#protect his neighbors is so powerfully moving because

[savagetrickster]

Paper Hearts.

D.Gray-Man | Lavi x Reader (NSFW)

Okay so, I accidentally deleted the original post of the ask - basically anon requested for a soft smut for Lavi where he knew he and his s/o shouldn’t be in a r/s at all because of who he is but still did hanky panky anyway. (that’s what i recalled) 

Prompt #15 from the list of smut prompts here : “Spend the night with me?” 

I tried to make this soft smut without making it too explicit and smutty (had to refrain from vomiting my perverted thoughts while writing LOL - i tried okay -_-)

so yeah, tell me what you think <3

themes/warnings: 18+, angst,  breeding kink lol again....and hmm that’s it i guess?

.

In the still silence and darkness of the European branch, the full moon hung high in the night sky. The towering structure was quiet with sleep. 

The hallway she stood in was lingering with airy silence. The rooms around her were quiet. Most of her neighbors were already asleep. Those empty ones belonged to those who were still out there.

Her lips parted with a dreary sigh as her eyes wandered to the floors below. Her limbs were heavy with weariness from the mission she returned from this evening. 

But even as night fell and delved into the darker hours, she couldn’t sleep. Her helpless tossing and turning could be seen in the ruffled bedsheet of her bed in the room behind her.

This was nothing new. She always found herself looking down at the levels below, her hands relaxed on the railing separating her and the seemingly endless way down. 

Her thoughts ran on nothing and everything. The darkness she stood in was comforting but depressing whenever a certain redhead came into mind. And always accompanied with wistful sighs when that happened.

Lavi. 

He was her little secret. And she was his.

Their glances were always fleeting on each other as though there was a death warrant hanging over their heads if they were caught.

The brushes across each others’ hands were always light, quiet, and longing, fingers twitching with the urge to lace through each other.

And if they were standing near to the other, they couldn’t help being overly aware of each others’ presence, their skin tingling, and prickling in the warmth that seemed to radiate over them. 

These whispers of their love were something that always made her heart ache almost painfully. 

Knowing that they would be this way forever. A love always so quiet, hesitant, and afraid.

Being who they were, each had a duty bound to them for life. 

A Bookman and an Exorcist.

They were meant to look the other way.

Placed into this world to face the darkness threatening to engulf it, Exorcists and Bookmans alike were the bravest, strongest of mankind to brave the horrors hidden within.

But ironically.

Her heart. Their hearts which wanted to...love-

They were so fragile, easily torn through like paper hearts. 

Every time she managed to muster the courage to think about their future, her hands were always shaking and her parting lips trembling with a sobbing sigh.

Nothing was all she could see. Their future was-

Bleak.

Dull.

Cold.

She closed her eyes in anguish. The presence of tears she felt was threatening to fill her eyes. 

She suddenly felt cold. So...so cold.

Was it the chill in the air? Was it the dreadful tingle sinking in her?

As if someone was eavesdropping her thoughts, a sudden warmth met her lonely back. 

Strong, toned arms slipped around her waist.

Her head jerked up with a small gasp just as they pulled her back snugly against a warm breathing wall.

A slip of her eyes behind.

“…Lavi.”  

Her heart soared, then fell - the sight of him was lifting but the nasty voice that always reminded her of their reality always sank her back down.

“...Why are you still up, princess?” A light kiss pressed to her temples. 

Large hands pressed to her stomach and his lips inches above her shoulder, his green eyes were soft and gentle on hers.

“I just can’t fall asleep.” A soft smile quirked her lips but quickly fell. “But Lavi, You shouldn’t be hugging me like this.”  

Her eyes shifted around hastily, “What if someone sees-” 

“You worry too much,” His chest rumbled lightly to the chuckles tingling her skin. “Everyone’s asleep. It’s just you and me now.”

Her breath hitched.

“It’s just you and me now”- a hope tugging uselessly at her heart as her hand raised to her stomach to slide over his. 

At the squeeze she gave him, he pulled her even closer to him with a tuck of her head against his neck, his tall and broad figure hanging over her like a protective coat. 

A comforting silence sat with them as they relished the soothing heat they shared. 

There was so much to say in this rare moment together. 

Yet, because it was such a precious time for them, words seemed too cheap for this rare opportunity to just...hold each other.

Turning in his arms, she rested her head against his chest where she could hear his calm, beating heart and breathed in his warm, steady scent slowly.

“Spend the night with me?”

Her heart skipped a beat.

“You know we can’t, Lavi.” A sigh lingered behind her melancholic voice.

“Just tonight, princess,” His lips moved to press against her forehead. His warm breath brushing across her skin as he murmured, “...just tonight.”

.

In the soft glow of the moonlight cast into the room and onto the bed they shared, they talked, drifting aimlessly through topics.

Sleep was forgotten as they relished in each others’ presence. 

Eyes staring up at the ceiling from their sprawled bodies, occasionally wandering over to each other as soft peals of laughter fluttered out of their smiling mouths.

“Lavi, what do you think our life would be like if we were not who we are?”

Pushing himself off the bed to lean over her, the sheets under them ruffled to his movement as Lavi propped an elbow under his head .

Intrigue lighting the green eyes hovering over her. “What do you mean?”

“You know,” She curled into him, her eyes roaming over his handsome face, 

“If we’re ordinary people. You’re not a Bookman and I’m not an Exorcist. Like we have no obligations or duties.”

“Oh, so you mean just civilians.” 

She nodded, smiling wryly. 

“Imagine us living freely.” Her whispering voice shook out of her as her fingers splayed across his cheek, “You’d probably be a teacher and I’d probably be opening a little cafe.” 

She sighed longingly.

A warm, tender look swept over him,

“I know what I’d do if we’re that,” as his fingers gently grasped her chin and tilted her face up to him. 

Her heart gave a squeeze.

“...Wh-What?” Her eyes wavered at him.

His face drew close to hers, his lips lingering just above hers with a murmur barely above a whisper,

“I would marry you in a heartbeat.” 

His lips met hers in a chaste kiss, gently prodding her open as a breathy sigh escaped her. His tongue slipped into her as the elbow under his head lowered to the space beside her head, sinking his forearm into the soft pillow.

Their breath mingled as he pulled away slightly. 

"I'll be the happiest if you'd be willing to be my wife. And even happier if we could have some little ones."

"...Lavi," She stared with a wavering glint. The hopeful tugs in her heart made her breathless. "I'd love to be your wife and give you some. As many as you like."

A wistful hunger ignited a flame within him. "And you'd look so beautiful round with them."

His eyes danced back at hers as he leaned away to tug his shirt over his head to reveal a sculpted body rippling with his movements as he tossed the article aside.

His lips hovered over hers again.

"You'd make a wonderful mother."

There was a strain in his low, quiet voice.

“You’ve no idea how many times I saw you pregnant with my child in my head." 

A carnal thrill ran down his body, tightening him in his pants.

"And how amazing it would have felt to run my hands over that beautiful bump." A tattered groan broke into his tender voice. "The idea of you growing my baby in your womb…"

The aching need cracking through his words shook a breathy gasp of her. "...I can't take it. It's killing me."

He brought her hand to his bare chest, right on where his heart was beating powerfully with his words. “This is how much I want to spend this life with you, if we could.” 

She could feel the presence of tears lingering at the back of her throat at his words. They rang true with her own quiet ones. 

Lavi slipped a hand down to press into her stomach. “If only I could put one in you right now.”

A bitter laugh left him.

“But I won’t, of course.”

Big hands moving up to caress her face, he shifted them, enveloping her in his heat and pinning her down with a tender, burning gaze. 

“Oh, Lavi…” Her heart clenched in agony as a small sob wrecked through her words.

His lips descended on hers.

His head tilted as he pried through her, meeting her lips in a slow, deepening kiss as he pulled a hand away from her face to under her dress, deftly peeling off her panties.

Her fingers ran through his hair while her other hand found its place over his broad shoulders and onto his back, the taut muscle rippling lightly to their moving lips and his working hands.

A shuddering sigh panting out of her against his lips between the brief seconds they parted to catch their breath as his long, calloused fingers prodded and stretched inside her weeping cunt, prepping her for him.

The other hand left her face and slid down to tug his pajama pants off before slipping under her knees to push her thighs apart.

Lips leaving hers, he shifted up to press a long kiss against her forehead as he settled his knees in the space between her legs.

He knew she was ready enough for him when slippery, vulgar squelches responded to every movement his fingers made. 

The wet stain growing bigger and bigger on the white sheets under her was the dead giveaway.

“I’m coming in, princess.” His lips nibbled her ear, his warm breath brushing against her head as he pushed himself in slowly.

Breathy moan shivered out of her as he parted her dripping folds and stretched her open, prodding in until she was pressed snug against him. 

A fleeting groan escaped her, mingling with his shivering grunt at the electrifying jolt that came with their joined bodies. 

She could feel him so clearly. 

His thick girth was buried completely inside her, its whole length wedged fittingly between her throbbing walls.

Deep enough to bulge up against her stomach.

The hand clutching onto his hair throughout his careful penetration left to join her other hand on his back as fluttering blinks accompanied the sigh leaving her.

She missed this. The familiar, satisfying feeling of him snug inside her. Like the missing piece of a puzzle.

"...It's been a long time,” A satisfied wavering sigh shuddered out his lips.

His eyebrows strained on his forehead along with his voice. “...but you feel as wonderful as I remember." 

Then he moved, his lips descending onto hers again as his hip rolled against hers slowly and sensually. 

Each thrust carried gentleness and meaning, almost in sync with his pounding heart. 

His lips on hers were deep and subtly powerful with his love for her swelling in the calm heaves and falls of his chest. 

I love yous murmuring against each others’ lips, slipping out between every tilt of their heads. 

The headboard of the bed underneath them bumping the wall behind each time he pushed himself into her. 

His arms prodded at her sides shifted down to hook the crooks of his elbows under her parted thighs, spreading her until her bent knees hovered in the air. Almost close enough to touch her head caged between them.

Her whimper elicited past their moving lips at the big stretch tugging the folds of her heated core even wider apart.

The dull thuds of the headboard gradually became rattling light slams as his thrusts began to escalate to faster and curt ones. 

Along with her moaning whispers and his grunting words muffled against each other, the squelching wetness he was hammering through grew loud enough to mingle with the dense heat on the bed.

Their lips parted with a loud sigh. Her delirious moans and his growling grunts freed into the room.

Small white flashes blinked behind her fluttering dazed gaze as a sigh sifted through her needy moans at his furious ruts. 

Towering over her, his eyes were drawn to the slightly visible deep, fast prods of his thrusts pushing against her stomach.

He could feel himself growing thicker and thicker with the building pressure within his girth as the same few primal thoughts clouded his head. 

"Tha-That's my girl."

Something stirred in his chest at the mere sight. "Taking me so well."

Of how she would look so precious rounded and bulging with his child if the load threatening to burst impregnated her.

The hunger gnawing at him made him stare heatedly at where he had always imagined his baby would be growing in, marveling at the way his passionate ruts into her could be seen poking out.

The furious prods were small but provokingly powerful enough to make him murmur his desire longingly.

"I-I'd really love to put our baby," His fingers rounding over her thigh to brush over the area. "...right here."

Those words, his fingers sinking lightly in the skin and the next thrust- 

That was it. She couldn’t take it anymore.

Hand flying to her mouth, a muffled sob wreaked through her as a starburst of white pleasure blinded her as he sent her release gushing in her. 

The sharp rips of her orgasm rippling desperately around him made him shiver with a moan hoarse and ending with a tattered gasp as his hips flew at the searing intensity of his own approaching one.

His hand on her abdomen hastily returned to its spot, mirroring his other hand holding her wider apart.

His eyebrows strained on his sweaty forehead as his heated eyes bore into the way he was furiously ramming into her erratically clenching heat. 

A long hiss dragging through his gritted teeth as he relished in her greedy walls squeezing continuously around him, edging him closer and closer.

Slipping a glance up at the sound of her giddy whimpers, he instantly wished he didn’t as a strangled groan left him immediately at her helpless, flustered face blushing red at him.

The stir in his chest grew stronger with a craving ache. And his girth was becoming unbearably full with an animalistic impulse urging him to deposit every bit in her.

With a choked grunt, he mustered all his self-restrain to tug himself out of her in one hasty move, in time for white, rich load to spurt out over her.

“S-Sorry, princess…” Lavi murmured through his panting gasps as his hand gripped him in a pumping haste.

“...No, it’s okay, Lavi-” Her head shook weakly on the bed as a wavering sigh left her at the warm coat splattering over her. 

“-that...that was amazing.”

#lavi smut #dgm lavi #dgrayman lavi #dgm smut #d.gray-man smut #lavi x reader #anime smut #d.grayman imagines

[docholligay]

Doc Loves A Series of Unfortunate Events

You should read this book series to your children. Or your nieces and nephews. Neighbor children. 

Do NOT watch the Netflix Series, which I tried VERY hard to like. 

This is one of the few series I know that isn’t even really YA, it’s truly a children’s series, written with very simply prose, and is incredible. 

The prose is simple, as I said, but that does not mean it is in any way boring, or lacking in its own flavor of poetry. The narrator, Lemony Snicket, has an incredible way of telling stories, that is immediately recognizable as its own patter, in the same way that Rod Serling or Stephen King have an easily recognizable style, not something I generally find in children’s stories. 

If an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say in a pleasant and hopeful voice, "Well this isn't too bad, I don't have a left arm anymore but at least nobody will ever ask me if I'm left-handed or right-handed," but most of us would say something more along the lines of, "Aaaaaa! My arm! My arm!

It’s the sort of thing that presents ideas, and themes, and really, very difficult things, to children in a way that is understandable to them without talking down to them. It’s what I think all children’s literature should aspire to be. The narration is funny, but often poignant, and it manages to define terms for children in a way that perfectly falls into the story, without seeming a moment’s out of step:

A passport, as I'm sure you know, is a document that one shows to government officials whenever one reaches a border between two countries, so that the official can learn who you are, where you were born, and how you look when photographed unflatteringly.

A child not knowing what a passport was would then immediately know, without having to stop and ask, without any sort of pause or confusion. It’s done so artfully, so many times within the series, that it becomes almost a joke or a style within itself. 

One of the reasons I love the story is that bad things continually happen to the children in it. It is not a story of being loved, and having triumph. It is a story of never giving up, against impossible odds, when all the world is against you. How great resourcefulness will carry you to the next tragedy, which is also something you can handle. I so rarely see things like this, that truly teach children that life is meant to be fought on, and no matter how young you are, you are completely capable of doing so. It never feels like the children will win, but it never feel like things are hopeless, either. It’s a strangely realistic children’s series, in this way, and I think presenting that level of resilience to children is important, and incredible. 

And it never shys away from using that simple yet elegant prose to highlight difficult things as well, things that I don’t know most children’s books go into. Not only the bad happenings themselves, but the feelings behind it. Death and moral complexity and saving face. The way tragedy has a tendency to worm its way into your heart, and lie there. I always think of this quote: 

It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.

And this one: 

People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.

And this one okay I am done now: 

When someone is crying, of course, the noble thing to do is to comfort them. But if someone is trying to hide their tears, it may also be noble to pretend you do not notice them.

This is all I can say in the way of convincing you to read the books without spoiling anything for you

Spoilery below the cut:

You know what I never saw coming, as a full grown adult reading these books? Lemony Snicket being a character and not simply the author. I don’t know that I know many adult novels that are the particularly clever. And this is part of what I love so well about ASOUE, is that it is uniquely clever among children’s books, while still managing to remain within a child’s wheelhouse, and making good use of a formulaic book style, that allows children to experience the pleasure of getting “the same thing, but different’ which we all look for as adults, really. 

The way it handles grief and misery as given parts of the human experience absolutely floors me. It’s not a blink and you’ll miss it sort of thing, it’s woven through the fabric of the whole series, that the children lose over and over again, and that it absolutely affects them. But losing their parents from the outset doesn’t ruin them, and they don’t need to be rescued (Which is good, because they never are) they are their OWN rescuers. This isn’t a Cinderella story where some wish fulfilment comes out of the gloom. This is about the three of them having to band together, and save themselves. 

I love how the mystery gets deeper and more complicated as you go on, while still having to deal with the threat of Olaf. I love that a great deal of the mysteries are left unsolved, I love that we have no idea what happens to the Baudelaires. I love the sense of uncertainty that weaves itself throughout the piece, the way that it, like life, leaves us to tie up the loose ends. I think it’s such a valuable lesson as well as just a damn good series. 

I’ve talked, from time to time, about how I think this book, written by a Jewish man and stated to be about Jewish children, uses Count Olaf as a stand in for anti-Semitism. It strikes me so powerfully, how they can always recognize him, and how it should be obvious to anyone, but the adults REFUSE to see what it is until he tries to kill them again, ad then of course the adults promise that they will protect the children, again. And that, my friends, is a fucking Jewish-ass mood. Only they can see that the same threat is just now wearing a new disguise, over and over again. 

And that the children, after everything, have another orphan with them, another person that they must carry on, and the story really does not stop but just moves forward, I love that. They will care for Beatrice in a way that they themselves were never cared for. I think The End is a really strange book in a lot of ways, and how I feel about it very often comes down to the day, but I do love that. I love that the children are willing to be the protection they never had, and I think there’s something very winning in that. Despise everything, the children never become the evil that seeks them. I think that’s the most hopeful thing of all, and the most JEWISHLY hopeful thing of all, Not that they will be safe, but that they will be GOOD, against everything.

#Holligay loves reading #Holligay is 34: The celebration

[letmeletmetrashyourlove]

Breaking Things

Summary: Billy finds companionship in his next-door neighbor after she witnesses him being punched by his father.

Author’s Note: The things being broken are hearts. Just so you know. Just short of 4k words

REQUESTS OPEN! FEEDBACK APPRECIATED!

A new family had moved in next door nearly a year earlier. The Hargroves. I suspected they were a blended family, judging by how the siblings got along. Max, a girl, couldn’t be older than 14. She rode her skateboard around the block all the time. She came off as polite, but spunky. Her mother was also very proper, quiet and reserved.

Billy was the oldest sibling, my age. He had a hot rod car and a bad attitude. Although, he played it up more than he cared to admit. When the family came over to introduce themselves, he offered me a modest smirk, shaking my hand.

Come to learn that this was how Billy treated everybody. When he was in front of his parents, anyway. Without the oversight of his father, he was a crude, callous boy. Despite his prickly personality, he managed to win over the hearts of every girl in the school. Turns out teenagers really value the important life skill of being able to do the longest keg stand in Hawkins history.

With the Hargrove’s arrival came a few new echoes in the neighborhood. A skateboard on the asphalt, the rumble of a car engine… and screaming.

Every day, at eight o’clock in the evening on the dot, the screaming started. Short, sporadic bursts of hollering came throughout the day and continued into the night. But eight o’clock was invariably the loudest. A male voice, occasionally two, could be heard rattling the walls of the Hargrove’s house. But the second voice always quieted, frequently punctuated with a bang. Occasionally accompanied by Billy staggering out to his car and speeding off down the road.

Tonight, at eight o’clock, the screaming started again. It could be heard from my kitchen window. I could see into the Hargrove’s kitchen from there. Nothing much exciting ever went on, other than the occasional appearance of Mrs. Hargrove doing the dishes.

But this time, I noticed Billy. Neil had him pinned up against the fridge, some of the magnets had bounced to the floor. His father stuck an accusing finger in his face, ultimately forcing his closed fist across Billy’s cheek.

Billy instinctively reached up, cupping his face where he had been struck. This was followed by a terse conversation, leading to Billy picking the magnets up off the floor before heading to the front door.

I  suspected something was going on. A kid like Billy doesn’t develop that temperament without an outside force. And that force was Neil.

Without thinking, I ran out my front door and watched as Billy stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

         “Hargrove!” I called out, watching Billy stagger down his driveway, clutching his face in his palm. I couldn’t tell if he was drunk or if the blow had rung his bell. Either way, I didn’t like the prospect of him wandering around town alone after dark. Not after what happened to Barbara Holland.

He ignored my shouting, stumbling down the street in the contrary direction of me.

        “Hargrove!” I called, “Billy!”

         “Fuck off and mind your own goddamn business.” He wailed, not bothering to look at me.

Billy Hargrove was never one to ask for help. Most of what he wanted, he could just get. Flash a smile, bat his lashes, girls bent to his every whim. That tactic not working? Yell and intimidate. Throw fists, break skin. But he wasn’t going to brush me off that easily,

        “Billy!” I worried, tracking him down the sidewalk.

        “What did I just fucking say!?” He spat, still not turning to look at me, even though I was mere steps behind him.

 I mulled over whether or not to catch his arm, recognizing the situation he just went through involved an unpleasant touch. But he wasn’t going to pay attention unless I did, so I reached out for his wrist. I trapped it in a grip firm enough to stop him, but not rough enough for him to see it as unfriendly.

          “What!” He thundered, powerfully enough to force me to jump back. He nevertheless refused to look me in the eye, his cheek still turned aside.

 I didn’t say anything, I just reached for his chin to angle his head towards me. He smacked my hand aside.

          “Would you cut the bullshit?” I requested, reaching up once again.

He rolled his eyes before he allowed me to rest my thumb on his chin, turning his face towards me to display a gash running across his left cheekbone, expanding under his eye.

          “What happened?” I feigned ignorance. I couldn’t straight up tell him I had watched through his window. He would probably do anything to change the subject, call me a stalker and storm off. He wasn’t used to having people care about him.

        “Fight with Tommy, that’s all. That bastard is irritating as hell.” He lied, drawing a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it. He drew in a deep breath, his whole body was trembling. With anger or fear, I couldn’t tell. He let the smoke out through his nose, closing his eyes as he tried to manage his breathing.

        “I… uh… I heard all that… yelling.” I implied that I knew more than I was letting on, more than he was telling me.

        “Yeah, you and the rest of the fucking block.” He derided, glancing up the street to meet several neighbors peering out their windows at us. They hastily drew their curtains when we caught sight of them.

        “Billy… Did… did your dad-” I pressed, playing with my necklace.

        “It was just an argument.” He interrupted, taking another puff from his smoke.

