk to his boy.

(My name is Jolene. I’m here to help.)

(I’m Miles… my father is he..?) His boy’s voice is hoarse from crying, his breaths punctuated with small hiccups. He will never again be able to hug his boy and tell him things were going to be ok.

Things will never be ok again.

He is not ok with this.

(I’m sorry Miles, I suppose you’re old enough to understand it… your father has passed.)

His boy turns red with the effort it took to contain his giant, sobbing screams.

(Do you have any relatives or family you are close with?)

His boy shakes his head.

(Ok… come with me, we can get you someplace to stay for the time being.)

There is no place. Their house is large, empty. Tom - a distant cousin - is the closest thing to family this boy has. But Sam is brutal, jobless, abusive. He, himself, is the only one his boy had left and he had died. He has failed his boy, has failed his Miles.

He resigns himself to following Miles around. He follows Miles as he goes to temporary housing with the social worker, picks up his things from school, breaks the news to his friends – who are very insistent to stay by his side, despite the social worker’s denial of such. He follows Miles as he goes back to temporary housing and waits silently as they process his paperwork, send him off to foster care.

He watches his boy try to adapt to the new house, cry himself to sleep every night, pass around the food on his plate. He follows him to his new school, the therapy sessions, the houses of the new friends he tries to make. He hates to see his Miles so miserable but he stays by the boy’s side. It is the least he can do in his current non-corporeal state.

Several months more and Miles sneaks out of the foster house, runs away from home. He's walking for hours, trying to find their old house with the oversized map he picks up from a nearby convince store. The social worker finds him, moves him back to temporary housing. The foster family doesn’t want him anymore.

He's long since stopped trying to change anything - he is powerless in this world. He can only follow, chained and hollow and empty and dark, like a shadow.

They are in the middle of processing the paper work to get Miles reinstated in a different home when the aged, smug face of a man he’s never met shows up to meet with the social worker. He doesn’t like the look of this man, wouldn’t trust him more than he could throw him. To his disgruntlement, the man adopts Miles. 

He follows Miles as he sends one last goodbye to his friends and is taken across the Atlantic to Germany.

He can only silently watch as the man - who’s name is Thomas - takes everything Miles believes in and stomps it to finely ground sand. He watches his Miles blossom into adolescence, taking his studies by storm, surpassing his expectations. Miles steam-trains his way to becoming a successful prosecutor and is often called a prodigy.

Despite everything, he is so proud of his son.

He knows, for a man to be successful, there must be sacrifices. Miles is given a title – “Genius Prosecutor” – and he isn’t even overseeing cases independently. Yet he still can recall the times his son wakes up in the dead of night, screaming for his father. 

He watches his son, as young as 16, sneak out of his bedroom window whilst the house is asleep and bully his way into illegal clubs. He watches his son learn to internalize his emotions, bottle them up like watered down soda, leave them to age like fine wine.

He feels surges of fatherly protection when Thomas throws waves of verbal abuse at his boy. He places himself between Thomas and Miles, glaring at the monstrosity as he talks down to his son. He likes to think that the words hurt less passing through his ghost-like body before reaching Miles.

Miles turns twenty and returns to America to debut as a prosecutor, overseen by Thomas. He starts off very well, his wining streak perfect, the verdicts guilty – and rightfully so.

But then Miles choses to walk a path of underhanded methods, forged evidence, bribery. 

He wonders when his son had morphed from his sweet, little boy to the man who vouched for a verdict and turned blind eye to truth.

He still follows Miles. He still stands next to his son in court and watches as his child is buried under mountains of victories, under several hundred tonnes of faux-ego.

Miles swaps genius for a new title - they call him the “Demon Prosecutor”. 

He feels numb again, for a long time. Lost and confused and hopelessly tethered to his son who feels more like a stranger than his own child.

He longs to turn, to leave Miles and maybe return when Miles isn’t hard pressed for a guilty verdict. But just as he is ready to go, just as he assures himself there will be no more of this hell - because only hell would dress up the devil to look like his son - Miles will do or say something and suddenly, he is the little boy who was licking strawberry ice-cream under Friday afternoon sun, the little boy who was shaken up, wide-eyed, crying to himself under the watchful moon, the little boy he vowed never to abandon.

He follows Miles to the prosecutor’s building, his apartment, the courtroom, through investigations, mundane luncheons.

He follows Miles to a trial in particular. The trial where Miles is left almost gob-smacked with the man staring him down from the defence's bench. He’s representing a girl named Lucy Gramble. He remembers this man from fourteen years ago - a long lost friend of Miles.

The man introduces himself as Arthur Lee.

He watches court proceedings with rapt attention, each side in rapid-fire succession pointing out holes, tearing through evidence and witness statements.

They’re halfway through cross-examination when he feels someone tap on him the shoulder.

It is an odd feeling, after spending over a decade without being able to touch things or be touched by things, he is surprised out of his skin. He turns to see a lady – he recognizes her as the defense attorney who worked Miles’ official, first case. He blinks at her and she waves at him.

“You can see me?” He asks, hesitantly.

“Just as you can see me.” Her tone is cheeky.

He tries to introduce himself, as etiquette demands but finds himself blanking. “Forgive me, I don’t remember my name.”

“You are George Greyhorn, father of Miles Greyhorn. My colleague, Arthur Lee, has told me a lot about the both of you.”

George… he feels the name suits him, like an old, woollen glove. “Thank you…” he hesitates.

“Mia Gramble.” She nodded at Lucy, “My sister caught my bad luck, it seems.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you. If only unfortunate to meet you like this.” He is suddenly curious, “I apologize for asking, but, I must know, how did you come to be this way?” he feels it would be rude to outright say the word “die”.

“Bludgeoned to death by corporate monster, Stephen White.” she says it like they're discussing the weather.

“That sounds terrible.” He sighs as Miles pulls out another piece of falsified evidence. “I’m sorry my son is trying to pin the murder on your sister. I’ve been an absent parental figure lately.”

“You were murdered in an elevator and your son was left orphaned and under the jurisdiction of a random stranger. I don’t blame you.”

He only hums noncommittally. Later, he says, “I never really believed in religion. But I always entertained the idea that we pass on to an underworld of some sort. It seems I was wrong.”

“My mom used to say that the dead sometimes never cross over. Sometimes they stay on earth for a while and then pass. The theory is that the spirits who stay usually have a vendetta or unresolved vow. I’ve stayed to protect my sister.”

“I’ve been following Miles since the accident.” He feels inclined to say this, for some reason.

Both of them have their attention on Miles. “I can imagine how hard that must be.”

They don’t say anything after that for a long time, choosing to watch the court proceedings. Gently, Mia leads him away from the prosecutor’s bench and closer to the center of the courtroom, where they can see each side equally.

“It doesn’t seem like much,” she says suddenly, “but he has grown subconsciously dependant on your presence.” She cants her head to the left side of the room.

Indeed, Miles is less graceful with his words, slower with his comebacks. George feels infinitely confused. “He’s never once looked in my direction and actually acknowledged I was there.”

“Love is a powerful thing, Mr. Greyhorn.”

They watch until, unbelievably, Phoenix disproves Lucy’s guilt. George feels like a traitor as he rejoices Arthur’s small victory.

And then his son decides to go ahead and blame the murder on Arthur himself. The judge quells the rising hysteria among the spectators and court is adjourned for the day.

George rubs at his forehead, suddenly feeling several thousand years old.

A comforting hand settles on his shoulder. He regards Mia with tired eyes. She smiles warmly at him, “There is hope for your son, yet.”

The sentence is too cryptic for him to work out at that moment, with his thoughts scattered like floating dust. He looks at her dubiously and just nods. They part ways for the night, Mia taking after her sister and George following Miles.

Court proceeds the next day like it had the last. George chooses to sit on the judge’s counter and is provided with a grand view of the courtroom. He notices Mia standing next to her sister and Arthur.

He is feeling too many things to bare being close to his son.

He almost laughs at that thought.

In an amazing turnabout, Arthur shreds Stephen White’s testimony and burns through any evidence Miles presents.

Arthur Lee beats Miles Greyhorn.

George waits for the earth to tilt, the floor to cave in, the building to collapse.

None of that happens.

Miles Greyhorn had lost and the earth was still in tact, the world had not ended. He looks at Mia, bewilderedly. She throws him a wink. He turns his head to the prosecutor’s bench only to find it empty. He quickly hops off the judge’s counter in fast pursuit of his son.

He finds Miles in an empty lobby, his eyes a stormy turbulence. He isn’t wearing his perfectly constructed poker face. George can see the anger, confusion and question of his own existence written in Miles’ stony features.

Most of all, George can see the confused boy he had left behind in that elevator.

"There is hope for your son, yet."

He thinks he finally understands what she meant. 

*Please note that this was originally a transformative pice of work that I posted [here] and later edited for the purpose of this assignment. I, in no way, have plagiarized this piece as it is my own work. If you need further proof, don’t hesitate to ask. 

[10.] (November 25, 2017)

[thesinglesjukebox]

PINK - WALK ME HOME

[3.27]

A new single by P!nk! What do we th!nk?