        “Billy-” I began,

        “Stop it! Stop fucking talking to me like that!” He yelled, catching me off guard. smoke exploded from his mouth as he flicked his cigarette onto the pavement and ground it out under his boot.

        “Like what!?” I counteracted.

        “Like… Like you’re smarter than me! Like… Like you know what’s going on!” He hollered, throwing his hands up in frustration. He did what he always did when he went into ‘intimidate mode’ puffed up his chest, raised his voice, broadened his shoulders.

Smarter than him. I knew Billy had his insecurities, but I never doubted his intelligence. The brief glimpses I got at his school assignments told me he was brighter than he let on. He’d quickly shove the homework or test into his backpack or toss it into the trash. It wasn’t cool to be smart or get good grades, and he couldn’t damage his bad boy reputation.

        “I saw your dad hit you through your goddamn window, Billy!” I shouted back,

His angered expression dropped to one of dismay. Abuse is never something anybody wants to talk about, and I just threw it out into the open.

        “And it’s not hard to connect the dots. I’m not a fucking moron like the rest of your friends who believe your bullshit excuses!”

          “So what’re you gonna do, huh? Tell everybody about it? Make me the fucking laughing stock of the town?” He scoffed,

          “No! Because unlike your friends, I’m not a piece of shit!” I hissed, “Now come on.”

I reached for his wrist once more but he yanked away before I could grab him.

        “Why?”

        “You’re walking down the street like a drunk and you’re bleeding.” I told him, “Somebody is gonna call the cops on you or something. Let’s go.”

He followed behind me, his boots clicking on the sidewalk.

        “I don’t need you to be my fucking therapist.” He grumbled.

        “I’m not trying to be your therapist.”

        “Good.” He replied.

        “Fine.”

        “Cause I don’t need one.”

        “Sure.”

        “I’m serious.”

        “I know.”

I led him up the steps of my front porch and inside. I sat him at the dining room table, leaving him while I got the first aid kit. When I returned, he was out of his seat, studying the pictures that hung on the wall,

        “You were a cute baby.” He smirked, pointing to the picture of me grinning at the camera, showing off the wooden block I was playing with. I ignored his attempt to change the subject, 

          “All babies are cute.” I rebutted, “Sit.”

He followed my order, watching my every move as I tore out a hunk of gauze big enough to protect the wound on his cheek. 

        “Does he do this to Max?” I whispered.

        “No… Susan would be gone if he did. And he enjoys fucking her too much.”

        “Jesus, Billy. I didn’t need to know that.” I grimaced.

        “Yeah, well. Neither did I. Thin walls in that house, Y/N.”

Without either of us realizing it, this became a routine. Eight o’clock, screaming, knock on my door, Billy in the dining room. Ice and a bandage on his cheek. Go home. Eight o’clock, screaming, knock on my door, Billy in the dining room. Ice and a bandage on his cheek.

Each time, he revealed a little more about himself. How he grew up, where he’s from, basketball, his car. But topic never touched was what happened to his mother. I knew she was likely still in California, but I didn’t know a damn thing about her. Or about how and why his parents split. I never bothered to bring it up, though.

Each time he stayed a little bit later. The first time he came over, he left right after being patched up. The next time we chatted about school for a while, then he left. The next time stayed for dinner, meeting my family. The next time we ate dinner and watched a movie, both of us becoming increasingly comfortable having the other around.

        “You know you can stay the night if you ever want to.” I offered on more than one occasion.

        "Y/N, are you inviting me to a sleepover?" He smirked.

I crossed my arms over my chest and raised my eyebrows at him.

        "I'm serious."

        “And what?  Have him come break down your door? Not gonna happen. I want him as far away from you as possible.” He reiterated.

This protectiveness from Billy was nothing new either. Whenever I glanced at him at school, he seemed to already have tabs on me. Not in a creepy way, either. Just, keeping an eye out for me. Not that I needed any protection anyway.

I generally sat alone at lunch, by my own choosing. I worked on whatever homework I had, read a book, listened to my walkman. But one day, I hear a tray slam down onto the table next to mine. The waft of cologne and cigarette smoke told me who it was before he even sat down. He gave me a nod before eating quietly beside me. Every eye in the room was turned towards us, the new king of Hawkins was sitting with some nobody at lunch, and that tipped the scales.

But the evenings were no different.

Eight o’clock, screaming, knock on my door, Billy in the dining room. Ice and a bandage on his cheek. Go home.

I began to anticipate his arrival, pulling the first aid kit from the bathroom and setting it on the dining room table. Even the nights that he didn’t need it, he still showed up, the routine burned into his mind.

The stomps that fell on my steps were heavier than normal, causing my heart to race faster with each thud. I was about to make a break for the back door when the familiar mullet headed boy burst through the front door,  

        “Jesus Christ, Billy! You scared the shit out of me!” I exclaimed, placing my hand on my chest as Billy slammed my front door closed.

        “You can’t just come storming in here like that. I’m home alone, I thought you were coming in to kill me or something!”

He avoided me, tramping past me and into the kitchen,

        “Billy!?” I called after him, getting up from the couch and following him. He paced around, letting out short, sharp breaths.

        “Hey!” I hollered, observing as he slapped a full glass of water off the counter and onto the floor.

I now stood barefoot in a puddle, imprisoned in my space by the shattered glass on the floor.

        “What the hell is your problem!?” I screamed, throwing my hands up in grievance.

Yet another glass struck the floor, fracturing and skittering across the linoleum. Billy proceeded to be a bull in a china shop, stomping through the kitchen, making the cabinets rattle.

        “Okay, fine? You wanna break things? Let’s fucking break things, huh!?” I shouted, tiptoeing around the glass the best I could and bringing him over to the display case in the living room that held all of the participation trophies I had received as a child. I wrenched it open, snatching one of the trophies.

        “Hm?” I hummed, lifting my eyebrows at him as I slammed the plastic figurine to the floor. I handed one to him, “Come on!”

He looked me up and down, considering whether or not I was serious before smashing the object to the floor, tearing another one from the case. He yanked them all down, one by one, demolishing them on the floor under his boots. Once he was out of things to break, his chest continued to heave, his jaw clenched.

His hands curled in and out of fists as he tried to slow his breathing.

        “Billy.” I murmured, “Deep breaths.”

He nodded, although he was still powerless to contain himself, each breath more labored than the last. My mind reeled, working to think of what to do to calm him down. Then it dawned on me.

I grabbed him by the face and pulled him in to kiss me. After his initial shock wore off, his hands flew to my cheeks, leaning into my touch.

        “Are you done breaking shit?” I breathed as I pulled away, peering at his reddened face.

        “Yeah.” He exhaled.

        “Good.”

He kept his hold on my cheeks, propping his forehead on mine and staring down at the wreckage on the floor. I followed his gaze, settling on the red splotch that was appearing around my foot.

        “Did you cut it?” He whispered, his face imprinted with worry as he dropped his hands from my face and set them on my upper arms.

        “Must’ve. I didn’t notice.” I remarked, lifting my foot up off the ground and glancing at the bottom of it. A fragment of glass stuck in the ball of my foot, leaving a gouged wound.

Billy wrapped an arm around my middle, helping me hobble into the kitchen. He hoisted me up to sit on the counter.

I didn’t have to tell him where the first aid kit was. He shuffled into the bathroom and plucked it out. He took a chair from the dining room table, sitting down in front of me and arranging my foot in his lap. He tugged out the piece of glass, setting the bloodied shard on the counter beside me.

He did what I had done many times before. Pulled out the gauze, soaked it with alcohol, wiped my foot, and placed a bandage over it. He wrapped the bandage around my foot a few times before securing it.

        “Sorry about the uh…” He muttered, pointing to the shattered glass I had likely stepped on, causing the bleeding from my foot.

        “Don’t worry about it.”

        “No...I… I shouldn’t have come in here and just started breaking things...I.”

        “Billy.” I cut off, “It’s okay. I’d rather you come here and break a few plastic trophies than go beat somebody’s face in, okay?”

He nodded,

        “Broom?” He sought, brushing the fragments of glass off to the side with his foot.

        “Don’t worry about it, I got it,” I reassured.

        “It’s the least I can do.” He replied.

        “Yeah. Uh. Closet, around the corner.” I instructed him, watching as he retrieved the broom. He began to sweep up all of the shards of glass and plastic from the floor. I observed in silence, the peace that fell over the room was cathartic. He had finally let out all of that pent-up hostility in a somewhat healthy manner.

Footsteps on hardwood told me that Billy had arrived. Eight o’clock. One the nose. Once again. The doorknob turned slowly, the click of it shutting behind him barely audible over the hum of the refrigerator.

        “Y/N?” He murmured as he entered the house.

I looked up to see his face beaten the worse I had ever seen. A split on his upper lip was hardly distinguishable from his crooked and bloodied nose. The same purple from his nose crept up under his eye, turning to black.  

My mouth hung open, unsure what to say. He took his usual seat at the dining room table, shrugging off his jacket and letting out a sigh. I returned a moment later with the first aid kit and a damp washcloth.

He sat in silence as I wiped the caked blood from his mouth. The scent of liquor rolled off his tongue. Our breathing and the occasional hiss of pain broke the otherwise stark silence.

Once he was cleared of the blood, I prodded his nose with my fingers. He screwed his eyes shut, his mouth twisting in pain.

        “Doesn’t feel broken,” I informed him, leaving him to go into the kitchen for an ice bag.

He caught my arm as I walked past him, keeping me by his side.

        “Can….Uh-I… Can you just… sit… with me?” He stammered. Billy never tripped over his words. He didn’t open his mouth unless he knew exactly what to say.

        “Of course.” I murmured, placing a kiss on the top of his head and sitting in the chair across from him.

        “I- uh… I’m... I’m drunk.” He admitted with a breathy chuckle.

        “I could smell it when you walked in,” I whispered.

        “Yeah, well. So could dad and Susan.”

        “What happened?”

        “Dad did what he does.” He muttered, pointing to the smaller bruise on his cheek that I hadn’t noticed, having been preoccupied with the blood dripping down his chin, “Susan came in, talking about how worried she was about me.” He scoffed.

I nodded, urging him to keep going.

        “I told her to stay the fuck out of it, she’s not my goddamn mother and she’s the fucking reason we moved all the way out here and the reason he left my mom. Then,” He gestured to his eye and nose.

        “Your mom?” I murmured, “I’ve never heard you talk about her.”

He glanced at his lap, grasping the pendant that he had around his neck,

        “Yeah… Uh… She was… She got really sick… Diagnosed when I was 12.” He told me.

        “I’m so sorry, Billy,” I whispered.

        “Dad… He… As soon as it happened… he just… he just gave up on her… Pretended to care, he wasn’t very good at it, but he pretended.”

        “Next thing I know, he calls me into the living room to meet Susan. She was supposed to be helping him take care of our finances. Mom always did that. She was smart, loved to crunch numbers.” He smirked at the memory, despite the pain in his eyes,

        “I rode the bus to the hospital every day. He couldn’t even bother to pick me up. He couldn’t even bother to go see her. And I come home one day, open the front door, go into the living room,”

He hesitated for a moment, his jaw clenching,

        “I caught her, fucking legs spread on my goddamn couch!” He growled, “First time he ever hit me… When I started screaming at him about that. Then he started screaming some bullshit about life insurance and how if they split before she died that he wouldn’t get any money. But I knew damn well that Mama had all of her money left to me.”

        “And what do I do about that, huh? A fucking 12-year-old kid, walking in and seeing that. Hearing him say he’s staying with your mother for fucking life insurance?”

        “Do I tell my mom about it? Break her fucking heart? She’s already sick, can barely even eat on her own.”

        “So what did you do?”

        “I lied to her. I lied and I said ‘oh he’s working late’ or ‘he got a second job’ I lied to her every damn day to fucking spare her.”

        “And every day she looked worse, every day she looked paler and paler. Thinner and thinner. You know how hard that was? Watching her just wither away to nothingness, right in front of me?”

That’s a pain that many people have to endure. The loss of their parents. But no child should ever lose their mother at that age. Under those circumstances, with those kinds of secrets.

        “When she finally died, he wasn’t even there. He came in to sign the paperwork and he left. He didn’t even fucking hug me, didn’t even look at me.”

        “My aunt and I planned the funeral. She didn’t know about Susan either, I didn’t want her to have to keep that secret,”

My heart broke for Billy and I suddenly realized why he is the way he is. He felt he was protecting everybody involved by not telling anyone what was going on. He endured that pain all alone, even the death of his mother was suffered without support from his father.

        “And I’m there in my suit, looking at my mom’s casket. And he gets up to the fucking altar, and he spouts out some bullshit about how she was the love of his life, and how he’s never going to forget her. He had forgotten about her the day she got diagnosed.” He spat.

        “Not even two months later, Susan and Max are living with us. Suddenly we’re moving to California and my mother is barely in the fucking ground.” His voice cracked as he spoke, but he cleared his throat in an attempt to conceal what he was feeling.

        “I would go to school and come home to this woman in my fucking house. Sleeping in my mom’s bed. Wearing her clothes.”

I reached out,  grasping his hand and giving it a squeeze before drawing circles on his skin with my thumb. He looked up at me, lips slightly parted as if he were about to say something. No words came out, only a pathetic squeak from the back of his throat before he broke down.  He exploded into body-wracking sobs, putting his face in his hands.

I sprung up from my chair, rushing over to him wrapping my arms around his shoulders. He threw his arms around my midriff, grasping the back of my shirt in his fists as he wept against my stomach.

I set my hands on the back of his head, scrunching my fingers against his skin reassuringly. I struggled to not let my own tears fall. The previous five years of his life had been a living hell, losing his mom, watching his stepmom replace her, lying to her and her family, seeing his father become physically abusive, and having a new little sister that he couldn’t figure out how to relate to.

        “I just miss her.” He squeaked, his whimpers muffled my top.

        “I know.” I murmured, reaching down to cup his cheeks and make him look up at me.

His face was blotchy, skin flushed and coated with a layer of tears and snot. What do I say to him now? He just spilled out everything about the most difficult time of his life. Things far worse than anything I’ve been through, far worse than most people our age have been through.

        “You’re gonna be okay,” I whispered.

        “I don’t know.”

        “I do. You’re strong, you’re smart,” I punctuated the line by poking him in the center of his forehead. He cracked a slight grin, “You’re loyal. And you’re a pain in my ass, but you’re going to be okay.”

#billy hargrove imagine #lidi writes #billy hargrove x reader #billy hargrove fic #billy hargrove/reader #billy hargrovexreader #billy hargrove fics #billy hargrove fan fic #billy hargrove fanfiction #billy hargrove fan fiction #billy hargrove fan fics #billy hargrove fanfics #billy hargrove fanfic #stranger things imagines #stranger things fic #stranger things imagine #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things fan fic #stranger things fics #stranger things fanfics #stranger things fan fics #stranger things fanfic

[annabelaplit]

What Makes Lucie Perfect?

Something that has been mentioned in class while we read A Tale of Two Cities is that Lucie is basically the ideal woman of Victorian times. This means she represents what Dickens and Dickens’ culture believe to the pinnacle of feminine perfection. So what I am curious about is what exactly are the traits that made up an ideal woman during this time. Let’s look at Lucie and see what traits she has up through page 170. 

The first time the audience is introduced to Lucie Manette is in the fourth chapter of Book 1. She meets with the workaholic banker Mr. Lorry who informs her that her deceased father is in fact alive. The first description that readers get of her is,

“a young lady of not more than seventeen, in a riding-cloak, and still holding her straw travelling- hat by its ribbon in her hand. As his eyes rested on a short, slight, pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own with an inquiring look, and a forehead with a singular capacity (remembering how young and smooth it was), of rifting and knitting itself into an expression that was not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm, or merely of a bright fixed attention, though it included all the four expressions-as his eyes rested on these things, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him, of a child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very Channel, one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran high” (19)

The first things we learn about Lucie is that she is young and she is pretty. Her golden hair stands out as a feature of particular importance and it is key to her later characterization as a golden thread. The other important feature about Lucie in the passage is how she immediately makes Mr, Lorry think about when he protected her as a child bringing her from France to England. From the very first Lucie conjures up images of innocence, and is linked to a person who others need to protect and shelter. 

Perfect Victorian Woman Checklist

Beautiful

Young

Needs those around her to protect her

Throughout the meeting with Mr. Lorry, Lucie shows off many more of her traits. For instance she curtsies to Mr. Lorry, “ with a pretty desire to convey to him that she felt how much older and wiser he was than she” . She willingly acknowledges that others know more about the world than she does and has no inclination to assert herself superior. 

After Mr. Lorry tells Lucie of her father’s continued existence she is astonished. Although she tries to control her mood, she freezes and becomes briefly unable to move and speak. She is not able to process the revelations instantly and go on with normal behavior, nor does she become completely hysterical and engage in fits of fainting and crying. She reacts with shock and emotion but not too much emotion. 

Her caretaker, the red and wild Miss Pross then emerges to take care of Lucie and criticize Mr. Lorry for frightening her. This gives further credence to the idea that a perfect Victorian woman needs the protection of others. 

Perfect Victorian Woman Checklist

Beautiful

Young

Needs those around her to protect her

Respects others authority

Emotional, but not too emotional

Lucie’s next role in the story comes when she and Mr. Lorry go to retrieve her father in France and return him to England. Before going in to meet Dr. Manette, Lucie expresses to Mr. Lorry that she is afraid, but these feelings morph soon after seeing her father.

“And so exactly was the expression repeated on the fair young face of her who had crept along the wall to a point where she could see him, and where she now stood looking at him, with hands which at first had been only raised in frightened compassion, if not even to keep him off and shut out the sight of him, but which were now extending towards him, trembling with eagerness to lay the spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love it back to life and hope—so exactly was the expression repeated (though in stronger characters) on her fair young face, that it looked as though it had passed like a moving light, from him to her” (41).

Here a new and very important trait of Lucie’s is revealed, her compassion. After seeing her Dad all of her fear fades and is replaced by a deep love and an overwhelming desire to make him well again. Lucie is a person capable of extraordinary love and she wants to help others through this love. Indeed, her interactions with her father in the rest of the chapter involve her slowly revealing that she is his daughter and that she plans to take him home and care for him as is her natural duty. So she is both a care-taker and someone to be taken care of. 

Perfect Victorian Woman Checklist

Beautiful

Young

Needs those around her to protect her

Respects others authority

Emotional, but not too emotional

Overflowing with compassion

Wants to take care of others

The next time we meet Lucie is at the trial of Charles Darnay, where she serves as a reluctant witness for the prosecution. She immediately becomes the darling of everyone watching the spectacle after they see her face. 

“His daughter had one of her hands drawn through his arm, as she sat by him, and the other pressed upon it. She had drawn close to him, in her dread of the scene, and in her pity for the prisoner. Her forehead had been strikingly expressive of an engrossing terror and compassion that saw nothing but the peril of the accused. This had been so very noticeable, so very powerfully and naturally shown, that starers who had had no pity for him were touched by her” (62)

This passage illuminates what was talked before. Lucie cares for her distressed father and exudes compassion for the plight of Darnay, but everyone watching the trial also feel strongly for her and wish they could make her plight easier.

Through Lucie’s actual testimony readers gain more evidence of the great lengths she will go to and sacrifices she will make to care for her father and the immense compassion she feels for Charles Darnay. After all the testimony has been given Lucie starts to feel faint and is noticed by Sydney Carton, who orders her to be escorted out of the room. This gives more evidence for her traits of moderate emotionalism and her need to be protected by others. When the trial ends and Darnay is acquitted one of the more important passages relating to Lucie’s character appears. 

“Only his daughter had the power of charming this black brooding from his mind. She was the golden thread that united him to a Past beyond his misery, and to a Present beyond his misery: and the sound of her voice, the light of her face, the touch of her hand, had a strong beneficial influence with him almost always. Not absolutely always, for she could recall some occasions on which her power had failed; but they were few and slight, and she believed them over” (76)

This passage again attests to Lucie’s incredible powers of love. Affection from her is a source of rehabilitation, her beautiful presence a source of healing. Book Two is titled a Golden Thread and this is the description given to Lucie is the passage. She is all things good, the power of healing. And when has this great ability, is it any wonder they become beloved by all. After Darnay’s acquittal Sydney Carton takes him out for dinner and remarks,

“That’s a fair young lady to be pitied by and wept for by! How does it feel? Is it worth being tried for one’s life, to be the object of such sympathy and compassion, Mr. Darnay”(81)

It seems clear that Lucie’s love is a gift beyond measure. It is little wonder she is beloved by all who meet her. 

Perfect Victorian Woman Checklist

Beautiful

Young

Needs those around her to protect her

Respects others authority

Emotional, but not too emotional

Overflowing with compassion

Wants to take care of others

Enriches one’s life through her love

Beloved by all

Lucie’s next big chapter is Hundreds of People. It is another chance for Dickens to showcase how perfect she is and universally she is adored by everyone around her. First, she lives in just about the quaintest street in the entirety of London, and has none of the nuisances of annoying neighbors or the like. She is revealed to have the ability to “make much of little means”, and thus is fantastic at decorating her home. 

Her caretaker Miss Pross then spends quite a lot of time talking about the multitude of visitors Lucie receives and how none of them are worthy of her. Her virtues are enough to make any other man or woman’s shrink in comparison. There is more talk of how much Lucie has helped her father and then Lucie returns home to immediately be adored by all and praise Miss Pross for adoring her. Lucie suggests going outside and the company agrees immediately because “everyone turned upon her, and revolved around her”.She also makes sure the needs of her guests are well met, replenishing their glasses of wine whenever they run empty. 