Katherine St Asaph: The first verse suspect this was the writing of Julia Michaels or Nate Ruess. Turns out it's the latter, blowing "Some Nights" up even bigger until it could fill a megachurch on Jupiter. Which ensures that besides the beginning vocal, like making a speech synthesizer sing Ariana Grande's "yuh," "Walk Me Home" is the least interesting Pink's music has been, even after a relatively uninteresting decade. I guess she finally let her get her. [3]

Thomas Inskeep: Walk yourself home, with your fucking foot-stomp beat and acoustic guitar and "anthemic" chorus. [1]

Ian Mathers: My favourite bit is probably the fact that if you just played me the first 8 seconds and asked me to guess I'd go with Pink being a bit fan of 22, A Million, but the whole thing is kind of satisfyingly sturdy. It's catchy enough, the stomp and acoustic guitar are nice -- it's a tad underwhelming compared to her very best stuff, but surprisingly durable nonetheless. If anything, my biggest complaint is that in 2019 it feels like we need a little more specificity than just "there's so much wrong goin' on outside," although that's definitely a true statement. [7]

Alfred Soto: "Ryan Tedder with lyric assist by Julia Michaels," I thought on listening to the ABC drama closing credit music over clippety-cloppety beat. Nate Ruess is a worse guess. Pink's impressive sustainability depended on holding on to her mix of woundedness and high energy; this surrender to received ideas is as dispiriting as unexpected midterm election returns. [1]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: A faux-inspirational love song whose decorum and stadium-friendly stomps trick listeners into thinking this has any actual meaning. "Walk Me Home" will still provide relief for the weary: placebo pop. [2]

Danilo Bortoli: It's been forever now since Pink first entered the realm of adult contemporary (statistically, since "Try" at least). She has of course not always been this way though: even when she bordered on gratuitous sentimentality, she made it with wit and courage. "Walk Me Home" repeats, sadly, a pattern of safety and conformity. A "sonic cathedral" in (big) sound but not in spirit. [3]

Alex Clifton: Pink has one of the most powerful voices in all of pop, but this is the first Pink song where I did not immediately identify her as the vocalist. If you manage to make Pink sound non-descript, you've really mucked something up. I like Pink best in loud party mode, but she can do ballads; "Who Knew" still kicks me in the gut every time I hear it. But "Walk Me Home" could've been recorded by Alessia Cara or Rachel Platten. It's generic and lacks the requisite emotion. Ironically I kept thinking that this would have made a better fun. song from five years ago, only to find out that Nate Ruess had a hand in the song. It's a shame as I thought his production worked so well on "Just Give Me a Reason," but here it fails to hit those heights. [3]

Iris Xie: So we're now past 2012 "End of the Mayan Calendar" bangers and into 2019 "Global Warming, Rise of Fascism, and the Fall of Late Crisis Capitalism" power ballads, huh? I find this song cute lyric-wise, because true, there is a lot going wrong outside in the world right now, and reaching out for reassurance from your loved ones is really important in troubling times like these. But those calls for intimacy are paired with an empty, bombastic beat that lessens the impact of these sentiments, and turns a "Walk Me Home" into a great song for a commercial, prime for well-edited uplifting footage to help support anxiety-induced purchasing habits. Alexa! Give me a song for the end of the world, please. [3]

Edward Okulicz: Pink has quietly put together a career that puts her among the very top echelon of pop stars, as if her music narrowcasts loudly to her fans and lets her fly under the critical radar. I mean, have you met a Pink stan? Outside one of her concerts, they're pretty quiet. What I'm getting at is that this is her worst ever lead single, being like Nate Ruess decided to write a country song and then Pink agreed to release it because nobody else would, but the album will still sell in massive numbers (despite its appalling name: Hurts 2B Human), so none of this matters. I'm not one of her biggest fans, but this one just doesn't sound like her somehow. [4]

Will Adams: There's a world of difference between "Fucking Perfect" and this, despite being cut from the same inspiro-stomp cloth. Part of this is context -- the "be yourself" anthems of the early '10s have now become the "everything sucks" dirges of today, in this case rendered as blandly as "there's so much wrong going on outside" -- but most of it is Jack Antonoff. Once again, he tries to augment his mostly gray palette with "interesting" flourishes that just sound wrong: here, deep synthesized voices going "mmm-bluhh." Pink more than most other pop acts has been able to sell this type of otherwise schmaltzy uplift, but with material as bland as she's been given, even she's beginning to sound cynical. [4]

Scott Mildenhall: Pink's place as the pop artist most likely to deploy a power ballad this decade has been a blessing. Who else could have released "Try" or "Just Give Me a Reason" and pulled them off with such aplomb? OK, Nate Ruess for the latter, but it feels somewhat that with "Walk Me Home," he may have been less a help than a hindrance. Pink's last thinly veiled allusion to The State Of Things was a rallying cry, but this time she sounds worn down, and not like on "Try." When she performed this to open her ahistorical medley at the BRITs, it felt like a damp squib. Halfway ballad, halfway power ballad, and effectively neither, it's weighed down by a fun.ny clomp. [5]

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