Perfect Victorian Woman Checklist

Beautiful

Young

Needs those around her to protect her

Respects others authority

Emotional, but not too emotional

Overflowing with compassion

Wants to take care of others

Enriches one’s life through her love

Beloved by all

Makes the most of limited resources

Excellent homemaker

Virtues outshine those around her

Center of attention but not on purpose

Courteous and kind

Lucie’s next major mentions in A Tale of Two Cities deal with marriage. In the chapter Two Promises Charles Darnay recognizes his feelings for Lucie,

“He had loved Lucie Manette from the hour of his danger. He had never heard a sound so sweet and dear as the sound of her compassionate voice; he had never seen a face so tenderly beautiful, as hers when it was confronted with his own on the edge of the grave that had been dug for him” (126)

His reasons for love are those discussed earlier, her beauty and the unique depths of her compassion. Darnay expresses his feelings to Lucie’s father, with the caveats that he intends not to ask her for marriage unless he feels she will accept and that he will honor her commitment to her father. The fact that Dickens believes it would be wrong for Lucie to marry if it means diminishing her commitment to her father shows how important that commitment is for women. Dr. Manette also mentions that he “can make no guess at the state of her heart”. Lucie is not too open about her romantic thoughts and feelings. 

In the next chapter it is Mr. Styver who professes his love for Lucie and decides that he also wants to marry her. Rather than taking the Darnay route, he assures himself she will accept him because it will be an advantageous marriage and she is “worthy of good fortune”. But when he expresses those sentiments to Mr. Lorry he learns Lucie may not be as keen and he insults her causing Mr. Lorry to reply,

“I will hear no disrespectful word of that young lady from any lips; and that if I knew any man—which I hope I do not— whose taste was so coarse, and whose temper was so overbearing, that he could not restrain himself from speaking disrespectfully of that young lady at this desk, not even Tellson’s should prevent my giving him a piece of my mind”(140)

Lorry’s angry response makes it clear that Lucie is a lady above reproach. She is the opposite of a “mincing fool”. She is so good that no insult like Mr. Stryver’s can touch her and that if is she is besmirched a usually detached person like Mr. Lorry will spring to her defense. Furthermore the fact that she opt not to marry Mr. Stryver shows that a desire for a love based marriage instead of a prudential one is honorable. 

The final person to profess their love for Lucie is Sydney Carton who reveals his tragic love for her in a private meeting at her apartment. She responds 

‘Without it, can I not save you, Mr. Carton? Can I not recall you— forgive me again!—to a better course? Can I in no way repay your confidence? I know this is a confidence,’ she modestly said, after a little hesitation, and in earnest tears” (144)

This is more evidence of Lucie’s compassion and kindness, her desire to help, and fix the problems of others. She behaves this way even with the people she is not exceptionally close to. Furthermore she makes these statements with modesty, not trying to overstate her own worth. To these supplications Carton responds with some more telling passages about Lucie’s effect on him 

“Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight” (146)

“For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you” (147)

“O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father’s face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!” (148)

In the first passage Carton talks about how Lucie inspired in him a desire to begin again and to become a better person that he thought was lost forever. In the second passage he explains that he would sacrifice anything to help Lucie and those she cares about. In the third passage he expresses how Lucie will soon find great happiness in a domestic role and asks her not to forget him Clearly the impact that Lucie has on others is quite extraordinary. 

In addition to causing such passion in Sydney Carton, Lucie also agrees to keep these revelations secret from all others but only after an “agitated pause”. Carton’s request for her confidence outweighs her desire to tell those closest to her about them. This is evidence of her commitment and willingness to sacrifice.

So what makes an ideal Victorian woman? The final list of traits is 

Perfect Victorian Woman Checklist

Beautiful

Young

Needs those around her to protect her

Respects others authority

Emotional, but not too emotional

Overflowing with compassion

Wants to take care of others

Enriches one’s life through her love

Beloved by all

Makes the most of limited resources

Excellent homemaker

Virtues outshine those around her

Center of attention but not on purpose

Courteous and kind

Wife-Material

Familial piety

Not too open about matters of romance

Sensible

Inspires great loyalty in others

Above reproach

Marries for love

Inspires people to be their best selves

People want to sacrifice for her

Finds joy in domestic settings

Committed to promises

Capable of sacrifice

That certainly doesn’t seem like an impossible standard at all!

[mcabalabal]

Fang Yin’s Handkerchief

/1/

She looked at the handkerchief again, no longer white; past thirteen years. Matches in hand, ready to burn her became ashes of the past.

However, before the flames, his heart trembled; Blowing the fire – he was silent in the silent night. She opened the bedroom window: leaden skies of Los Angeles Occupies from 13 years ago.

Came to mind first week in this room When every night she cried; Yes, just call her Fang Yin – meaning fragrant grass. His real name was secret, wait till all subside.

At that time he was twenty two Forced to flee from Indonesia, the country of her birth After the mob raped In 1998, in a melee.

What is Indonesia mean for me? Fang Yin whispered to herself. Thousands of Chinese1 descendents left Indonesia: After May the jet, after May that no order After wallowing May riots2

/2/

It was a country without a government run Abandoned law, riots everywhere There was only the cry of Pursue Chinese! Kill the Chinese! The mass were uncontrollable3.

The sky blackened by the blaze of smoke Of houses and shops - All amazed, no one was ready Protected yourself from malignancy.

There were families who chose to commit suicide In the presence of looters whose eyes like fire Ready to pounce; ready to seize anything Ready to rape the helpless women4.

What is the meaning of Indonesia for me? whispered Fang Yin To herself, whose life had been taken Who no longer could feel the cool breeze Because her happiness living pulp.

That time heard a long howling dog As the security forces for help; They threw the animal into the pool Floundered: the water was redden.

/3/

Fang Yin family fled to America Together with a number of people of Chinese descendent; They lived nearby in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New Jersey – like a colony of Indonesia.

First weeks in America Fang Yin has not realized what actually happened Weak body and soul, needs recovery of the enormity of the trauma, Wherever she went, her parents and a psychologist at her side.

After three months of her life to be normal. She also took courses in English, wanted to continue studying. However, Fang Yin had changed - She was no longer cheerful, liked to be alone.

When a Korean young man approached her Fang Yin even get away, worrying if not different With Kho, her boyfriend formerly in Jakarta, Who left her after realizing she was raped.

13 years already she in the United State, growing her desire To return to her homeland, Indonesia; At that time she was thirty-five He wants to start a new life, building a family. Wanted to have a husband, wanted to have children Homesickness where she was born and raised Miss teen friends, spending long periods of time Sightseeing and joking in Citraland Mall.

But her anger to Indonesia was still burning Trauma of being rape was still tangible horror to her. Fang Yin canceled her intention to return For her Indonesia was a dark past

Kho memorable impression on her mind. She did not know where the young man is now located. He opened a letter that since 12 years ago She would sent to a young man, but always canceled.

Kho, how are you I am alone here Formerly you said will accompany Especially in times of difficulty That’s why I accepted your love I was very disturbed, Kho I want to hear your voice.

She often tried to contact him by phone There was never any answer, just like disappeared. Kho might also flee, but who knows where Fang Yin never know anymore about him.

The only memories of Kho Which was still kept Was a piece of handkerchief She currently hold on tight, worrying him.

/4/

She wanted to burn a piece of memory The only witness, the rest of the trauma of the past Up to know the handkerchief is kept secret Do not want anyone else to interfere.

She looked at the handkerchief again He touch the surface, still felt Former tears drop by drop wed her at the time Enduring part of her life.

A year ago her psychologist, an American, said She was almost recovered. And will recover completely If she willingly accepted the past has been lost As part of the game of human fate. To the psychologist Fang Yin owed his life. Several times the woman almost committed suicide But because he companied her every day Soul of the wealthy family’s child getting recover again.

She repeated that psychologist magic formula, She tried to understand what lies behind the words: Accept the fact what it is! Make peace with the past.

In the fourth month, she began to feel the benefits The past was no longer a bomb in the head But memories like a wasp sting that was not stopping Not easily run away.

/5/

She looked back at the handkerchief: Looked cinema presentation on its surface: Illustrated her home in Kapuk, North Jakarta A building with high walls.

Lined up next to other houses The fence as if race Which was the highest, where the most robust. All occupied by people of Chinese descent5. However, any high wall Was not able to secure them Unable to stem the wave of riots The burning of Jakarta. The day was Tuesday, May 12, 1998. Fang Yin no college, just at home; She was just watching television Everything was broadcast over again.

Free speech on college campuses Demonstrations everywhere Demanding Soeharto fell Considered to be unable to restore the country’s economy.

Companies out of business Unemployment is rampant The price of staple goods soar The rupiah slumped.

Student movement which at first only rally Reform movement first named Soon turned into a massive wave of demonstrations Not irreversible any more.

Afternoon, Tuesday, May 12 In front of the Trisaksi University Four students were shot dead: The night was tense, turmoil erupted.

Wednesday, May 13, 1998 Thousands of students gathered At the Trisakti University Grief mingled with crowd cries

Not known from where the jungle At noon getting full of mass And, suddenly, a group of people Burning tires in the middle of the road.

Black smoke was billowing high Passing truck stopped by mass And shouts echoed, more and more wild: Burn! burn!

The mass of the crowd liked ants Pushed into the middle of town Down from the trucks that come out suddenly Out of nowhere.

Shouts were changed direction Heard the sounds of burn Chinese! Burn Chinese burn! Hordes of strong and well built youngsters Sweeping shops, offices, and Chinese settlement.

They entered the houses of the slanted eyes Dragging its residents, beat the men Raping the women. And the afternoon More and more and countless.

Accompanied by a maid, Fang Yin witnessed Scene after scene of horror on television. Fear gripped her! He phones her father in the office, unable to go home Mass filled the streets, countless.

/6/

The frightened ghosts were transformed - She heard the deafening noise A bunch of people damaging the fence They went in and killed her herder dog.

Her maid had time to scream, and then collapsed By the hoodlums that she got beat. Fang Yin ran to lock herself in the room Screaming, howling, ask for help.

No one heard. Perhaps neighbors Also facing the same fears. Fang Yin battered door, come in five men Well-built – they dragged her to bed.

Her hair was tufted Her clothes were torn and torn And roughly They hit, slapped.

Fang Yin was screaming, ask forgiveness, Do not … Do not … I have money. Forgiveness. Do not.

Like a pack of wolves they were: A person holding her left leg Another stretched her right leg The other on top of her.

O, had been stripped of her honor! The others prepared to wait their turn Malignant grin, no mercy For a virgin.

Fang Yin struggled as best she could Shouted as hard as she could Moving to maintain her honor Hitting, grabbing blindly.

Between pain and anxiety were unequaled Had she heard the bully laugh Devour her: hihihihi, hahahaha - Fang Yin was losing consciousness.

/7/

Fang Yin, yes, poor Fang Yin - When opening the eyes She found herself lying In the hospital.

At that Kho, her boyfriend, came to visit Gave her a handkerchief; Fang Yin remove drops of tears - The handkerchief that was loyal to her.

Stored in a that handkerchief the first drops of tears The second drop of her tear The tenth drop of her tear The thousandth drop of her tear

There was also stored in the lonely nights When she asked the Lord to make her dead When she felt herself weak, no longer reinforced The handkerchiefs recorded as diary book.

Rina, she close friend, caressed her Accompanying Kho in the visit. Rina really understood her, Rina much help her.

Infusion flowed in one hand Her mother and mother cried and hugged her; Fang Yin remembered what was happened Imagine what she has experienced.

Scattered bruises all over her body And remembered: she had been raped!6 Fang Yin once screamed powerfully The whole hospital heard.

Please … please … Mercy, Oh Lord Help me Mercy, mercy …

/8/

Jakarta ocean of fire! Where are the security forces? Did not appear at all. The unrest also spread wild Like fire, like a snake. Jakarta residents unnerved. So many people came Just like that, out of nowhere No one knew them.

Dropped by trucks in a specific location They were stocky and robust - They destroyed, they burned, Their looted – and the mass was hooked.

And when the crowd more and more And when there was no rule that upright The raiders left the premises - Mass was raging without a definite cause.

They scramble to plunder, each preceded Helter-skelter, overlapping, on top caught fire In a burning building Roasted alive – and died in vain.7

/9/

Fang Yin and family did not understand politics More over military issues.8 They made a living by trading only And when confused, not sure where to complain.

Indonesia earth broke down, the sky flashing Meanwhile, President Suharto was there in Egypt; The situation became more severe Waiting for the President return.

Year 1998, dated May 15 4:30 in the morning Suharto said he did not take a step backwards; Tension mounted, the peace was shattered.

Chinese who began to calm down Re worried that the turmoil to come back; They sell their goods, slam the price Preparing to move to foreign countries.

At the hospital, Fang Yin was still lying weak. She suspected the riots would happen again And those vicious burly men Would rape her again.

Daddy, what was my mistake? Why I was raped? What was my mistake, Daddy? Her father did not answer, He embraced his daughter tightly.

Kho, her boyfriend, quiet and start to cold. Fang Yin was screaming - A spiritual teacher tried to stop it Touch Confucius sincerity. Conveys the essence of zodiac; Fang Yin was a Dragon girl, and 1998 was the Tiger - Dragon was less fortunate in that year And must received with open chest.

He described Ren Dou principle The doctrine of human relations; Yes, a small book, The Book of Meng Zi: And he read, Listen: That were not morality should not be seen That were not morality should not be heard That no decency not to talk about.

Lovingly he held Fang Yin forehead He faced her eye, supplied energy, He grew live spirit, And calmly said,

Fang Yin, This a disaster has occurred Forget it. Begin a new life - Sincerity will beat adversity Confidence will defeat suffer.

In a hospital television, Fang Yin heard the discussion: In the history of Indonesia, Chinese people Often became victims of mob fury. Uhhhh … Fang Yin did not understand history.9

/10/

So a week after the event Fang Yin and family flew to America; Not because they did not love Indonesia, said her father, But situation that forced.

My father told me about their great-grandfather relatives Freedom fighter, a friend of Bung Karno; Sie Kok Liong his name Pemilik Gedung Kramat 106.

In the building the Youth Congress was held That delivered the October 28, 1928 Youth Pledge; What was the meaning of Indonesia for Fang Yin and his family? They have to leave for the salvation of the soul.

/11/

Now 13 years after the disaster Fang Yin heard Indonesia had stabilized again; Some residents of Chinese descent became ministers Chinese New Year traditions were given the right to live the same way again. Lion swaying freely. Chinese-language newspaper circulation had been allowed Chinese-language programs presented on television. Confucianism had been recognized.10

Indonesian Chinese communities in foreign countries Sometimes met, shared stories about the Chinese New Year and all the way; Already many changing countries Being an American, Singapore, and others.

It seemed, for them Indonesia was the past A dark black; However, Chinese New Year was still unite them Although different religions and nations.

Fang Yin father had firm stance Abstinence became citizens of another country; To Fang Yin her father often told And warned,

Fang Yin, you’re a real Indonesian Do not move to another country citizen. Her father was fortune in Indonesia In time had to go back there.

And of course angry when she learned Fang Yin citizens had moved away; U.S. passport was in her hand, The process was assisted by a lawyer.

Fang Yin told by her father a lot about Indonesia In order to grow back her love to homeland Country that they always defended - Since the days of the movement that involved her great-grandfather.

Fang Yin was a girl who diligently read: The library provided all sorts of books, The book provided all kinds of science, And science would be able to change people.

But she was definitely with herself Did not want to see Indonesia again; Her father was desperate Convincing Fang Yin to come back.

And when the father returned to Indonesia Fang Yin insisted to stay To live in the United States alone - Modern culture was her handle, freedom was her rest. Fang Yin liked legal protection That’s why she was angry with Indonesia; Fang Yin did not like violence That case she hated Indonesia.

However, reefs could be shaken by a big wave: Ocean could become a desert What had not changed under the sun? Her father’s advice was so deeply rooted.

America was a temporary place to stop by But we were born in Indonesia, so we should die there - Wounds of the past must be confronted Love Fatherland must be grown.

And step by step, with difficulty Fang Yin anger began to subside Although grief over riots Still looming like a ghost.

Fang Yin began to grow identity Years books of philosophy, literature, religion, politics devoured; Science sculpted her Past long pain just flavored her life attitude.

And after thirteen years elapsed Fang Yin began to feel nostalgic. Fond memories of home, the teen years in Jakarta; Unconsciously, she called the name of Albert Kho, her first love.

Where a re you now, idol of my heart? Since her move to America, They never got in touch again; Only a handkerchief that was now left.

A bit she heard the news, Kho had a family Rina was the name of his wife, once close friend of Fang Yin - She was also a Chinese descent; Both had become Moslem and Moslem woman.

She imagined when Kho and Rina Visited her at Hospital that time; Fang Yin could only kept silent, saved the pain Left by a man who had already very familiar in the hart.

/12/

Fang Yin back on her knees in front of a handkerchief, He lit a match - Want to burn residual memories of his girlfriend first: Past should be immediately removed from memory.

Albert Kho I must also not forget, he said. Hand holding the cigarette back trembling; He was terrified, as if the fire would burn him; And so the fire did not flare.

Fang Yin cried. At first slowly, eventually getting cut - Keep it on hold So that no one else heard.

He lit another match - And without thinking, he burned handkerchief; The fire is lit, burned handkerchief He saw all her old self to ashes.

The past was burning, Long pain was also burnt, Love to Kho was on fire Jealous to Rina was gone on fire.

And her anger with Indonesia? Burnt already, as the rite of purification; The universe seemed to stop Quiet time – a long time.

And handkerchiefs became a pile of ashes. Fang Yin was born again Became woman who was completely new Cleaned from the horrors of the past.

Tears trickled accompanying the fire, Handkerchief was no more. She had managed to make peace with the past She had managed to became the new Fang Yin.

He fervently prayed: Oh Lord, raise the courage I intend to return to Fatherland Let I spend the rest of live there The land that gave birth to me, also make the soil bury me.

/13/

What does Indonesia mean for Fang Yin? She was born there not ask When the trauma was still gaping Indonesia just a wallow of wound.

Now she saw Indonesia with different eyes The country became the mirror of herself which was ever changing She wanted to be like her great-grandfather Birth, looking for a living, fighting and dying over there.

Indonesia entered again in her heart Such as the waving palm trees Call her to come home soon! Fang Yin felt the longing, tears.

According to the Chinese calendar, 2012 was Dragon Zodiac It would be good luck; She misses adolescence, She missed first place to spend evening in Jakarta. 13 years ago, she came to America Brought with her a very anger Brought with her resentment Toward Indonesia.

Now she wanted to go home, longing burning She wanted Indonesia as she was: to win against the past Disasters and calamities came unexpectedly But she should still had a dream.

This is new Indonesia, she said, they said. Yes, yes – her intention was steadfast: I get back there soon! I immediately go back there! I live there soon!

***

Disclaimer: The poem is written by Denny JA. I posted on this blog for reading material purpose.

#poem #dennyja

[gregoryandrew1991]

Reiki Master Indianapolis Creative And Inexpensive Useful Tips

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#Reiki Master Indianapolis Creative And Inexpensive Useful Tips #Reiki Master Glasgow

[whatdoyouknowforsure]

Conspiracy Theory

I remember holing up in my room listening to a series or five or six cassette tapes in a row about the hidden power of the illuminati, how they ran world governments in secret, and the implications for Christians. I was very cynical back in the 70’s so I recall scoffing during tape one, a lot of what ifs during 3-5, and a feeling of isolation and fear by the time I reached the end. I thought, “Its crazy, why should these people have the inside scoop on such a powerful and well connected cabal? But what if some of it is true? I was frightened, and I did not know what to do with this apparent special knowledge. How were we to fight these bad guys, would we Christians be around when the hammer fell, or would the rapture remove us before that? What to do?

I decided I needed three things. I needed protection, I needed to know if these conspiracies were true, and I need to know what to do next.

Protection

First, I worked on protection. This made me think about armor and I looked into Ephesians 6. I learned about all the protection offered by the covering God provided. The only offensive weapon turned out the be a sword, representing the scriptures. I noticed that I had already calmed down at bit. I prayed that God would use that very sharp sword of truth in my life. One of the truths I had to face up to was that God would love and protect me regardless of the length of my time this side of eternity. My comfort, and my plans for an extended stay here were secondary. He had me for the long term and would not let go.

What if it is true?

Still shaky emotionally, still cynical intellectually, I moved to the second need; What if the conspiracies are true? Heck, what if they are 25% true. I reread what Jesus said to his countrymen. These were people that he knew had a plan to kill him. Jesus told them, (John 8:44) “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” I decided then that if Satan is behind a conspiracy, then he does not have a new plan or a new language. He is the original conspirator, and he lies to his coconspirators, and they lie to us. So, if Satan was lying to them, and they were at least as selfishly motivated as most humans, then they could not possibly be as choreographed in the movements and controls as was reported in the cassettes.

What would God have me do about it?

So, even if 25% of the conspiracy is true, and I have protection from God, how should this special knowledge about the men behind the curtain change the way I lived, and fought, and voted? I had a sense of urgency without an action plan. This sent me back to the sword of his word to learn what is clear about how we should be spending our efforts, and gifts, and time. One of the first places I landed was the book of Acts. I wanted to see if the apostles were about this focus on hunting evil people, studying them, and warning people about their schemes. I found very little to support this idea. He told his closest followers, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority” (Acts 1:7). This is not the only place in which God discourages distraction and tells us to get back to the primary objective. Regarding the primary objective I had a collection of biblical to do lists. Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly, go therefore and make disciples, love god and your neighbor, serve the least of these, and more. Very few directives to study the roaring lion, only to resist in the power of God and that he would flee.

As I prayed and studied the truth, the power of the lies (and half-truths) dissipated. This has provided a firm foundation for doing very occasional battle with actual spirts, and more often in resisting the influence of the people of the lie. More than that, I am secure in the knowledge that God’s work is learning and spreading truth and grace so that others may know him and follow him.

Later, in my work as a psychotherapist, I was able to recall this experience and thereby empathize with those who came to me with conspiracy theories. Yes, some of them suffered with the very complex brain disorder schizophrenia, but most were just hypervigilant folks trying to cope with a very chaotic world. The main attraction of conspiracy theory is that it organizes our world. The world is a calmer place with when the threats are simplified, I can blame the commies, or the Martians, or the deep state.  The alternative to explaining all that is scary and confusing about the world this way is to see stresses and threats as senseless and random attributes of a broken world. So, a person offering special knowledge is offering you comfort. They may promise to unravel the mysteries of the end times, they may seek to prove that evil rich guys run the world (was that ever a secret?), or that the root of all that wrong with the planet is white sugar. They offer you comfort for control. They want you to think that you could be tricked into accepting the mark of the beast, or by some other mean loose God’s grip on you (lies). At least when I have an organizing principle (e.g. the bad people are behind it) I can develop a list of behaviors that will help me mitigate the stress. Those behaviors may take the forms as divergent as responsibly voting or wearing an aluminum hat. The point is that the behaviors are intended to lessen the power of the threat. I see this as managing the effects of evil rather than pursuing the expansion of God’s kingdom.

The primary threat to followers of Christ, I believe is that these conspiracies cause division among us. I exhort us all to focus on truth of our calling, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” Paul focused on the truth, shared the truth, and had no time for the endless supply of lies and partial truths. They did not matter to him because he knew he would not get out of here alive, but he knew his master would not let go of him.

[bountyofbeads]

The Kurds Gave Their Lives to Defeat the Islamic State. Trump Just Pissed It All Away.

Christopher Dickey, World News Editor | Updated 10.18.19 6:00 AM ET, Published 10.17.19 6:28 AM ET | Daily Beast | Posted October 18, 2019 |

PARIS—Donald J. Trump, trying to bluster his way Wednesday through the most disastrous foreign-policy debacle of his presidency, seemed to spit on the graves of more than 10,000 Kurds who died fighting to defeat the so-called Islamic State.

By moving U.S. troops in Syria out of the way, he gave a green light for Turkish forces to slaughter America’s erstwhile allies while ISIS prisoners escape en masse, and the Russians take charge.

“Syria may have some help with Russia, and that’s fine,” Trump said Wednesday. “They’ve got a lot of sand over there. So, there’s a lot of sand that they can play with. Let them fight their own wars.”

But no amount of Trumpian huffing and puffing, threatening and cajoling can change the widespread view in the Middle East—and in Congress—that almost on a whim he collapsed a fragile balance of power, then had to cut and run.

So he blames those he betrayed as if they were servants who failed him, and tries to claim credit for himself for the good that they did. In a deranged meeting with congressional leaders Wednesday, he reportedly declared “I captured ISIS.” He claimed the “overrated” former Defense Secretary James Mattis told him it would take two years. “I captured them in a month.”

Trump didn’t do any capturing in fact. The Kurds did that.

And Trump in another appearance decided to denigrate them.

“The Kurds know how to fight and as I said they are not angels, they are not angels,” Trump said during a photo-op with the Italian president. “Take a look. You have to go back and take a look. And they fought with us, and we paid a lot of money for them to fight with us.” 

Well, let’s do that. Let’s look at this force that Trump clearly views as nothing more than an army of mercenaries. Did they really “save the sum of things,” as the poet A.E. Housman once wrote, “for pay”?

If so, then however many millions of dollars were spent, the United States got a lot more than its money’s worth, because when the Islamic State surged across Syria and Iraq like a tidal wave of terror in 2014, all the other armies in the region, including those in which the U.S. had invested billions, were found to be complicit or corrupt and cowardly.

ASSAD'S GAME

Early in the Syrian conflict, Bashar al-Assad, the tyrant in Damascus, decided to cast his fight against democracy as a fight against Islamic terror—and to that end released the many Islamic terrorists he had in his prisons. His regime knew them well, having facilitated their insurgency in neighboring Iraq against the United States and its allies.

Mahmud al-Naser, a defected Syrian intelligence officer interviewed for a series on Assad-ISIS collusion published by The Daily Beast in 2016, said the service he worked for estimated 20,000 people crossed into Iraq as the U.S. began its attack in March 2003. Most returned after the fall of Baghdad three weeks later. But an additional 5,000 crossed for reasons of religious ideology—and they were “what gave birth to the monster” that became ISIS.

In the years that followed, Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies fought ferociously against other insurgents, but left ISIS virtually untouched as it built its “caliphate” in eastern Syria and grew rich selling oil to the Assad regime among others.

IRAQ’S ‘ASTRONAUTS’

In June 2014, ISIS moved against Mosul, the second biggest metropolis in Iraq. The government’s soldiers there had been trained by the U.S. and armed by the U.S. at enormous expense over the course of 11 years, and greatly outnumbered the ISIS forces. But the Iraqi military was rife with corruption. Many of the soldiers it had on its books were called “astronauts” by the locals because they orbited very far from their units. In fact, their officers were pocketing the soldiers’ salaries. And the problem grew worse as ISIS advanced deeper into Iraq, eventually threatening even Baghdad.

“The astronaut phenomenon is destroying the Iraqi army,” one officer, Kadhim al-Shammari, told the news site Niqash, a partner of The Daily Beast.  “There are senior officers who are making deals with dozens of their men, giving them vacations for months in return for part or all of the men’s salaries.”

Abbas al-Saadi, a soldier who should have been stationed near Tikrit where his unit was fighting ISIS, was working instead as a taxi driver in the capital.

“If I was killed, who would look after my wife and three children?” he asked. “I love the military but I am worried about ISIS. They not only kill soldiers in battle, they behead them and burn them. That’s why I decided to give all of my salary to the officer in charge of our unit so that he would register me absent with leave.”

RESCUING THE YAZIDIS

The Obama administration did not begin to recognize fully the kind of threat ISIS posed until after the fall of Mosul, and it did not begin to take serious action until August, when ISIS captured the town of Sinjar and began the systematic massacre of the Yazidi population, whose ancient religion was condemned as devil worship. Thousands of men were killed, women were raped and sold as slaves, children were taken to be indoctrinated in the ISIS version of Islam and turned into fighters.

As tens of thousands fled to the mountain above the town, the U.S. dropped food to the refugees and began to bomb ISIS positions. But someone needed to defend people on the ground, and the forces of Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government, the vaunted Peshmerga, had withdrawn.

The Kurds who stood their ground, as The Daily Beast reported at the time, were those from neighboring Syria, members of the so-called People’s Protection Units, or YPG, a militia affiliated with the Turkish-Kurdish PKK, designated a terrorist organization not only by Ankara but also by Washington.

“In 2016 terrorism fueled a rise in xenophobic populism that helped propel fearmongering Donald Trump, with his call for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States, into the White House.”

The PKK, or Kurdistan People’s Party, has fought a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish government, following a radical leftist ideology and employing terrorist as well as conventional guerrilla tactics. YPG fighters and supporters often brandish the image of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, now in a Turkish prison. But their bravery is legendary, and the YPG particularly is famous for its many women warriors, who were much in evidence fighting back against ISIS forces during the flight from Sinjar.

When Yazidi refugees hit a checkpoint where peshmerga were confiscating unauthorized weapons they sent word back down their convoy: “Give your guns to the YPG!”

That same August, ISIS set out to horrify the United States, Europe, and anyone else who might challenge its power with a series of gruesome executions. Journalist James Foley and others were beheaded. Calls for the Obama administration to do something intensified, but there was no taste for a new deployment of American fighters on the ground in the Middle East. A competent local force had to be found.

THE TURNING POINT

It wasn’t easy for the United States to join forces with the YPG. There were no illusions about its close ties with the terrorist-designated PKK up to that point, and pulling together an alliance of local forces to fight ISIS was a little like the problem building an effective resistance to the Nazis in World War II. Many people back then were uncomfortable working with communists who revered Joseph Stalin, but the communists were among the most dedicated fighters.

Then, in September 2014, ISIS laid siege to the town of Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border.

For a year at least, Turkish authorities had watched as thousands of Islamic extremists from around the world flooded into Syria to fight Assad and, in many cases, to join ISIS. Now the Turkish military—soldiers in NATO’s second biggest army—simply watched as the people of Kobani faced the ISIS onslaught. And once again, it was the Kurds of the YPG who went toe to toe against the Islamic State.

“The question is how long the YPG can defy the odds and prolong their last stand in a battle that resonates every bit as powerfully for Kurds as the Alamo once did for Americans.”

— From The Daily Beast writing about the Battle of Kobani, October 2014

“Turkish soldiers are meters away patrolling the fence, more to stop Turkish Kurds from joining the fight than to protect the country from Islamic militants besieging the Syrian border town,” wrote The Daily Beast correspondent on the scene. “In the distance, black smoke is swirling from the western and northern sides of Kobani, the last redoubts of the few hundred YPG fighters who are there fighting for their lives. They control only about a third of the town now, YPG sources inside tell me, and the question remains how long they can defy the odds and prolong their last stand in a battle that resonates every bit as powerfully for Kurds as the Alamo once did for Americans.”

Weeks and then months passed as the U.S. began supplying quantities of weapons to the Kurds, and used air power to support them, until finally, in January 2015 the siege was broken—and so was the myth that ISIS was unbeatable.

Asked on Wednesday when the moment came that decided U.S. backing for the YPG, a senior State Department official in both the Obama and Trump administrations answered with one word: “Kobani.”

The war to destroy the territorial claims of the so-called “Caliphate” went on with largely defensive battles to contain an Islamic State that claimed as its objective baqiya wa tatamadad, “remaining and expanding.” And as ISIS felt the pressure, its operatives and sympathizers launched stunning attacks in Europe and the United States. The Bataclan massacre in Paris in November 2015 and the Orlando night-club shooting in June 2016 are just two examples.

ENDGAME

Fear spread through Western electorates, fueling a rise in xenophobic populism that helped propel fearmongering Donald Trump, with his call for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States, into the White House.

But the tough job, the fighting on the ground in the Syrian heart of ISIS-land, remained all along with the YPG and Arabs who joined with it to form the Syrian Democratic Forces. They retook Raqqa in October 2017 and delivered the final blow to the Caliphate as a physical territory when the town of Baghouz fell in March this year.

ISIS fighters, Trump declared at the time, “are losers and barely breathing.” He claimed victory, as usual, for himself.

The YPG and SDF had lost thousands of men and women fighters, with many more left permanently handicapped. Are they angels? Perhaps killer angels. With the Americans and other members of the U.S. backed coalition raining death from the sky, they defeated on the ground the Islamic State’s forces of darkness. Are they mercenaries? If so, then truly, they earned their keep when they saved the sum of things.

And Trump? He’s just pissed it all away.

#trump scandals #president donald trump #trumpism #trump administration #president trump #trump #trump news #erdogan kurds #kurds #iraqi kurdistan #syrian kurds #turkey kurds #erdogan #recep tayyip erdoğan #iraq #kurdsbetrayedbytrump #maga #maga2020 #us politics #politics #syria news #syrian war #syria #syrianrefugees #u.s. military #u.s. news #military #worldpolitics #world news #international news

[boopa-doopa-foop]

1984 Julia Analysis

If you were to make an inquiry to any intellectual or analytical website as to the purpose of Julia in the novel of 1984, you will, no matter how many different sources you turn to, probably be told almost verbatim- this phrase: She represents the elements of humanity that Winston does not: pure sexuality, cunning, and survival. In my personal examinations of the text however, this a far cry of the full truth and depth of her character. And, honestly, out of all the countless reviews and scrutiny's of her I have seen, I have always come away unsatisfied. I feel as if her character is treated rather hollowly, as a thing rather than a person. And it has led me to believe that for the most part, People attempt to analyze and give Julia depth of character as a sex object rather than a full woman independent of Winston, with her own past life and motivations.

But Julia wasn't born a horny twenty six year old woman looking to whore herself out to the men of the Inner Party. She has a past that affects who she is and what she does, just like Winston. And any analysis of her role in the novel that excludes such blaring important details such as how her age affects her role in furthering the reign of Big Brother is laughingly incomplete. Julia is viewed as a sex object in the novel, as her only form of characterization for the readers is given through the eyes of Winston, who lusts for her. So it can be difficult to get a full view of her character by only reviewing what Winston speaks/thinks of her. But if one looks into her actions, as well as other details mentioned by Winston, and look at her in the context of not only what Winston says of her but what he says of himself and his own life experience, a much more fleshed out figure begins to appear.

I mean honestly the way Winston talks about her is so symptomatic and based in his own personal male view narrative it's astounding that no one has pointed out the one of the biggest arguments against whether or not Winston and Julia truly loved each other and therefore whether torture/pain is stronger than love or that love is pointless is that in Winston's eyes Julia is his Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Winston views her solely in the way she affects him and not at all in the way she might exist separately from him. Winston views himself as depressed and old and frumpy and sex deprived and boring and cowardly, a pushover in the face of totalitarian rule. And Julia is young and happier with her life than Winston. She carelessly and fearlessly defies the establishment to get what she wants and she's exciting and only exists to bring sunshine into Winston's life and show him how to let go and embrace his more rebellious side instead of just sitting around malcontent. She was born to bring zest into his boring life by having sex with him in the woods. At least, that's how he views her. But there's so much more to her to be seen, even simply just taking into account her age. Julia is twenty six, unlike Winston who is thirty nine. This is important, because the only other main people Winston socializes with are implied to be or shown to be his cohorts. O'brian is forty, his neighbor and friends at work seem to be the same age, if not at times older, such as with Symes.

This puts Julia at a very different place developmentally than Winston and O'brian in the timeline of Big Brother's overrule. We are shown a strong contrast in the book between Winston's generation and that of his neighbor mr. Parsons children. People Winston's age are even shown to fear the children, as even at the ages of six and seven, the ages mr. Parsons children are, they are very cruel and vicious. They are members of the Spying and Youth Group, and are raised in school to be perfectly willing and voraciously eager to obey, protect, and reinforce the societal constructs Created by the Party. One small slight in performing the status quo and any adult could find themselves reported by such children and taken away to the Ministry of Love.

This is a steep difference to Winston's age group, who are either unhappy with life and Big Brother but without the adequate tools to understand express or act on this feeling, or happy and content to serve Big Brother individually, but with noted preference for keeping to themselves instead of constantly trying to police those around them like the children. They do not actively look for rebels. Julia is the only character who is in neither group. Her age group is the place in between Winston and Mr. Parsons proud little spies. The transition between these two is clearly shown in her and yet never really brought up or discussed except in passing in both the novel and in real life. Winston's story of his past put The Parties takeover at happening around the time he was ten, as he has little but some faded memories from the time. So, if the Party took over around when Winston was ten, and his memory of the image of Big Brother first coming about in the sixties is to be trusted, that places Julia's birth at around the exact same time that the Party came into their own and became completely comfortably established as the new rulers of modern society. Since Julia being 26 was born in the year 1958 of the novels timeline, her generation would be the first to be educated completely under the Party by the Parties rules and standards. Julia is the transition between Winston and Mr. Parsons children.

This is most powerfully demonstrated by the scene in which Winston is reading Goldstein's book given to him by O'brian at Mr. Charrington's shop. Winston reads aloud to Julia about how the goal of the Party is to teach their citizens to be completely disinterested in rebellion. During this, Winston turns multiple times to Julia to see if she is paying attention, only for her to not seeming be taking in what Winston is reading to her, and finally to end up falling asleep. Julia falls asleep as Winston, who has been overworked all week, reads avidly about how the Party strives to control its citizens so much that they don't even want to think about rebelling. And Julia, a member of the first generation that was raised under the Parties fully developed rule, is asleep. How do you miss that? To me it was one of the most pivotal moments in all of 1984, and yet never once have I seen someone mention it in their analysis of Julia's character. Julia and Winston did not love each other. Winston viewed Julia as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, to Julia Winston was just another meaningless conquest, albeit a unique and exciting one, which I believe is what led her to tag along with Winston in his quest for rebellion. She may have inspired Winston to move into action, but as shown earlier, she had no personal interest herself in truly rebelling against Big Brother. She merely used sex as a way to rebel against Big Brother in small ways, like a young rebellious teen might want to not be told what to do by their parents but doesn't actually want to leave them. This is why Julia and Winston betray each other so quickly. She never truly wanted to leave the fold of Big Brother, so while she thought Winston's anti establishment ways were exciting he wasn't worth being in pain for, much less experiencing torture. And Julia wasn't a slut to no purpose. Julia simply used sex to rebel in all likeliness mostly because it was the easiest low risk option that was available to her. Julia was a very sexually attractive woman, and was part of the anti sex league. There were obviously far more men than just Winston who at first seeing her wanted to have sex with her. And, if Winston's rather unloving sexual fantasies about violently raping and murdering her are anything to go off of as a standard for other men like him, she was probably often under pressure at least passively to let herself be used as a cumrag. If there are powerful men who want to use her for sex, and sex is a form of rebellion, especially with Julia as a member of the Anti Sex League, and Julia wanted to rebel in a way with as little consequence as possible, it's only natural she become promiscuous. Not because she necessarily likes sex, much less sex with older men with no interest in anything but using her body for their own pleasure, but because it was her way of using these men back, her only available form of rebellion. So Despite the lovely image of Julia getting nice and hot over wrinkled old bags of flesh slithering their grimy calloused hands all over her in the dark, she does not have sex because she loves to have sex and cannot therefore represent pure sexuality! I need to organize this more, but the bottom line of this is that Julia's characterization suffers due to a hollow male centered analysis of her character, actions and motives.

#my writing #my ideas #i actually turned in a cleaner version of this as an essay once #but im putting it here too because the world needs to know

[joannrochaus]

What Saturday Night Live taught America about forgiveness

Saturday Night Live, a show built around commenting on current events through satire and attempts at humor (some more successful than others), is rarely known for improving the country’s morality. Two Saturdays ago, cast member Pete Davidson epitomized that fact after making fun of a war injury suffered by Congressmen-elect Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas.

After the segment aired, there was an understandable backlash from people on both sides of the political spectrum, with responses ranging from demands for an apology to calls for Davidson (and show creator Lorne Michaels) to be fired. Both are in the news again today, however, because they instead took a rather unusual approach to resolve the situation.

Rather than heed the calls to fire either man, SNL chose instead to invite Crenshaw to appear next to Davidson on Saturday’s show. The segment opened with a bit of self-deprecating humor from a contrite Davidson before allowing Crenshaw the chance to poke fun at Davidson and ultimately deliver a powerful call to forgiveness.

My purpose today is not to rehash the controversy, or even to focus on the interaction between the two men. Rather, it’s to point out that the show offered a compelling and important alternative to the two most common reactions when someone makes a mistake or offers offense to another person, party, or group.

More than our worst mistakes

The easiest path to take for Saturday Night Live after Davidson’s original comments would have simply been to fire or suspend the comedian until the controversy subsided. Such a decision would have likely satisfied the cries for blood that emanate so quickly from the various corners of our society when someone violates the absolute laws of political correctness.

To be sure, there are times when such action is both appropriate and necessary. However, perhaps not when the primary victim of such attacks seems genuinely unbothered, as did Crenshaw when he initially responded by encouraging us “to get away from this culture where we demand apologies every time someone misspeaks.”

Conversely, SNL could have simply ignored the matter in the hopes that it would eventually fade from our collective consciousness. Given that the midterm elections followed three days later, it’s quite likely that few would have remembered by the time Saturday night’s episode aired. Such an approach would have done nothing to rectify the initial wrong, but it also would have cost the show little.

Instead, Saturday Night Live chose to take a third route, one that offers us a powerful lesson for dealing with our culture today. By inviting Crenshaw to appear next to Davidson, not only was the initial wrong publicly addressed and forgiveness given, but the show also gave the nation a chance to witness the fact that little is accomplished when we define people by their worst mistakes.

Christ’s Golden Rule for our enemies

Jesus’ Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Luke 6:31), remains etched in our collective conscience as a revered ideal, even as society moves steadily away from biblical morality. In many ways, it lies at the foundation of the culture’s worship of tolerance. After all, the fundamental purpose of protecting someone else’s faith, actions, and opinions is the belief that we would want them to do the same for us–that they have just as much right to live their lives as they wish as we do.

While most of us would likely agree that’s not how it usually plays out, the basic impulse is good. Yet, there’s an aspect of the Golden Rule that often goes overlooked, by Christians and non-Christians alike.

When Jesus first gives those words in Luke’s gospel, he does so in the context of teaching his disciples to love their enemies. He assumed that such treatment would not be returned, meaning that the only reason a person could have for acting in that way is that Jesus said it was the correct thing to do.

That becomes especially important in how we react when others wrong us. When you and I say or do something we come to regret, we tend to approach rectifying the situation with the understanding that it was just one mistake. And even if that lapse in judgment falls among a series of missteps that could indicate a genuine flaw in our character, it rarely changes the way we see ourselves on a fundamental level.

In short, we give ourselves the benefit of the doubt and don’t define ourselves by our worst moments. We might even take the same approach with our friends and family.

But think back to the last time a stranger cut you off in traffic, or you overheard a difficult co-worker gossiping about you behind your back. What were your first thoughts about the other person? Did you think he must have just been having a bad day or that she simply got caught up in the moment? Perhaps, but I think for most of us such errors either create or confirm a primarily negative view of the other person.

We assume the worst in others but the best in ourselves, and Jesus was very clear that we are called to more than that.

True gospel work

Christ’s command to treat others as we want to be treated means having as much mercy for them as we’d have for ourselves. SNL‘s decision to allow Dan Crenshaw and Pete Davidson to share a stage on Saturday night allowed the former Navy Seal to demonstrate the truth of that statement.

What would our culture look like if Christians became known for taking that position when we’re mocked or ridiculed? What impact could that have on your relationship with a difficult neighbor or co-worker?

As the late Eugene Peterson so powerfully wrote, “Muckraking is not gospel work. Witch-hunting is not gospel work. Shaming the outcast is not gospel work. Forgiving sin is gospel work.”

Our culture needs to see us respond to hate and derision with gospel work rather than outrage and pity. They need to see us forgive them just as we would forgive ourselves.

Can you do that today? Will you?

The post What Saturday Night Live taught America about forgiveness appeared first on Denison Forum.

source https://www.denisonforum.org/columns/daily-article/saturday-night-live-taught-america-forgiveness/ source https://denisonforum.tumblr.com/post/180068301187

[denisonforum]

What Saturday Night Live taught America about forgiveness

Saturday Night Live, a show built around commenting on current events through satire and attempts at humor (some more successful than others), is rarely known for improving the country’s morality. Two Saturdays ago, cast member Pete Davidson epitomized that fact after making fun of a war injury suffered by Congressmen-elect Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas.

After the segment aired, there was an understandable backlash from people on both sides of the political spectrum, with responses ranging from demands for an apology to calls for Davidson (and show creator Lorne Michaels) to be fired. Both are in the news again today, however, because they instead took a rather unusual approach to resolve the situation.

Rather than heed the calls to fire either man, SNL chose instead to invite Crenshaw to appear next to Davidson on Saturday’s show. The segment opened with a bit of self-deprecating humor from a contrite Davidson before allowing Crenshaw the chance to poke fun at Davidson and ultimately deliver a powerful call to forgiveness.

My purpose today is not to rehash the controversy, or even to focus on the interaction between the two men. Rather, it’s to point out that the show offered a compelling and important alternative to the two most common reactions when someone makes a mistake or offers offense to another person, party, or group.

More than our worst mistakes

The easiest path to take for Saturday Night Live after Davidson’s original comments would have simply been to fire or suspend the comedian until the controversy subsided. Such a decision would have likely satisfied the cries for blood that emanate so quickly from the various corners of our society when someone violates the absolute laws of political correctness.

To be sure, there are times when such action is both appropriate and necessary. However, perhaps not when the primary victim of such attacks seems genuinely unbothered, as did Crenshaw when he initially responded by encouraging us “to get away from this culture where we demand apologies every time someone misspeaks.”

Conversely, SNL could have simply ignored the matter in the hopes that it would eventually fade from our collective consciousness. Given that the midterm elections followed three days later, it’s quite likely that few would have remembered by the time Saturday night’s episode aired. Such an approach would have done nothing to rectify the initial wrong, but it also would have cost the show little.

Instead, Saturday Night Live chose to take a third route, one that offers us a powerful lesson for dealing with our culture today. By inviting Crenshaw to appear next to Davidson, not only was the initial wrong publicly addressed and forgiveness given, but the show also gave the nation a chance to witness the fact that little is accomplished when we define people by their worst mistakes.

Christ’s Golden Rule for our enemies

Jesus’ Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Luke 6:31), remains etched in our collective conscience as a revered ideal, even as society moves steadily away from biblical morality. In many ways, it lies at the foundation of the culture’s worship of tolerance. After all, the fundamental purpose of protecting someone else’s faith, actions, and opinions is the belief that we would want them to do the same for us–that they have just as much right to live their lives as they wish as we do.

While most of us would likely agree that’s not how it usually plays out, the basic impulse is good. Yet, there’s an aspect of the Golden Rule that often goes overlooked, by Christians and non-Christians alike.

When Jesus first gives those words in Luke’s gospel, he does so in the context of teaching his disciples to love their enemies. He assumed that such treatment would not be returned, meaning that the only reason a person could have for acting in that way is that Jesus said it was the correct thing to do.

That becomes especially important in how we react when others wrong us. When you and I say or do something we come to regret, we tend to approach rectifying the situation with the understanding that it was just one mistake. And even if that lapse in judgment falls among a series of missteps that could indicate a genuine flaw in our character, it rarely changes the way we see ourselves on a fundamental level.

In short, we give ourselves the benefit of the doubt and don’t define ourselves by our worst moments. We might even take the same approach with our friends and family.

But think back to the last time a stranger cut you off in traffic, or you overheard a difficult co-worker gossiping about you behind your back. What were your first thoughts about the other person? Did you think he must have just been having a bad day or that she simply got caught up in the moment? Perhaps, but I think for most of us such errors either create or confirm a primarily negative view of the other person.

We assume the worst in others but the best in ourselves, and Jesus was very clear that we are called to more than that.

True gospel work

Christ’s command to treat others as we want to be treated means having as much mercy for them as we’d have for ourselves. SNL‘s decision to allow Dan Crenshaw and Pete Davidson to share a stage on Saturday night allowed the former Navy Seal to demonstrate the truth of that statement.

What would our culture look like if Christians became known for taking that position when we’re mocked or ridiculed? What impact could that have on your relationship with a difficult neighbor or co-worker?

As the late Eugene Peterson so powerfully wrote, “Muckraking is not gospel work. Witch-hunting is not gospel work. Shaming the outcast is not gospel work. Forgiving sin is gospel work.”

Our culture needs to see us respond to hate and derision with gospel work rather than outrage and pity. They need to see us forgive them just as we would forgive ourselves.

Can you do that today? Will you?

The post What Saturday Night Live taught America about forgiveness appeared first on Denison Forum.

source https://www.denisonforum.org/columns/daily-article/saturday-night-live-taught-america-forgiveness/

[ruthiemcwilliams-blog]

Where’s Messi? Tributes lacking in his aboriginal Argentina city

ROSARIO, Argentine Republic (AP) - Flop ahead kickoff, the plasm TV's were quieten tuned to a tennis meet on deaf-and-dumb person as an alternative of the Barcelona spirited at a intimately evacuate debar owned by Lionel Messi's home in his Argentine Republic hometown. The alone hint at the debar were about photos of Messi. No one seemed to forethought or so the gritty until a pair walked in hurriedly and asked a waiter to modification the canalize. The college students from Deutschland had protected for months to journey on a pilgrim's journey to their idol's indigene metropolis. By this peak they were disappointed: they had seen no Messi statues, plaques or museums. Null. "It seems like I feel more for Messi than Rosarinos," Oshin Gharibi, 32, aforementioned as he watched the twin side by side to his girlfriend, Lena Wagner, 23. She wore a Barcelona shirt decked with Messi's telephone number 10 on the backwards. In this April 17, 2018 photo, customers are reflected in a moving picture of Lionel Messi at the Very important person eating house owned by Lionel Messi's class in his hometown of Rosario, Argentine Republic. In Messi's hometown, where at that place are no statues or museums in abide by of the soccer idol, everyone seems to agree: the Messi's are a humble, seemly family; Lionel was a safe kid, and he only if cared most unity affair only: the association football testicle. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) "Messi is such a big star from such a small place," Gharibi aforesaid. "How can you not give him the recognition that he deserves?" It's a mystery story that confounds many. Cristiano Ronaldo has an airdrome named after him on his Lusitanian home base island of Madeira; Pele has his museum in his Brazilian aboriginal metropolis of Santos; level Bumpy Balboa - a fictitious boxer- has been paying court with a statue in City of Brotherly Love. So wherefore does Rosario appear to let an ambivalent relationship with the world's nearly famous football player? Many Here appear to make out vertebral column to the Lapplander theories: a soccer-insane metropolis shared out by the contention of its deuce beloved clubs; the comparisons to Diego Maradona; and the melodic theme that anything but victorious is worthless. In a decennary of victorious trophies for Barcelona, the trump player of his coevals has sooner or later to deport a World Cup for Genus Argentina - as Maradona did in 1986. Russia power be the finale take a chance for Messi, WHO will sprain 31 during the tournament. Rosario, a river larboard and Argentina's third-largest metropolis is situated near 180 miles Northwest of Buenos Aires. It's better known for organism the country's agricultural hub, the hometown of subverter loss leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and a talent manufactory for just about of Argentina's scoop footballers and coaches. Merely for Rosarinos merely two clubs matter: Rosario Fundamental and Newell's Honest-to-goodness Boys, its perpetual contender and Messi's childhood guild. "You breathe football everywhere in Rosario, but, curiously, the air doesn't smell of Messi," author Guillem Balague writes in "Messi," the prescribed biography. Everybody seems to possess a narrative nigh Messi, only "the city does not seem to want to gloat. It's almost as if it is considered vulgar to have his face posted everywhere," Balague says. Just "when you ask him what his favorite memories are, he is in no doubt. 'My home, my neighborhood, where I was born.'" In the working-family neighbourhood of La Bajada, neighbors recognise for each one former by key out and kids razz bikes on constringe streets. As they pass up to the hoary gate of Messi's puerility home, the German tourists put up hardly hold their joyousness. "We could have traveled to a beach in Barcelona, Thailand or Australia, but we came here," Wagner aforesaid. "It's worth it because we get to see the places where he grew up." Messi is powerfully machine-accessible to Rosario. His accentuate is unchanged, even out though he odd the urban center 18 geezerhood agone. He returns oftentimes and end year, he married his puerility sweetie in the metropolis. "I don't think it's something against Messi, but perhaps something cultural that we have to evaluate and rethink about ... people who perhaps deserve more recognition," said Sandro Alzugaray, a Sculptor. In his atelier, he keeps a ordered series mock up of a Messi statue. He presented the design to urban center officials four old age agone and it has thus far to get favorable reception. Messi was innate a year afterward Maradona led Genus Argentina to the Cosmos Loving cup trophy in 1986. Only he has faced comparisons to the late Argentinian sea captain passim his liveliness. "For us...who took care of him, it hurts to hear the criticism, the comparisons to Maradona," aforesaid Andrea Liliana Sosa, ane of Messi's onetime teachers. A partition of a untried Messi clothed in the red-and-contraband colors of Newell's features at the club's youthfulness dissipated coordination compound. It's the lonesome preindication that the five-sentence FIFA worldly concern instrumentalist of the year was a standout actor hither as a tiddler. "I think we're not using the marketing correctly," aforementioned Gustavo Pereira, a Newell's juvenility division passenger car. Perhaps Rosarinos guardianship so very much close to Messi's concealment because they neediness him to donjon advent support. "When people ask me about a Messi tourist tour, it pains me," aforementioned Hector De Benedictis, Rosario's Tourism Secretariate. In his hand, he held copies for a Messi tour that his situation has well-tried to establish double. But the Messi crime syndicate spurned the marriage proposal because of privateness concerns. "It's a question of ethics." In this Apr 18, 2018 photo, artist Sandro Alzugaray shows his Clay simulate of Lionel Messi at his studio apartment in Rosario, Argentina, Messi's hometown. Alzugaray has proposed to make a monument to laurels Messi in their hometown since the late Macrocosm Cup, four years ago, just is silence confident that about Day it testament be sanctioned by the metropolis governing and that he'll observe the financial brook to pee it bump. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) This April 17, 2018 photograph shows a soccer field of battle exploited by the Newell's Honest-to-god Boys spring chicken teams in Rosario, Argentina, the urban center where soccer avid Lionel Messi grew up. "You breathe football everywhere in Rosario, but, curiously, the air doesn't smell of Messi. There are hardly any photos, or pictures, nor even advertisements depicting Leo," source Guillem Balague writes in "Messi," the administrative unit life story. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) In this April 17, 2018 photo, children gearing at the Newell's Sure-enough Boys youthfulness education home base in Rosario, Argentina, the hometown of association football majuscule Lionel Messi. Messi was Max Born a year later Maradona light-emitting diode Argentina to the Humans Cupful prize in 1986, and has faced comparisons to the quondam Argentine master passim his life, regular when they could non be Sir Thomas More different away the field of view. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) In this Apr 17, 2018 photo, a modest wall painting portrayal Lionel Messi as a small fry decorates the bulwark at a soccer area exploited by the Newell's Previous Boys early days teams, Messi's childhood club, in Rosario, Argentina. Messi, Max Born in Rosario, played for Rosario's local anaesthetic team up before sign language with Barcelona at eld 13. The mural is the alone sign that he was a standout musician hither as a youngster. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) In this Apr 18, 2018 photo, Lionel Messi's former neighbour Marta Rodriguez shows her autographed depiction with the soccer matinee idol inwardly her home, on the equivalent forget that Messi grew up on in La Bajada, Rosario, Genus Argentina. Messi is even real often connected to Rosario. His accent and expressions are unchanged, Casino Online regular though he left the metropolis as a teen, 18 age agone. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) In this Apr 17, 2018 photo, photos of expectant soccer moments ornament the cafeteria indoors Newell's Old Boys youthfulness education centre in Rosario, Argentina, the hometown of Lionel Messi. Photos of previous coaches and players lifting trophies ornament the cafeteria's walls, merely there's non a bingle figure of Messi, the five-clock FIFA earth player of the twelvemonth. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) In this April 17, 2018 photo, European country tourists Oshin Gharibi and his lady friend Lena Wagner, both students from Heidelberg, beat for a moving-picture show at the High-up restaurant owned by Lionel Messi's sept in Rosario, Genus Argentina. The mates walked into the bar, nearly-empty, expecting to watch out Messi act a plot disseminate on TV, but had to demand the server to place the gamy on. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) In this Apr 18, 2018 photo, a partition of Lionel Messi covers a mansion one barricade from his puerility household in La Bajada, Rosario, Genus Argentina. As a wedding gift, around of his puerility friends varicolored the large mural on a fence at a small-scale force field where they victimised to toy as kids. It shows a whiskery Messi encircled by coloured planets, and on a tree it reads: "From another galaxy - and from my neighborhood." (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) In this April 18, 2018 photo, European country tourist twosome Oshin Gharibi and Lena Wagner, from Heidelberg, parting a handwritten letter of the alphabet at the internal where Lionel Messi grew up in La Bajada, Rosario, Argentina, by chance making the planetary house consternation go away. The duet are college students who saved for months to come up altogether the mode to Rosario for a pilgrimage to their idol's indigen city. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) In this April 18, 2018 photo, a foosball defer stands at heart the "Escuela General Las Heras" where Lionel Messi went to chief cultivate in Rosario, Genus Argentina. "When I see him on TV, I think of that little kid on this same yard doing those same dribbles," aforementioned Andrea Liliana Sosa, unrivalled of Messi's onetime teachers. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) In this Apr 18, 2018 photo, Andrea Liliana Sosa, Lionel Messi's primary train teacher, poses for a visualise at the "Escuela General Las Heras" in Rosario, Genus Argentina. "For us, the teachers who took care of him, it hurts to hear the criticism, the comparisons to Maradona," said Sosa. They don't render him the grandness he deserves. It's as if the metropolis can't clutch that Lionel is from Hera." (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) In this April 18, 2018 photo, an Ernesto "Che" Guevara statue by artist Andres Zerneri stands in a park in his hometown of Rosario, Argentina. Rosario, a river port and Argentina's third-largest city is best known for being the country's agricultural hub, the hometown of the revolutionary leader and a talent factory for some of Argentina's best footballers and coaches, including Lionel Messi. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) In this April 18, 2018 photo, a woman cycles past Lionel Messi's school "Escuela Ecumenical Las Heras" primary school in Rosario, Argentina. The mural featuring Messi was painted by the school's students and teachers with the help of local artist Ruben Perez Barrios. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) In this April 18, 2018 photo, Alejandro Daniel Fernandez poses for a photo by a mural of his childhood friend, Lionel Messi, that reads in Spanish "From my region!" in La Bajada, Rosario, Argentina. Fernandez said Messi's family had always helped him, including living with the family for a while, and that he remains friends with Lionel and his brother who all play soccer together when in town. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko) Advertisement

[almighty-god-saved-me-blog]

Due to Performing My Duty, I Was Granted God’s Enormous Salvation | Eastern Lightning

Due to Performing My Duty, I Was Granted God’s Enormous Salvation | Eastern Lightning

Hong Wei, Beijing

August 15, 2012

On July 21, 2012, a very heavy rain began to fall. That day I just happened to have a duty to perform, so after our meeting was finished and I saw that the rain had lightened up a bit, I rushed home on my bike. Only when I got onto the highway did I discover that water was rushing down from the mountain like a waterfall, and the road was so covered in splashing rainwater that the surface couldn’t be seen very clearly anymore. This sight made me feel somewhat frightened, so in my heart I called out persistently, “God! I implore You to add to my faith and courage. Right now is a time that You want me to stand testimony. If You allow me to be swept away by the water, then this has Your good intentions in it, too. I am willing to submit to Your orchestration and arrangements.” After I prayed like this, I became calmer; I no longer felt that afraid, and faced the storm head-on continuously the whole way home. Who could have known that an even greater danger lay waiting for me? On the road to my home was a very steep slope. Due to the newly laid asphalt and the rainwater running over the slope, as I went downhill the bike’s front two breaks wouldn’t work. At the bottom of this hill was an auxiliary road to National Route 108, and on the other side of it was a stand of trees. Beyond that was the main current of the river; if I was unable to reduce my speed, then I would have no choice but to crash into those trees, and it was even possible that I would fall into the river. The consequences of that…. I thought to myself, Now I’m done for! Just as I was thinking this, some force from somewhere suddenly knocked me from my bike. The bike’s inertia swept me along with it, and did not stop moving until I got to the intersection at the bottom of the hill. Just then two cars happened to drive past, side by side, right in front of me. It was so close! Luckily, right in the middle of this crisis, God had saved me.

After I got home, the rain started falling even harder, and in the blink of an eye the water had risen to the seventh of our house’s front steps. By then, power lines had fallen down, too, smashing our neighbor’s solar panels. The whole time growing up, I had never seen such a flood. By the time I had changed out of my sopping wet clothes and had returned to the courtyard to have a look, the water had risen to the thirteenth step and was just about to pour into the courtyard. I quickly closed the front gate and began to gather up the mp4 player I use to listen to the hymns and sermons, as well as my collection of books of God’s utterances. My mother, who is also a believer, gathered up her books, too, and we were getting ready to head up the mountain at any moment. Just then we suddenly thought, We can take our own books with us, but many of the church’s books are still here in the house; how can we carry them? Hurriedly, we knelt down before God and prayed: “God! We can take our own books with us, but there are still too many of the church’s books stockpiled here for us to carry. We do not want the church’s property to get damaged. God, please look after them and protect them. We have no way of doing so anymore. However, we are willing to rely on You, and submit to Your orchestration.” After praying, I saw yet another act of God. Originally, the floodwaters were rushing down toward us with powerfully destructive force, but as they passed our home, they suddenly slowed down and the current lessened; it even slowed to just a trickle. Because of this, the church’s books were not damaged one bit. That night the neighbors in front of us and behind us all fled because the water had entered their courtyards, but under God’s watchful eye, we remained protected, and enjoyed a peaceful night.

In the midst of this experience, I witnessed wonderful acts of God with my own eyes. Given that my life was spared due to God’s protection, I cannot in good conscience neglect to repay the debt of love I owe to Him. I must further spread the gospel and bear testimony to Him so that more people can come before Almighty God as soon as possible. Our rebellion has provoked God’s anger, causing all manner of disasters to befall us over and over; these are God’s reminders and warnings to us. Let us treasure this final opportunity given by God to fulfill our duties, and satisfy God and console His heart. At the same time, in the process of fulfilling our duties, let us, to an even greater degree, attain knowledge of God and witness God’s acts.

#gospel #eastern lightning #the church

[pinkarcadecandy]

TRIAL BY FIRE

Did Texas execute an innocent man?

By David Grann

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009 ISSUE

The fire moved quickly through the house, a one-story wood-frame structure in a working-class neighborhood of Corsicana, in northeast Texas. Flames spread along the walls, bursting through doorways, blistering paint and tiles and furniture. Smoke pressed against the ceiling, then banked downward, seeping into each room and through crevices in the windows, staining the morning sky.

Buffie Barbee, who was eleven years old and lived two houses down, was playing in her back yard when she smelled the smoke. She ran inside and told her mother, Diane, and they hurried up the street; that’s when they saw the smoldering house and Cameron Todd Willingham standing on the front porch, wearing only a pair of jeans, his chest blackened with soot, his hair and eyelids singed. He was screaming, “My babies are burning up!” His children—Karmon and Kameron, who were one-year-old twin girls, and two-year-old Amber—were trapped inside.

Willingham told the Barbees to call the Fire Department, and while Diane raced down the street to get help he found a stick and broke the children’s bedroom window. Fire lashed through the hole. He broke another window; flames burst through it, too, and he retreated into the yard, kneeling in front of the house. A neighbor later told police that Willingham intermittently cried, “My babies!” then fell silent, as if he had “blocked the fire out of his mind.”

Diane Barbee, returning to the scene, could feel intense heat radiating off the house. Moments later, the five windows of the children’s room exploded and flames “blew out,” as Barbee put it. Within minutes, the first firemen had arrived, and Willingham approached them, shouting that his children were in their bedroom, where the flames were thickest. A fireman sent word over his radio for rescue teams to “step on it.”

More men showed up, uncoiling hoses and aiming water at the blaze. One fireman, who had an air tank strapped to his back and a mask covering his face, slipped through a window but was hit by water from a hose and had to retreat. He then charged through the front door, into a swirl of smoke and fire. Heading down the main corridor, he reached the kitchen, where he saw a refrigerator blocking the back door.

Todd Willingham, looking on, appeared to grow more hysterical, and a police chaplain named George Monaghan led him to the back of a fire truck and tried to calm him down. Willingham explained that his wife, Stacy, had gone out earlier that morning, and that he had been jolted from sleep by Amber screaming, “Daddy! Daddy!”

“My little girl was trying to wake me up and tell me about the fire,” he said, adding, “I couldn’t get my babies out.”

While he was talking, a fireman emerged from the house, cradling Amber. As she was given C.P.R., Willingham, who was twenty-three years old and powerfully built, ran to see her, then suddenly headed toward the babies’ room. Monaghan and another man restrained him. “We had to wrestle with him and then handcuff him, for his and our protection,” Monaghan later told police. “I received a black eye.” One of the first firemen at the scene told investigators that, at an earlier point, he had also held Willingham back. “Based on what I saw on how the fire was burning, it would have been crazy for anyone to try and go into the house,” he said.

Willingham was taken to a hospital, where he was told that Amber—who had actually been found in the master bedroom—had died of smoke inhalation. Kameron and Karmon had been lying on the floor of the children’s bedroom, their bodies severely burned. According to the medical examiner, they, too, died from smoke inhalation.

News of the tragedy, which took place on December 23, 1991, spread through Corsicana. A small city fifty-five miles northeast of Waco, it had once been the center of Texas’s first oil boom, but many of the wells had since dried up, and more than a quarter of the city’s twenty thousand inhabitants had fallen into poverty. Several stores along the main street were shuttered, giving the place the feel of an abandoned outpost.

Willingham and his wife, who was twenty-two years old, had virtually no money. Stacy worked in her brother’s bar, called Some Other Place, and Willingham, an unemployed auto mechanic, had been caring for the kids. The community took up a collection to help the Willinghams pay for funeral arrangements.

Fire investigators, meanwhile, tried to determine the cause of the blaze. (Willingham gave authorities permission to search the house: “I know we might not ever know all the answers, but I’d just like to know why my babies were taken from me.”) Douglas Fogg, who was then the assistant fire chief in Corsicana, conducted the initial inspection. He was tall, with a crew cut, and his voice was raspy from years of inhaling smoke from fires and cigarettes. He had grown up in Corsicana and, after graduating from high school, in 1963, he had joined the Navy, serving as a medic in Vietnam, where he was wounded on four occasions. He was awarded a Purple Heart each time. After he returned from Vietnam, he became a firefighter, and by the time of the Willingham blaze he had been battling fire—or what he calls “the beast”—for more than twenty years, and had become a certified arson investigator. “You learn that fire talks to you,” he told me.

He was soon joined on the case by one of the state’s leading arson sleuths, a deputy fire marshal named Manuel Vasquez, who has since died. Short, with a paunch, Vasquez had investigated more than twelve hundred fires. Arson investigators have always been considered a special breed of detective. In the 1991 movie “Backdraft,” a heroic arson investigator says of fire, “It breathes, it eats, and it hates. The only way to beat it is to think like it. To know that this flame will spread this way across the door and up across the ceiling.” Vasquez, who had previously worked in Army intelligence, had several maxims of his own. One was “Fire does not destroy evidence—it creates it.” Another was “The fire tells the story. I am just the interpreter.” He cultivated a Sherlock Holmes-like aura of invincibility. Once, he was asked under oath whether he had ever been mistaken in a case. “If I have, sir, I don’t know,” he responded. “It’s never been pointed out.”

Vasquez and Fogg visited the Willinghams’ house four days after the blaze. Following protocol, they moved from the least burned areas toward the most damaged ones. “It is a systematic method,” Vasquez later testified, adding, “I’m just collecting information. . . . I have not made any determination. I don’t have any preconceived idea.”

The men slowly toured the perimeter of the house, taking notes and photographs, like archeologists mapping out a ruin. Upon opening the back door, Vasquez observed that there was just enough space to squeeze past the refrigerator blocking the exit. The air smelled of burned rubber and melted wires; a damp ash covered the ground, sticking to their boots. In the kitchen, Vasquez and Fogg discerned only smoke and heat damage—a sign that the fire had not originated there—and so they pushed deeper into the nine-hundred-and-seventy-five-square-foot building. A central corridor led past a utility room and the master bedroom, then past a small living room, on the left, and the children’s bedroom, on the right, ending at the front door, which opened onto the porch. Vasquez tried to take in everything, a process that he compared to entering one’s mother-in-law’s house for the first time: “I have the same curiosity.”

In the utility room, he noticed on the wall pictures of skulls and what he later described as an image of “the Grim Reaper.” Then he turned into the master bedroom, where Amber’s body had been found. Most of the damage there was also from smoke and heat, suggesting that the fire had started farther down the hallway, and he headed that way, stepping over debris and ducking under insulation and wiring that hung down from the exposed ceiling.

As he and Fogg removed some of the clutter, they noticed deep charring along the base of the walls. Because gases become buoyant when heated, flames ordinarily burn upward. But Vasquez and Fogg observed that the fire had burned extremely low down, and that there were peculiar char patterns on the floor, shaped like puddles.

Vasquez’s mood darkened. He followed the “burn trailer”—the path etched by the fire—which led from the hallway into the children’s bedroom. Sunlight filtering through the broken windows illuminated more of the irregularly shaped char patterns. A flammable or combustible liquid doused on a floor will cause a fire to concentrate in these kinds of pockets, which is why investigators refer to them as “pour patterns” or “puddle configurations.”

The fire had burned through layers of carpeting and tile and plywood flooring. Moreover, the metal springs under the children’s beds had turned white—a sign that intense heat had radiated beneath them. Seeing that the floor had some of the deepest burns, Vasquez deduced that it had been hotter than the ceiling, which, given that heat rises, was, in his words, “not normal.”

Fogg examined a piece of glass from one of the broken windows. It contained a spiderweb-like pattern—what fire investigators call “crazed glass.” Forensic textbooks had long described the effect as a key indicator that a fire had burned “fast and hot,” meaning that it had been fuelled by a liquid accelerant, causing the glass to fracture.

The men looked again at what appeared to be a distinct burn trailer through the house: it went from the children’s bedroom into the corridor, then turned sharply to the right and proceeded out the front door. To the investigators’ surprise, even the wood under the door’s aluminum threshold was charred. On the concrete floor of the porch, just outside the front door, Vasquez and Fogg noticed another unusual thing: brown stains, which, they reported, were consistent with the presence of an accelerant.

The men scanned the walls for soot marks that resembled a “V.” When an object catches on fire, it creates such a pattern, as heat and smoke radiate outward; the bottom of the “V” can therefore point to where a fire began. In the Willingham house, there was a distinct “V” in the main corridor. Examining it and other burn patterns, Vasquez identified three places where fire had originated: in the hallway, in the children’s bedroom, and at the front door. Vasquez later testified that multiple origins pointed to one conclusion: the fire was “intentionally set by human hands.”

By now, both investigators had a clear vision of what had happened. Someone had poured liquid accelerant throughout the children’s room, even under their beds, then poured some more along the adjoining hallway and out the front door, creating a “fire barrier” that prevented anyone from escaping; similarly, a prosecutor later suggested, the refrigerator in the kitchen had been moved to block the back-door exit. The house, in short, had been deliberately transformed into a death trap.

The investigators collected samples of burned materials from the house and sent them to a laboratory that could detect the presence of a liquid accelerant. The lab’s chemist reported that one of the samples contained evidence of “mineral spirits,” a substance that is often found in charcoal-lighter fluid. The sample had been taken by the threshold of the front door.

The fire was now considered a triple homicide, and Todd Willingham—the only person, besides the victims, known to have been in the house at the time of the blaze—became the prime suspect.

Police and fire investigators canvassed the neighborhood, interviewing witnesses. Several, like Father Monaghan, initially portrayed Willingham as devastated by the fire. Yet, over time, an increasing number of witnesses offered damning statements. Diane Barbee said that she had not seen Willingham try to enter the house until after the authorities arrived, as if he were putting on a show. And when the children’s room exploded with flames, she added, he seemed more preoccupied with his car, which he moved down the driveway. Another neighbor reported that when Willingham cried out for his babies he “did not appear to be excited or concerned.” Even Father Monaghan wrote in a statement that, upon further reflection, “things were not as they seemed. I had the feeling that [Willingham] was in complete control.”

The police began to piece together a disturbing profile of Willingham. Born in Ardmore, Oklahoma, in 1968, he had been abandoned by his mother when he was a baby. His father, Gene, who had divorced his mother, eventually raised him with his stepmother, Eugenia. Gene, a former U.S. marine, worked in a salvage yard, and the family lived in a cramped house; at night, they could hear freight trains rattling past on a nearby track. Willingham, who had what the family called the “classic Willingham look”—a handsome face, thick black hair, and dark eyes—struggled in school, and as a teen-ager began to sniff paint. When he was seventeen, Oklahoma’s Department of Human Services evaluated him, and reported, “He likes ‘girls,’ music, fast cars, sharp trucks, swimming, and hunting, in that order.” Willingham dropped out of high school, and over time was arrested for, among other things, driving under the influence, stealing a bicycle, and shoplifting.

In 1988, he met Stacy, a senior in high school, who also came from a troubled background: when she was four years old, her stepfather had strangled her mother to death during a fight. Stacy and Willingham had a turbulent relationship. Willingham, who was unfaithful, drank too much Jack Daniel’s, and sometimes hit Stacy—even when she was pregnant. A neighbor said that he once heard Willingham yell at her, “Get up, bitch, and I’ll hit you again.”

On December 31st, the authorities brought Willingham in for questioning. Fogg and Vasquez were present for the interrogation, along with Jimmie Hensley, a police officer who was working his first arson case. Willingham said that Stacy had left the house around 9 a.m. to pick up a Christmas present for the kids, at the Salvation Army. “After she got out of the driveway, I heard the twins cry, so I got up and gave them a bottle,” he said. The children’s room had a safety gate across the doorway, which Amber could climb over but not the twins, and he and Stacy often let the twins nap on the floor after they drank their bottles. Amber was still in bed, Willingham said, so he went back into his room to sleep. “The next thing I remember is hearing ‘Daddy, Daddy,’ “ he recalled. “The house was already full of smoke.” He said that he got up, felt around the floor for a pair of pants, and put them on. He could no longer hear his daughter’s voice (“I heard that last ‘Daddy, Daddy’ and never heard her again”), and he hollered, “Oh God— Amber, get out of the house! Get out of the house!’ “

He never sensed that Amber was in his room, he said. Perhaps she had already passed out by the time he stood up, or perhaps she came in after he left, through a second doorway, from the living room. He said that he went down the corridor and tried to reach the children’s bedroom. In the hallway, he said, “you couldn’t see nothing but black.” The air smelled the way it had when their microwave had blown up, three weeks earlier—like “wire and stuff like that.” He could hear sockets and light switches popping, and he crouched down, almost crawling. When he made it to the children’s bedroom, he said, he stood and his hair caught on fire. “Oh God, I never felt anything that hot before,” he said of the heat radiating out of the room.

After he patted out the fire on his hair, he said, he got down on the ground and groped in the dark. “I thought I found one of them once,” he said, “but it was a doll.” He couldn’t bear the heat any longer. “I felt myself passing out,” he said. Finally, he stumbled down the corridor and out the front door, trying to catch his breath. He saw Diane Barbee and yelled for her to call the Fire Department. After she left, he insisted, he tried without success to get back inside.

The investigators asked him if he had any idea how the fire had started. He said that he wasn’t sure, though it must have originated in the children’s room, since that was where he first saw flames; they were glowing like “bright lights.” He and Stacy used three space heaters to keep the house warm, and one of them was in the children’s room. “I taught Amber not to play with it,” he said, adding that she got “whuppings every once in a while for messing with it.” He said that he didn’t know if the heater, which had an internal flame, was turned on. (Vasquez later testified that when he had checked the heater, four days after the fire, it was in the “Off” position.) Willingham speculated that the fire might have been started by something electrical: he had heard all that popping and crackling.

When pressed whether someone might have a motive to hurt his family, he said that he couldn’t think of anyone that “cold-blooded.” He said of his children, “I just don’t understand why anybody would take them, you know? We had three of the most pretty babies anybody could have ever asked for.” He went on, “Me and Stacy’s been together for four years, but off and on we get into a fight and split up for a while and I think those babies is what brought us so close together . . . neither one of us . . . could live without them kids.” Thinking of Amber, he said, “To tell you the honest-to-God’s truth, I wish she hadn’t woke me up.”

During the interrogation, Vasquez let Fogg take the lead. Finally, Vasquez turned to Willingham and asked a seemingly random question: had he put on shoes before he fled the house?

“No, sir,” Willingham replied.

A map of the house was on a table between the men, and Vasquez pointed to it. “You walked out this way?” he said.

Willingham said yes.

Vasquez was now convinced that Willingham had killed his children. If the floor had been soaked with a liquid accelerant and the fire had burned low, as the evidence suggested, Willingham could not have run out of the house the way he had described without badly burning his feet. A medical report indicated that his feet had been unscathed.

Willingham insisted that, when he left the house, the fire was still around the top of the walls and not on the floor. “I didn’t have to jump through any flames,” he said. Vasquez believed that this was impossible, and that Willingham had lit the fire as he was retreating—first, torching the children’s room, then the hallway, and then, from the porch, the front door. Vasquez later said of Willingham, “He told me a story of pure fabrication. . . . He just talked and he talked and all he did was lie.”

Still, there was no clear motive. The children had life-insurance policies, but they amounted to only fifteen thousand dollars, and Stacy’s grandfather, who had paid for them, was listed as the primary beneficiary. Stacy told investigators that even though Willingham hit her he had never abused the children—“Our kids were spoiled rotten,” she said—and she did not believe that Willingham could have killed them.

Ultimately, the authorities concluded that Willingham was a man without a conscience whose serial crimes had climaxed, almost inexorably, in murder. John Jackson, who was then the assistant district attorney in Corsicana, was assigned to prosecute Willingham’s case. He later told the Dallas Morning News that he considered Willingham to be “an utterly sociopathic individual” who deemed his children “an impediment to his lifestyle.” Or, as the local district attorney, Pat Batchelor, put it, “The children were interfering with his beer drinking and dart throwing.”

On the night of January 8, 1992, two weeks after the fire, Willingham was riding in a car with Stacy when swat teams surrounded them, forcing them to the side of the road. “They pulled guns out like we had just robbed ten banks,” Stacy later recalled. “All we heard was ‘click, click.’ . . . Then they arrested him.”

Willingham was charged with murder. Because there were multiple victims, he was eligible for the death penalty, under Texas law. Unlike many other prosecutors in the state, Jackson, who had ambitions of becoming a judge, was personally opposed to capital punishment. “I don’t think it’s effective in deterring criminals,” he told me. “I just don’t think it works.” He also considered it wasteful: because of the expense of litigation and the appeals process, it costs, on average, $2.3 million to execute a prisoner in Texas—about three times the cost of incarcerating someone for forty years. Plus, Jackson said, “What’s the recourse if you make a mistake?” Yet his boss, Batchelor, believed that, as he once put it, “certain people who commit bad enough crimes give up the right to live,” and Jackson came to agree that the heinous nature of the crime in the Willingham case—“one of the worst in terms of body count” that he had ever tried—mandated death.

Willingham couldn’t afford to hire lawyers, and was assigned two by the state: David Martin, a former state trooper, and Robert Dunn, a local defense attorney who represented everyone from alleged murderers to spouses in divorce cases—a “Jack-of-all-trades,” as he calls himself. (“In a small town, you can’t say ‘I’m a so-and-so lawyer,’ because you’ll starve to death,” he told me.)

The Willingham family in the days before Christmas, 1991

Not long after Willingham’s arrest, authorities received a message from a prison inmate named Johnny Webb, who was in the same jail as Willingham. Webb alleged that Willingham had confessed to him that he took “some kind of lighter fluid, squirting [it] around the walls and the floor, and set a fire.” The case against Willingham was considered airtight.

Even so, several of Stacy’s relatives—who, unlike her, believed that Willingham was guilty—told Jackson that they preferred to avoid the anguish of a trial. And so, shortly before jury selection, Jackson approached Willingham’s attorneys with an extraordinary offer: if their client pleaded guilty, the state would give him a life sentence. “I was really happy when I thought we might have a deal to avoid the death penalty,” Jackson recalls.

Willingham’s lawyers were equally pleased. They had little doubt that he had committed the murders and that, if the case went before a jury, he would be found guilty, and, subsequently, executed. “Everyone thinks defense lawyers must believe their clients are innocent, but that’s seldom true,” Martin told me. “Most of the time, they’re guilty as sin.” He added of Willingham, “All the evidence showed that he was one hundred per cent guilty. He poured accelerant all over the house and put lighter fluid under the kids’ beds.” It was, he said, “a classic arson case”: there were “puddle patterns all over the place—no disputing those.”

Martin and Dunn advised Willingham that he should accept the offer, but he refused. The lawyers asked his father and stepmother to speak to him. According to Eugenia, Martin showed them photographs of the burned children and said, “Look what your son did. You got to talk him into pleading, or he’s going to be executed.”

His parents went to see their son in jail. Though his father did not believe that he should plead guilty if he were innocent, his stepmother beseeched him to take the deal. “I just wanted to keep my boy alive,” she told me.

Willingham was implacable. “I ain’t gonna plead to something I didn’t do, especially killing my own kids,” he said. It was his final decision. Martin says, “I thought it was nuts at the time—and I think it’s nuts now.”

Willingham’s refusal to accept the deal confirmed the view of the prosecution, and even that of his defense lawyers, that he was an unrepentant killer.

In August, 1992, the trial commenced in the old stone courthouse in downtown Corsicana. Jackson and a team of prosecutors summoned a procession of witnesses, including Johnny Webb and the Barbees. The crux of the state’s case, though, remained the scientific evidence gathered by Vasquez and Fogg. On the stand, Vasquez detailed what he called more than “twenty indicators” of arson.

“Do you have an opinion as to who started the fire?” one of the prosecutors asked.

“Yes, sir,” Vasquez said. “Mr. Willingham.”

The prosecutor asked Vasquez what he thought Willingham’s intent was in lighting the fire. “To kill the little girls,” he said.

The defense had tried to find a fire expert to counter Vasquez and Fogg’s testimony, but the one they contacted concurred with the prosecution. Ultimately, the defense presented only one witness to the jury: the Willinghams’ babysitter, who said she could not believe that Willingham could have killed his children. (Dunn told me that Willingham had wanted to testify, but Martin and Dunn thought that he would make a bad witness.) The trial ended after two days.

During his closing arguments, Jackson said that the puddle configurations and pour patterns were Willingham’s inadvertent “confession,” burned into the floor. Showing a Bible that had been salvaged from the fire, Jackson paraphrased the words of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew: “Whomsoever shall harm one of my children, it’s better for a millstone to be hung around his neck and for him to be cast in the sea.”

The jury was out for barely an hour before returning with a unanimous guilty verdict. As Vasquez put it, “The fire does not lie.”

II

When Elizabeth Gilbert approached the prison guard, on a spring day in 1999, and said Cameron Todd Willingham’s name, she was uncertain about what she was doing. A forty-seven-year-old French teacher and playwright from Houston, Gilbert was divorced with two children. She had never visited a prison before. Several weeks earlier, a friend, who worked at an organization that opposed the death penalty, had encouraged her to volunteer as a pen pal for an inmate on death row, and Gilbert had offered her name and address. Not long after, a short letter, written with unsteady penmanship, arrived from Willingham. “If you wish to write back, I would be honored to correspond with you,” he said. He also asked if she might visit him. Perhaps out of a writer’s curiosity, or perhaps because she didn’t feel quite herself (she had just been upset by news that her ex-husband was dying of cancer), she agreed. Now she was standing in front of the decrepit penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas—a place that inmates referred to as “the death pit.”

She filed past a razor-wire fence, a series of floodlights, and a checkpoint, where she was patted down, until she entered a small chamber. Only a few feet in front of her was a man convicted of multiple infanticide. He was wearing a white jumpsuit with “DR”—for death row—printed on the back, in large black letters. He had a tattoo of a serpent and a skull on his left biceps. He stood nearly six feet tall and was muscular, though his legs had atrophied after years of confinement.

A Plexiglas window separated Willingham from her; still, Gilbert, who had short brown hair and a bookish manner, stared at him uneasily. Willingham had once fought another prisoner who called him a “baby killer,” and since he had been incarcerated, seven years earlier, he had committed a series of disciplinary infractions that had periodically landed him in the segregation unit, which was known as “the dungeon.”

Willingham greeted her politely. He seemed grateful that she had come. After his conviction, Stacy had campaigned for his release. She wrote to Ann Richards, then the governor of Texas, saying, “I know him in ways that no one else does when it comes to our children. Therefore, I believe that there is no way he could have possibly committed this crime.” But within a year Stacy had filed for divorce, and Willingham had few visitors except for his parents, who drove from Oklahoma to see him once a month. “I really have no one outside my parents to remind me that I am a human being, not the animal the state professes I am,” he told Gilbert at one point.

He didn’t want to talk about death row. “Hell, I live here,” he later wrote her. “When I have a visit, I want to escape from here.” He asked her questions about her teaching and art. He expressed fear that, as a playwright, she might find him a “one-dimensional character,” and apologized for lacking social graces; he now had trouble separating the mores in prison from those of the outside world.

The aftermath of the fire on December 23, 1991

Photograph from Texas State Fire Marshal’s Office

When Gilbert asked him if he wanted something to eat or drink from the vending machines, he declined. “I hope I did not offend you by not accepting any snacks,” he later wrote her. “I didn’t want you to feel I was there just for something like that.”

She had been warned that prisoners often tried to con visitors. He appeared to realize this, subsequently telling her, “I am just a simple man. Nothing else. And to most other people a convicted killer looking for someone to manipulate.”

Their visit lasted for two hours, and afterward they continued to correspond. She was struck by his letters, which seemed introspective, and were not at all what she had expected. “I am a very honest person with my feelings,” he wrote her. “I will not bullshit you on how I feel or what I think.” He said that he used to be stoic, like his father. But, he added, “losing my three daughters . . . my home, wife and my life, you tend to wake up a little. I have learned to open myself.”

She agreed to visit him again, and when she returned, several weeks later, he was visibly moved. “Here I am this person who nobody on the outside is ever going to know as a human, who has lost so much, but still trying to hold on,” he wrote her afterward. “But you came back! I don’t think you will ever know of what importance that visit was in my existence.”

They kept exchanging letters, and she began asking him about the fire. He insisted that he was innocent and that, if someone had poured accelerant through the house and lit it, then the killer remained free. Gilbert wasn’t naïve—she assumed that he was guilty. She did not mind giving him solace, but she was not there to absolve him.

Still, she had become curious about the case, and one day that fall she drove down to the courthouse in Corsicana to review the trial records. Many people in the community remembered the tragedy, and a clerk expressed bewilderment that anyone would be interested in a man who had burned his children alive.

Gilbert took the files and sat down at a small table. As she examined the eyewitness accounts, she noticed several contradictions. Diane Barbee had reported that, before the authorities arrived at the fire, Willingham never tried to get back into the house—yet she had been absent for some time while calling the Fire Department. Meanwhile, her daughter Buffie had reported witnessing Willingham on the porch breaking a window, in an apparent effort to reach his children. And the firemen and police on the scene had described Willingham frantically trying to get into the house.

The witnesses’ testimony also grew more damning after authorities had concluded, in the beginning of January, 1992, that Willingham was likely guilty of murder. In Diane Barbee’s initial statement to authorities, she had portrayed Willingham as “hysterical,” and described the front of the house exploding. But on January 4th, after arson investigators began suspecting Willingham of murder, Barbee suggested that he could have gone back inside to rescue his children, for at the outset she had seen only “smoke coming from out of the front of the house”—smoke that was not “real thick.”

An even starker shift occurred with Father Monaghan’s testimony. In his first statement, he had depicted Willingham as a devastated father who had to be repeatedly restrained from risking his life. Yet, as investigators were preparing to arrest Willingham, he concluded that Willingham had been too emotional (“He seemed to have the type of distress that a woman who had given birth would have upon seeing her children die”); and he expressed a “gut feeling” that Willingham had “something to do with the setting of the fire.”

Dozens of studies have shown that witnesses’ memories of events often change when they are supplied with new contextual information. Itiel Dror, a cognitive psychologist who has done extensive research on eyewitness and expert testimony in criminal investigations, told me, “The mind is not a passive machine. Once you believe in something—once you expect something—it changes the way you perceive information and the way your memory recalls it.”

After Gilbert’s visit to the courthouse, she kept wondering about Willingham’s motive, and she pressed him on the matter. In response, he wrote, of the death of his children, “I do not talk about it much anymore and it is still a very powerfully emotional pain inside my being.” He admitted that he had been a “sorry-ass husband” who had hit Stacy—something he deeply regretted. But he said that he had loved his children and would never have hurt them. Fatherhood, he said, had changed him; he stopped being a hoodlum and “settled down” and “became a man.” Nearly three months before the fire, he and Stacy, who had never married, wed at a small ceremony in his home town of Ardmore. He said that the prosecution had seized upon incidents from his past and from the day of the fire to create a portrait of a “demon,” as Jackson, the prosecutor, referred to him. For instance, Willingham said, he had moved the car during the fire simply because he didn’t want it to explode by the house, further threatening the children.

Gilbert was unsure what to make of his story, and she began to approach people who were involved in the case, asking them questions. “My friends thought I was crazy,” Gilbert recalls. “I’d never done anything like this in my life.”

One morning, when Willingham’s parents came to visit him, Gilbert arranged to see them first, at a coffee shop near the prison. Gene, who was in his seventies, had the Willingham look, though his black hair had gray streaks and his dark eyes were magnified by glasses. Eugenia, who was in her fifties, with silvery hair, was as sweet and talkative as her husband was stern and reserved. The drive from Oklahoma to Texas took six hours, and they had woken at three in the morning; because they could not afford a motel, they would have to return home later that day. “I feel like a real burden to them,” Willingham had written Gilbert.

As Gene and Eugenia sipped coffee, they told Gilbert how grateful they were that someone had finally taken an interest in Todd’s case. Gene said that his son, though he had flaws, was no killer.

The evening before the fire, Eugenia said, she had spoken on the phone with Todd. She and Gene were planning on visiting two days later, on Christmas Eve, and Todd told her that he and Stacy and the kids had just picked up family photographs. “He said, ‘We got your pictures for Christmas,’ “ she recalled. “He put Amber on the phone, and she was tattling on one of the twins. Todd didn’t seem upset. If something was bothering him, I would have known.”

The aftermath of the fire on December 23, 1991

Photograph from Texas State Fire Marshal’s Office

Gene and Eugenia got up to go: they didn’t want to miss any of the four hours that were allotted for the visit with their son. Before they left, Gene said, “You’ll let us know if you find anything, won’t you?”

Over the next few weeks, Gilbert continued to track down sources. Many of them, including the Barbees, remained convinced that Willingham was guilty, but several of his friends and relatives had doubts. So did some people in law enforcement. Willingham’s former probation officer in Oklahoma, Polly Goodin, recently told me that Willingham had never demonstrated bizarre or sociopathic behavior. “He was probably one of my favorite kids,” she said. Even a former judge named Bebe Bridges—who had often stood, as she put it, on the “opposite side” of Willingham in the legal system, and who had sent him to jail for stealing—told me that she could not imagine him killing his children. “He was polite, and he seemed to care,” she said. “His convictions had been for dumb-kid stuff. Even the things stolen weren’t significant.” Several months before the fire, Willingham tracked Goodin down at her office, and proudly showed her photographs of Stacy and the kids. “He wanted Bebe and me to know he’d been doing good,” Goodin recalled.

Eventually, Gilbert returned to Corsicana to interview Stacy, who had agreed to meet at the bed-and-breakfast where Gilbert was staying. Stacy was slightly plump, with pale, round cheeks and feathered dark-blond hair; her bangs were held in place by gel, and her face was heavily made up. According to a tape recording of the conversation, Stacy said that nothing unusual had happened in the days before the fire. She and Willingham had not fought, and were preparing for the holiday. Though Vasquez, the arson expert, had recalled finding the space heater off, Stacy was sure that, at least on the day of the incident—a cool winter morning—it had been on. “I remember turning it down,” she recalled. “I always thought, Gosh, could Amber have put something in there?” Stacy added that, more than once, she had caught Amber “putting things too close to it.”

Willingham had often not treated her well, she recalled, and after his incarceration she had left him for a man who did. But she didn’t think that her former husband should be on death row. “I don’t think he did it,” she said, crying.

Though only the babysitter had appeared as a witness for the defense during the main trial, several family members, including Stacy, testified during the penalty phase, asking the jury to spare Willingham’s life. When Stacy was on the stand, Jackson grilled her about the “significance” of Willingham’s “very large tattoo of a skull, encircled by some kind of a serpent.”

“It’s just a tattoo,” Stacy responded.

“He just likes skulls and snakes. Is that what you’re saying?”

“No. He just had—he got a tattoo on him.”

The prosecution cited such evidence in asserting that Willingham fit the profile of a sociopath, and brought forth two medical experts to confirm the theory. Neither had met Willingham. One of them was Tim Gregory, a psychologist with a master’s degree in marriage and family issues, who had previously gone goose hunting with Jackson, and had not published any research in the field of sociopathic behavior. His practice was devoted to family counselling.

At one point, Jackson showed Gregory Exhibit No. 60—a photograph of an Iron Maiden poster that had hung in Willingham’s house—and asked the psychologist to interpret it. “This one is a picture of a skull, with a fist being punched through the skull,” Gregory said; the image displayed “violence” and “death.” Gregory looked at photographs of other music posters owned by Willingham. “There’s a hooded skull, with wings and a hatchet,” Gregory continued. “And all of these are in fire, depicting—it reminds me of something like Hell. And there’s a picture—a Led Zeppelin picture of a falling angel. . . . I see there’s an association many times with cultive-type of activities. A focus on death, dying. Many times individuals that have a lot of this type of art have interest in satanic-type activities.”

The other medical expert was James P. Grigson, a forensic psychiatrist. He testified so often for the prosecution in capital-punishment cases that he had become known as Dr. Death. (A Texas appellate judge once wrote that when Grigson appeared on the stand the defendant might as well “commence writing out his last will and testament.”) Grigson suggested that Willingham was an “extremely severe sociopath,” and that “no pill” or treatment could help him. Grigson had previously used nearly the same words in helping to secure a death sentence against Randall Dale Adams, who had been convicted of murdering a police officer, in 1977. After Adams, who had no prior criminal record, spent a dozen years on death row—and once came within seventy-two hours of being executed—new evidence emerged that absolved him, and he was released. In 1995, three years after Willingham’s trial, Grigson was expelled from the American Psychiatric Association for violating ethics. The association stated that Grigson had repeatedly arrived at a “psychiatric diagnosis without first having examined the individuals in question, and for indicating, while testifying in court as an expert witness, that he could predict with 100-per-cent certainty that the individuals would engage in future violent acts.”

After speaking to Stacy, Gilbert had one more person she wanted to interview: the jailhouse informant Johnny Webb, who was incarcerated in Iowa Park, Texas. She wrote to Webb, who said that she could see him, and they met in the prison visiting room. A man in his late twenties, he had pallid skin and a closely shaved head; his eyes were jumpy, and his entire body seemed to tremble. A reporter who once met him described him to me as “nervous as a cat around rocking chairs.” Webb had begun taking drugs when he was nine years old, and had been convicted of, among other things, car theft, selling marijuana, forgery, and robbery.

As Gilbert chatted with him, she thought that he seemed paranoid. During Willingham’s trial, Webb disclosed that he had been given a diagnosis of “post-traumatic stress disorder” after he was sexually assaulted in prison, in 1988, and that he often suffered from “mental impairment.” Under cross-examination, Webb testified that he had no recollection of a robbery that he had pleaded guilty to only months earlier.

Johnny Webb claimed that Willingham confessed to him in prison.

Photograph by Alex Garcia / Chicago Tribune

Webb repeated for her what he had said in court: he had passed by Willingham’s cell, and as they spoke through a food slot Willingham broke down and told him that he intentionally set the house on fire. Gilbert was dubious. It was hard to believe that Willingham, who had otherwise insisted on his innocence, had suddenly confessed to an inmate he barely knew. The conversation had purportedly taken place by a speaker system that allowed any of the guards to listen—an unlikely spot for an inmate to reveal a secret. What’s more, Webb alleged that Willingham had told him that Stacy had hurt one of the kids, and that the fire was set to cover up the crime. The autopsies, however, had revealed no bruises or signs of trauma on the children’s bodies.

Jailhouse informants, many of whom are seeking reduced time or special privileges, are notoriously unreliable. According to a 2004 study by the Center on Wrongful Convictions, at Northwestern University Law School, lying police and jailhouse informants are the leading cause of wrongful convictions in capital cases in the United States. At the time that Webb came forward against Willingham, he was facing charges of robbery and forgery. During Willingham’s trial, another inmate planned to testify that he had overheard Webb saying to another prisoner that he was hoping to “get time cut,” but the testimony was ruled inadmissible, because it was hearsay. Webb, who pleaded guilty to the robbery and forgery charges, received a sentence of fifteen years. Jackson, the prosecutor, told me that he generally considered Webb “an unreliable kind of guy,” but added, “I saw no real motive for him to make a statement like this if it wasn’t true. We didn’t cut him any slack.” In 1997, five years after Willingham’s trial, Jackson urged the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant Webb parole. “I asked them to cut him loose early,” Jackson told me. The reason, Jackson said, was that Webb had been targeted by the Aryan Brotherhood. The board granted Webb parole, but within months of his release he was caught with cocaine and returned to prison.

In March, 2000, several months after Gilbert’s visit, Webb unexpectedly sent Jackson a Motion to Recant Testimony, declaring, “Mr. Willingham is innocent of all charges.” But Willingham’s lawyer was not informed of this development, and soon afterward Webb, without explanation, recanted his recantation. When I recently asked Webb, who was released from prison two years ago, about the turnabout and why Willingham would have confessed to a virtual stranger, he said that he knew only what “the dude told me.” After I pressed him, he said, “It’s very possible I misunderstood what he said.” Since the trial, Webb has been given an additional diagnosis, bipolar disorder. “Being locked up in that little cell makes you kind of crazy,” he said. “My memory is in bits and pieces. I was on a lot of medication at the time. Everyone knew that.” He paused, then said, “The statute of limitations has run out on perjury, hasn’t it?”

Aside from the scientific evidence of arson, the case against Willingham did not stand up to scrutiny. Jackson, the prosecutor, said of Webb’s testimony, “You can take it or leave it.” Even the refrigerator’s placement by the back door of the house turned out to be innocuous; there were two refrigerators in the cramped kitchen, and one of them was by the back door. Jimmie Hensley, the police detective, and Douglas Fogg, the assistant fire chief, both of whom investigated the fire, told me recently that they had never believed that the fridge was part of the arson plot. “It didn’t have nothing to do with the fire,” Fogg said.

After months of investigating the case, Gilbert found that her faith in the prosecution was shaken. As she told me, “What if Todd really was innocent?���

III

In the summer of 1660, an Englishman named William Harrison vanished on a walk, near the village of Charingworth, in Gloucestershire. His bloodstained hat was soon discovered on the side of a local road. Police interrogated Harrison’s servant, John Perry, and eventually Perry gave a statement that his mother and his brother had killed Harrison for money. Perry, his mother, and his brother were hanged.

Two years later, Harrison reappeared. He insisted, fancifully, that he had been abducted by a band of criminals and sold into slavery. Whatever happened, one thing was indisputable: he had not been murdered by the Perrys.

The fear that an innocent person might be executed has long haunted jurors and lawyers and judges. During America’s Colonial period, dozens of crimes were punishable by death, including horse thievery, blasphemy, “man-stealing,” and highway robbery. After independence, the number of crimes eligible for the death penalty was gradually reduced, but doubts persisted over whether legal procedures were sufficient to prevent an innocent person from being executed. In 1868, John Stuart Mill made one of the most eloquent defenses of capital punishment, arguing that executing a murderer did not display a wanton disregard for life but, rather, proof of its value. “We show, on the contrary, most emphatically our regard for it by the adoption of a rule that he who violates that right in another forfeits it for himself,” he said. For Mill, there was one counterargument that carried weight—“that if by an error of justice an innocent person is put to death, the mistake can never be corrected.”

The modern legal system, with its lengthy appeals process and clemency boards, was widely assumed to protect the kind of “error of justice” that Mill feared. In 2000, while George W. Bush was governor of Texas, he said, “I know there are some in the country who don’t care for the death penalty, but . . . we’ve adequately answered innocence or guilt.” His top policy adviser on issues of criminal justice emphasized that there is “super due process to make sure that no innocent defendants are executed.”

In recent years, though, questions have mounted over whether the system is fail-safe. Since 1976, more than a hundred and thirty people on death row have been exonerated. DNA testing, which was developed in the eighties, saved seventeen of them, but the technique can be used only in rare instances. Barry Scheck, a co-founder of the Innocence Project, which has used DNA testing to exonerate prisoners, estimates that about eighty per cent of felonies do not involve biological evidence.

In 2000, after thirteen people on death row in Illinois were exonerated, George Ryan, who was then governor of the state, suspended the death penalty. Though he had been a longtime advocate of capital punishment, he declared that he could no longer support a system that has “come so close to the ultimate nightmare—the state’s taking of innocent life.” Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has said that the “execution of a legally and factually innocent person would be a constitutionally intolerable event.”

Such a case has become a kind of grisly Holy Grail among opponents of capital punishment. In his 2002 book “The Death Penalty,” Stuart Banner observes, “The prospect of killing an innocent person seemed to be the one thing that could cause people to rethink their support for capital punishment. Some who were not troubled by statistical arguments against the death penalty—claims about deterrence or racial disparities—were deeply troubled that such an extreme injustice might occur in an individual case.” Opponents of the death penalty have pointed to several questionable cases. In 1993, Ruben Cantu was executed in Texas for fatally shooting a man during a robbery. Years later, a second victim, who survived the shooting, told the Houston Chronicle that he had been pressured by police to identify Cantu as the gunman, even though he believed Cantu to be innocent. Sam Millsap, the district attorney in the case, who had once supported capital punishment (“I’m no wild-eyed, pointy-headed liberal”), said that he was disturbed by the thought that he had made a mistake.

In 1995, Larry Griffin was put to death in Missouri, for a drive-by shooting of a drug dealer. The case rested largely on the eyewitness testimony of a career criminal named Robert Fitzgerald, who had been an informant for prosecutors before and was in the witness-protection program. Fitzgerald maintained that he happened to be at the scene because his car had broken down. After Griffin’s execution, a probe sponsored by the N.A.A.C.P.’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund revealed that a man who had been wounded during the incident insisted that Griffin was not the shooter. Moreover, the first police officer at the scene disputed that Fitzgerald had witnessed the crime.

These cases, however, stopped short of offering irrefutable proof that a “legally and factually innocent person” was executed. In 2005, a St. Louis prosecutor, Jennifer Joyce, launched an investigation of the Griffin case, upon being presented with what she called “compelling” evidence of Griffin’s potential innocence. After two years of reviewing the evidence, and interviewing a new eyewitness, Joyce said that she and her team were convinced that the “right person was convicted.”

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in 2006, voted with a majority to uphold the death penalty in a Kansas case. In his opinion, Scalia declared that, in the modern judicial system, there has not been “a single case—not one—in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops.”

“My problems are simple,” Willingham wrote Gilbert in September, 1999. “Try to keep them from killing me at all costs. End of story.”

During his first years on death row, Willingham had pleaded with his lawyer, David Martin, to rescue him. “You can’t imagine what it’s like to be here, with people I have no business even being around,” he wrote.

For a while, Willingham shared a cell with Ricky Lee Green, a serial killer, who castrated and fatally stabbed his victims, including a sixteen-year-old boy. (Green was executed in 1997.) Another of Willingham’s cellmates, who had an I.Q. below seventy and the emotional development of an eight-year-old, was raped by an inmate. “You remember me telling you I had a new celly?” Willingham wrote in a letter to his parents. “The little retarded boy. . . . There was this guy here on the wing who is a shit sorry coward (who is the same one I got into it with a little over a month ago). Well, he raped [my cellmate] in the 3 row shower week before last.” Willingham said that he couldn’t believe that someone would “rape a boy who cannot even defend himself. Pretty damn low.”

Because Willingham was known as a “baby killer,” he was a target of attacks. “Prison is a rough place, and with a case like mine they never give you the benefit of a doubt,” he wrote his parents. After he tried to fight one prisoner who threatened him, Willingham told a friend that if he hadn’t stood up for himself several inmates would have “beaten me up or raped or”—his thought trailed off.

Over the years, Willingham’s letters home became increasingly despairing. “This is a hard place, and it makes a person hard inside,” he wrote. “I told myself that was one thing I did not want and that was for this place to make me bitter, but it is hard.” He went on, “They have [executed] at least one person every month I have been here. It is senseless and brutal. . . . You see, we are not living in here, we are only existing.” In 1996, he wrote, “I just been trying to figure out why after having a wife and 3 beautiful children that I loved my life has to end like this. And sometimes it just seems like it is not worth it all. . . . In the 3 1/2 years I been here I have never felt that my life was as worthless and desolate as it is now.” Since the fire, he wrote, he had the sense that his life was slowly being erased. He obsessively looked at photographs of his children and Stacy, which he stored in his cell. “So long ago, so far away,” he wrote in a poem. “Was everything truly there?”

Inmates on death row are housed in a prison within a prison, where there are no attempts at rehabilitation, and no educational or training programs. In 1999, after seven prisoners tried to escape from Huntsville, Willingham and four hundred and fifty-nine other inmates on death row were moved to a more secure facility, in Livingston, Texas. Willingham was held in isolation in a sixty-square-foot cell, twenty-three hours a day. He tried to distract himself by drawing—“amateur stuff,” as he put it—and writing poems. In a poem about his children, he wrote, “There is nothing more beautiful than you on this earth.” When Gilbert once suggested some possible revisions to his poems, he explained that he wrote them simply as expressions, however crude, of his feelings. “So to me to cut them up and try to improve on them just for creative-writing purposes would be to destroy what I was doing to start with,” he said.

Despite his efforts to occupy his thoughts, he wrote in his diary that his mind “deteriorates each passing day.” He stopped working out and gained weight. He questioned his faith: “No God who cared about his creation would abandon the innocent.” He seemed not to care if another inmate attacked him. “A person who is already dead inside does not fear” death, he wrote.

One by one, the people he knew in prison were escorted into the execution chamber. There was Clifton Russell, Jr., who, at the age of eighteen, stabbed and beat a man to death, and who said, in his last statement, “I thank my Father, God in Heaven, for the grace he has granted me—I am ready.” There was Jeffery Dean Motley, who kidnapped and fatally shot a woman, and who declared, in his final words, “I love you, Mom. Goodbye.” And there was John Fearance, who murdered his neighbor, and who turned to God in his last moments and said, “I hope He will forgive me for what I done.”

Willingham had grown close to some of his prison mates, even though he knew that they were guilty of brutal crimes. In March, 2000, Willingham’s friend Ponchai Wilkerson—a twenty-eight-year-old who had shot and killed a clerk during a jewelry heist—was executed. Afterward, Willingham wrote in his diary that he felt “an emptiness that has not been touched since my children were taken from me.” A year later, another friend who was about to be executed—“one of the few real people I have met here not caught up in the bravado of prison”—asked Willingham to make him a final drawing. “Man, I never thought drawing a simple Rose could be so emotionally hard,” Willingham wrote. “The hard part is knowing that this will be the last thing I can do for him.”

Another inmate, Ernest Ray Willis, had a case that was freakishly similar to Willingham’s. In 1987, Willis had been convicted of setting a fire, in West Texas, that killed two women. Willis told investigators that he had been sleeping on a friend’s living-room couch and woke up to a house full of smoke. He said that he tried to rouse one of the women, who was sleeping in another room, but the flames and smoke drove him back, and he ran out the front door before the house exploded with flames. Witnesses maintained that Willis had acted suspiciously; he moved his car out of the yard, and didn’t show “any emotion,” as one volunteer firefighter put it. Authorities also wondered how Willis could have escaped the house without burning his bare feet. Fire investigators found pour patterns, puddle configurations, and other signs of arson. The authorities could discern no motive for the crime, but concluded that Willis, who had no previous record of violence, was a sociopath—a “demon,” as the prosecutor put it. Willis was charged with capital murder and sentenced to death.

Willis had eventually obtained what Willingham called, enviously, a “bad-ass lawyer.” James Blank, a noted patent attorney in New York, was assigned Willis’s case as part of his firm’s pro-bono work. Convinced that Willis was innocent, Blank devoted more than a dozen years to the case, and his firm spent millions, on fire consultants, private investigators, forensic experts, and the like. Willingham, meanwhile, relied on David Martin, his court-appointed lawyer, and one of Martin’s colleagues to handle his appeals. Willingham often told his parents, “You don’t know what it’s like to have lawyers who won’t even believe you’re innocent.” Like many inmates on death row, Willingham eventually filed a claim of inadequate legal representation. (When I recently asked Martin about his representation of Willingham, he said, “There were no grounds for reversal, and the verdict was absolutely the right one.” He said of the case, “Shit, it’s incredible that anyone’s even thinking about it.”)

Willingham tried to study the law himself, reading books such as “Tact in Court, or How Lawyers Win: Containing Sketches of Cases Won by Skill, Wit, Art, Tact, Courage and Eloquence.” Still, he confessed to a friend, “The law is so complicated it is hard for me to understand.” In 1996, he obtained a new court-appointed lawyer, Walter Reaves, who told me that he was appalled by the quality of Willingham’s defense at trial and on appeal. Reaves prepared for him a state writ of habeas corpus, known as a Great Writ. In the byzantine appeals process of death-penalty cases, which frequently takes more than ten years, the writ is the most critical stage: a prisoner can introduce new evidence detailing such things as perjured testimony, unreliable medical experts, and bogus scientific findings. Yet most indigent inmates, like Willingham, who constitute the bulk of those on death row, lack the resources to track down new witnesses or dig up fresh evidence. They must depend on court-appointed lawyers, many of whom are “unqualified, irresponsible, or overburdened,” as a study by the Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit organization, put it. In 2000, a Dallas Morning News investigation revealed that roughly a quarter of the inmates condemned to death in Texas were represented by court-appointed attorneys who had, at some point in their careers, been “reprimanded, placed on probation, suspended or banned from practicing law by the State Bar.” Although Reaves was more competent, he had few resources to reinvestigate the case, and his writ introduced no new exculpatory evidence: nothing further about Webb, or the reliability of the eyewitness testimony, or the credibility of the medical experts. It focussed primarily on procedural questions, such as whether the trial court erred in its instructions to the jury.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was known for upholding convictions even when overwhelming exculpatory evidence came to light. In 1997, DNA testing proved that sperm collected from a rape victim did not match Roy Criner, who had been sentenced to ninety-nine years for the crime. Two lower courts recommended that the verdict be overturned, but the Court of Criminal Appeals upheld it, arguing that Criner might have worn a condom or might not have ejaculated. Sharon Keller, who is now the presiding judge on the court, stated in a majority opinion, “The new evidence does not establish innocence.” In 2000, George W. Bush pardoned Criner. (Keller was recently charged with judicial misconduct, for refusing to keep open past five o’clock a clerk’s office in order to allow a last-minute petition from a man who was executed later that night.)

On October 31, 1997, the Court of Criminal Appeals denied Willingham’s writ. After Willingham filed another writ of habeas corpus, this time in federal court, he was granted a temporary stay. In a poem, Willingham wrote, “One more chance, one more strike / Another bullet dodged, another date escaped.”

Willingham was entering his final stage of appeals. As his anxieties mounted, he increasingly relied upon Gilbert to investigate his case and for emotional support. “She may never know what a change she brought into my life,” he wrote in his diary. “For the first time in many years she gave me a purpose, something to look forward to.”

As their friendship deepened, he asked her to promise him that she would never disappear without explanation. “I already have that in my life,” he told her.

Together, they pored over clues and testimony. Gilbert says that she would send Reaves leads to follow up, but although he was sympathetic, nothing seemed to come of them. In 2002, a federal district court of appeals denied Willingham’s writ without even a hearing. “Now I start the last leg of my journey,” Willingham wrote to Gilbert. “Got to get things in order.”

He appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but in December, 2003, he was notified that it had declined to hear his case. He soon received a court order announcing that “the Director of the Department of Criminal Justice at Huntsville, Texas, acting by and through the executioner designated by said Director . . . is hereby directed and commanded, at some hour after 6:00 p.m. on the 17th day of February, 2004, at the Department of Criminal Justice in Huntsville, Texas, to carry out this sentence of death by intravenous injection of a substance or substances in a lethal quantity sufficient to cause the death of said Cameron Todd Willingham.”

Willingham wrote a letter to his parents. “Are you sitting down?” he asked, before breaking the news. “I love you both so much,” he said.

His only remaining recourse was to appeal to the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, a Republican, for clemency. The process, considered the last gatekeeper to the executioner, has been called by the U.S. Supreme Court “the ‘fail safe’ in our criminal justice system.”

IV

One day in January, 2004, Dr. Gerald Hurst, an acclaimed scientist and fire investigator, received a file describing all the evidence of arson gathered in Willingham’s case. Gilbert had come across Hurst’s name and, along with one of Willingham’s relatives, had contacted him, seeking his help. After their pleas, Hurst had agreed to look at the case pro bono, and Reaves, Willingham’s lawyer, had sent him the relevant documents, in the hope that there were grounds for clemency.

Hurst opened the file in the basement of his house in Austin, which served as a laboratory and an office, and was cluttered with microscopes and diagrams of half-finished experiments. Hurst was nearly six and half feet tall, though his stooped shoulders made him seem considerably shorter, and he had a gaunt face that was partly shrouded by long gray hair. He was wearing his customary outfit: black shoes, black socks, a black T-shirt, and loose-fitting black pants supported by black suspenders. In his mouth was a wad of chewing tobacco.

A child prodigy who was raised by a sharecropper during the Great Depression, Hurst used to prowl junk yards, collecting magnets and copper wires in order to build radios and other contraptions. In the early sixties, he received a Ph.D. in chemistry from Cambridge University, where he started to experiment with fluorine and other explosive chemicals, and once detonated his lab. Later, he worked as the chief scientist on secret weapons programs for several American companies, designing rockets and deadly fire bombs—or what he calls “god-awful things.” He helped patent what has been described, with only slight exaggeration, as “the world’s most powerful nonnuclear explosive”: an Astrolite bomb. He experimented with toxins so lethal that a fraction of a drop would rot human flesh, and in his laboratory he often had to wear a pressurized moon suit; despite such precautions, exposure to chemicals likely caused his liver to fail, and in 1994 he required a transplant. Working on what he calls “the dark side of arson,” he retrofitted napalm bombs with Astrolite, and developed ways for covert operatives in Vietnam to create bombs from local materials, such as chicken manure and sugar. He also perfected a method for making an exploding T-shirt by nitrating its fibres.

His conscience eventually began pricking him. “One day, you wonder, What the hell am I doing?” he recalls. He left the defense industry, and went on to invent the Mylar balloon, an improved version of Liquid Paper, and Kinepak, a kind of explosive that reduces the risk of accidental detonation. Because of his extraordinary knowledge of fire and explosives, companies in civil litigation frequently sought his help in determining the cause of a blaze. By the nineties, Hurst had begun devoting significant time to criminal-arson cases, and, as he was exposed to the methods of local and state fire investigators, he was shocked by what he saw.

Many arson investigators, it turned out, had only a high-school education. In most states, in order to be certified, investigators had to take a forty-hour course on fire investigation, and pass a written exam. Often, the bulk of an investigator’s training came on the job, learning from “old-timers” in the field, who passed down a body of wisdom about the telltale signs of arson, even though a study in 1977 warned that there was nothing in “the scientific literature to substantiate their validity.”

In 1992, the National Fire Protection Association, which promotes fire prevention and safety, published its first scientifically based guidelines to arson investigation. Still, many arson investigators believed that what they did was more an art than a science—a blend of experience and intuition. In 1997, the International Association of Arson Investigators filed a legal brief arguing that arson sleuths should not be bound by a 1993 Supreme Court decision requiring experts who testified at trials to adhere to the scientific method. What arson sleuths did, the brief claimed, was “less scientific.” By 2000, after the courts had rejected such claims, arson investigators increasingly recognized the scientific method, but there remained great variance in the field, with many practitioners still relying on the unverified techniques that had been used for generations. “People investigated fire largely with a flat-earth approach,” Hurst told me. “It looks like arson—therefore, it’s arson.” He went on, “My view is you have to have a scientific basis. Otherwise, it’s no different than witch-hunting.”

In 1998, Hurst investigated the case of a woman from North Carolina named Terri Hinson, who was charged with setting a fire that killed her seventeen-month-old son, and faced the death penalty. Hurst ran a series of experiments re-creating the conditions of the fire, which suggested that it had not been arson, as the investigators had claimed; rather, it had started accidentally, from a faulty electrical wire in the attic. Because of this research, Hinson was freed. John Lentini, a fire expert and the author of a leading scientific textbook on arson, describes Hurst as “brilliant.” A Texas prosecutor once told the Chicago Tribune,of Hurst, “If he says it was an arson fire, then it was. If he says it wasn’t, then it wasn’t.”

Hurst’s patents yielded considerable royalties, and he could afford to work pro bono on an arson case for months, even years. But he received the files on Willingham’s case only a few weeks before Willingham was scheduled to be executed. As Hurst looked through the case records, a statement by Manuel Vasquez, the state deputy fire marshal, jumped out at him. Vasquez had testified that, of the roughly twelve hundred to fifteen hundred fires he had investigated, “most all of them” were arson. This was an oddly high estimate; the Texas State Fire Marshals Office typically found arson in only fifty per cent of its cases.

Hurst was also struck by Vasquez’s claim that the Willingham blaze had “burned fast and hot” because of a liquid accelerant. The notion that a flammable or combustible liquid caused flames to reach higher temperatures had been repeated in court by arson sleuths for decades. Yet the theory was nonsense: experiments have proved that wood and gasoline-fuelled fires burn at essentially the same temperature.

Vasquez and Fogg had cited as proof of arson the fact that the front door’s aluminum threshold had melted. “The only thing that can cause that to react is an accelerant,” Vasquez said. Hurst was incredulous. A natural-wood fire can reach temperatures as high as two thousand degrees Fahrenheit—far hotter than the melting point for aluminum alloys, which ranges from a thousand to twelve hundred degrees. And, like many other investigators, Vasquez and Fogg mistakenly assumed that wood charring beneath the aluminum threshold was evidence that, as Vasquez put it, “a liquid accelerant flowed underneath and burned.” Hurst had conducted myriad experiments showing that such charring was caused simply by the aluminum conducting so much heat. In fact, when liquid accelerant is poured under a threshold a fire will extinguish, because of a lack of oxygen. (Other scientists had reached the same conclusion.) “Liquid accelerants can no more burn under an aluminum threshold than can grease burn in a skillet even with a loose-fitting lid,” Hurst declared in his report on the Willingham case.

Hurst then examined Fogg and Vasquez’s claim that the “brown stains” on Willingham’s front porch were evidence of “liquid accelerant,” which had not had time to soak into the concrete. Hurst had previously performed a test in his garage, in which he poured charcoal-lighter fluid on the concrete floor, and lit it. When the fire went out, there were no brown stains, only smudges of soot. Hurst had run the same experiment many times, with different kinds of liquid accelerants, and the result was always the same. Brown stains were common in fires; they were usually composed of rust or gunk from charred debris that had mixed with water from fire hoses.

Another crucial piece of evidence implicating Willingham was the “crazed glass” that Vasquez had attributed to the rapid heating from a fire fuelled with liquid accelerant. Yet, in November of 1991, a team of fire investigators had inspected fifty houses in the hills of Oakland, California, which had been ravaged by brush fires. In a dozen houses, the investigators discovered crazed glass, even though a liquid accelerant had not been used. Most of these houses were on the outskirts of the blaze, where firefighters had shot streams of water; as the investigators later wrote in a published study, they theorized that the fracturing had been induced by rapid cooling, rather than by sudden heating—thermal shock had caused the glass to contract so quickly that it settled disjointedly. The investigators then tested this hypothesis in a laboratory. When they heated glass, nothing happened. But each time they applied water to the heated glass the intricate patterns appeared. Hurst had seen the same phenomenon when he had blowtorched and cooled glass during his research at Cambridge. In his report, Hurst wrote that Vasquez and Fogg’s notion of crazed glass was no more than an “old wives’ tale.”

Hurst then confronted some of the most devastating arson evidence against Willingham: the burn trailer, the pour patterns and puddle configurations, the V-shape and other burn marks indicating that the fire had multiple points of origin, the burning underneath the children’s beds. There was also the positive test for mineral spirits by the front door, and Willingham’s seemingly implausible story that he had run out of the house without burning his bare feet.

As Hurst read through more of the files, he noticed that Willingham and his neighbors had described the windows in the front of the house suddenly exploding and flames roaring forth. It was then that Hurst thought of the legendary Lime Street Fire, one of the most pivotal in the history of arson investigation.

On the evening of October 15, 1990, a thirty-five-year-old man named Gerald Wayne Lewis was found standing in front of his house on Lime Street, in Jacksonville, Florida, holding his three-year-old son. His two-story wood-frame home was engulfed in flames. By the time the fire had been extinguished, six people were dead, including Lewis’s wife. Lewis said that he had rescued his son but was unable to get to the others, who were upstairs.

When fire investigators examined the scene, they found the classic signs of arson: low burns along the walls and floors, pour patterns and puddle configurations, and a burn trailer running from the living room into the hallway. Lewis claimed that the fire had started accidentally, on a couch in the living room—his son had been playing with matches. But a V-shaped pattern by one of the doors suggested that the fire had originated elsewhere. Some witnesses told authorities that Lewis seemed too calm during the fire and had never tried to get help. According to the Los Angeles Times, Lewis had previously been arrested for abusing his wife, who had taken out a restraining order against him. After a chemist said that he had detected the presence of gasoline on Lewis’s clothing and shoes, a report by the sheriff’s office concluded, “The fire was started as a result of a petroleum product being poured on the front porch, foyer, living room, stairwell and second floor bedroom.” Lewis was arrested and charged with six counts of murder. He faced the death penalty.

Subsequent tests, however, revealed that the laboratory identification of gasoline was wrong. Moreover, a local news television camera had captured Lewis in a clearly agitated state at the scene of the fire, and investigators discovered that at one point he had jumped in front of a moving car, asking the driver to call the Fire Department.

Seeking to bolster their theory of the crime, prosecutors turned to John Lentini, the fire expert, and John DeHaan, another leading investigator and textbook author. Despite some of the weaknesses of the case, Lentini told me that, given the classic burn patterns and puddle configurations in the house, he was sure that Lewis had set the fire: “I was prepared to testify and send this guy to Old Sparky”—the electric chair.

To discover the truth, the investigators, with the backing of the prosecution, decided to conduct an elaborate experiment and re-create the fire scene. Local officials gave the investigators permission to use a condemned house next to Lewis’s home, which was about to be torn down. The two houses were virtually identical, and the investigators refurbished the condemned one with the same kind of carpeting, curtains, and furniture that had been in Lewis’s home. The scientists also wired the building with heat and gas sensors that could withstand fire. The cost of the experiment came to twenty thousand dollars. Without using liquid accelerant, Lentini and DeHaan set the couch in the living room on fire, expecting that the experiment would demonstrate that Lewis’s version of events was implausible.

The investigators watched as the fire quickly consumed the couch, sending upward a plume of smoke that hit the ceiling and spread outward, creating a thick layer of hot gases overhead—an efficient radiator of heat. Within three minutes, this cloud, absorbing more gases from the fire below, was banking down the walls and filling the living room. As the cloud approached the floor, its temperature rose, in some areas, to more than eleven hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Suddenly, the entire room exploded in flames, as the radiant heat ignited every piece of furniture, every curtain, every possible fuel source, even the carpeting. The windows shattered.

The fire had reached what is called “flashover”—the point at which radiant heat causes a fire in a room to become a room on fire. Arson investigators knew about the concept of flashover, but it was widely believed to take much longer to occur, especially without a liquid accelerant. From a single fuel source—a couch—the room had reached flashover in four and a half minutes.

Because all the furniture in the living room had ignited, the blaze went from a fuel-controlled fire to a ventilation-controlled fire—or what scientists call “post-flashover.” During post-flashover, the path of the fire depends on new sources of oxygen, from an open door or window. One of the fire investigators, who had been standing by an open door in the living room, escaped moments before the oxygen-starved fire roared out of the room into the hallway—a fireball that caused the corridor to go quickly into flashover as well, propelling the fire out the front door and onto the porch.

After the fire was extinguished, the investigators inspected the hallway and living room. On the floor were irregularly shaped burn patterns that perfectly resembled pour patterns and puddle configurations. It turned out that these classic signs of arson can also appear on their own, after flashover. With the naked eye, it is impossible to distinguish between the pour patterns and puddle configurations caused by an accelerant and those caused naturally by post-flashover. The only reliable way to tell the difference is to take samples from the burn patterns and test them in a laboratory for the presence of flammable or combustible liquids.

During the Lime Street experiment, other things happened that were supposed to occur only in a fire fuelled by liquid accelerant: charring along the base of the walls and doorways, and burning under furniture. There was also a V-shaped pattern by the living-room doorway, far from where the fire had started on the couch. In a small fire, a V-shaped burn mark may pinpoint where a fire began, but during post-flashover these patterns can occur repeatedly, when various objects ignite.

One of the investigators muttered that they had just helped prove the defense’s case. Given the reasonable doubt raised by the experiment, the charges against Lewis were soon dropped. The Lime Street experiment had demolished prevailing notions about fire behavior. Subsequent tests by scientists showed that, during post-flashover, burning under beds and furniture was common, entire doors were consumed, and aluminum thresholds melted.

John Lentini says of the Lime Street Fire, “This was my epiphany. I almost sent a man to die based on theories that were a load of crap.”

Hurst next examined a floor plan of Willingham’s house that Vasquez had drawn, which delineated all the purported pour patterns and puddle configurations. Because the windows had blown out of the children’s room, Hurst knew that the fire had reached flashover. With his finger, Hurst traced along Vasquez’s diagram the burn trailer that had gone from the children’s room, turned right in the hallway, and headed out the front door. John Jackson, the prosecutor, had told me that the path was so “bizarre” that it had to have been caused by a liquid accelerant. But Hurst concluded that it was a natural product of the dynamics of fire during post-flashover. Willingham had fled out the front door, and the fire simply followed the ventilation path, toward the opening. Similarly, when Willingham had broken the windows in the children’s room, flames had shot outward.

Hurst recalled that Vasquez and Fogg had considered it impossible for Willingham to have run down the burning hallway without scorching his bare feet. But if the pour patterns and puddle configurations were a result of a flashover, Hurst reasoned, then they were consonant with Willingham’s explanation of events. When Willingham exited his bedroom, the hallway was not yet on fire; the flames were contained within the children’s bedroom, where, along the ceiling, he saw the “bright lights.” Just as the investigator safely stood by the door in the Lime Street experiment seconds before flashover, Willingham could have stood close to the children’s room without being harmed. (Prior to the Lime Street case, fire investigators had generally assumed that carbon monoxide diffuses quickly through a house during a fire. In fact, up until flashover, levels of carbon monoxide can be remarkably low beneath and outside the thermal cloud.) By the time the Corsicana fire achieved flashover, Willingham had already fled outside and was in the front yard.

Vasquez had made a videotape of the fire scene, and Hurst looked at the footage of the burn trailer. Even after repeated viewings, he could not detect three points of origin, as Vasquez had. (Fogg recently told me that he also saw a continuous trailer and disagreed with Vasquez, but added that nobody from the prosecution or the defense ever asked him on the stand about his opinion on the subject.)

After Hurst had reviewed Fogg and Vasquez’s list of more than twenty arson indicators, he believed that only one had any potential validity: the positive test for mineral spirits by the threshold of the front door. But why had the fire investigators obtained a positive reading only in that location? According to Fogg and Vasquez’s theory of the crime, Willingham had poured accelerant throughout the children’s bedroom and down the hallway. Officials had tested extensively in these areas—including where all the pour patterns and puddle configurations were—and turned up nothing. Jackson told me that he “never did understand why they weren’t able to recover” positive tests in these parts.

Hurst found it hard to imagine Willingham pouring accelerant on the front porch, where neighbors could have seen him. Scanning the files for clues, Hurst noticed a photograph of the porch taken before the fire, which had been entered into evidence. Sitting on the tiny porch was a charcoal grill. The porch was where the family barbecued. Court testimony from witnesses confirmed that there had been a grill, along with a container of lighter fluid, and that both had burned when the fire roared onto the porch during post-flashover. By the time Vasquez inspected the house, the grill had been removed from the porch, during cleanup. Though he cited the container of lighter fluid in his report, he made no mention of the grill. At the trial, he insisted that he had never been told of the grill’s earlier placement. Other authorities were aware of the grill but did not see its relevance. Hurst, however, was convinced that he had solved the mystery: when firefighters had blasted the porch with water, they had likely spread charcoal-lighter fluid from the melted container.

Without having visited the fire scene, Hurst says, it was impossible to pinpoint the cause of the blaze. But, based on the evidence, he had little doubt that it was an accidental fire—one caused most likely by the space heater or faulty electrical wiring. It explained why there had never been a motive for the crime. Hurst concluded that there was no evidence of arson, and that a man who had already lost his three children and spent twelve years in jail was about to be executed based on “junk science.” Hurst wrote his report in such a rush that he didn’t pause to fix the typos.

V

“I am a realist and I will not live a fantasy,” Willingham once told Gilbert about the prospect of proving his innocence. But in February, 2004, he began to have hope. Hurst’s findings had helped to exonerate more than ten people. Hurst even reviewed the scientific evidence against Willingham’s friend Ernest Willis, who had been on death row for the strikingly similar arson charge. Hurst says, “It was like I was looking at the same case. Just change the names.” In his report on the Willis case, Hurst concluded that not “a single item of physical evidence . . . supports a finding of arson.” A second fire expert hired by Ori White, the new district attorney in Willis’s district, concurred. After seventeen years on death row, Willis was set free. “I don’t turn killers loose,” White said at the time. “If Willis was guilty, I’d be retrying him right now. And I’d use Hurst as my witness. He’s a brilliant scientist.” White noted how close the system had come to murdering an innocent man. “He did not get executed, and I thank God for that,” he said.

On February 13th, four days before Willingham was scheduled to be executed, he got a call from Reaves, his attorney. Reaves told him that the fifteen members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles, which reviews an application for clemency and had been sent Hurst’s report, had made their decision.

“What is it?” Willingham asked.

“I’m sorry,” Reaves said. “They denied your petition.”

The vote was unanimous. Reaves could not offer an explanation: the board deliberates in secret, and its members are not bound by any specific criteria. The board members did not even have to review Willingham’s materials, and usually don’t debate a case in person; rather, they cast their votes by fax—a process that has become known as “death by fax.” Between 1976 and 2004, when Willingham filed his petition, the State of Texas had approved only one application for clemency from a prisoner on death row. A Texas appellate judge has called the clemency system “a legal fiction.” Reaves said of the board members, “They never asked me to attend a hearing or answer any questions.”

The Innocence Project obtained, through the Freedom of Information Act, all the records from the governor’s office and the board pertaining to Hurst’s report. “The documents show that they received the report, but neither office has any record of anyone acknowledging it, taking note of its significance, responding to it, or calling any attention to it within the government,” Barry Scheck said. “The only reasonable conclusion is that the governor’s office and the Board of Pardons and Paroles ignored scientific evidence.”

LaFayette Collins, who was a member of the board at the time, told me of the process, “You don’t vote guilt or innocence. You don’t retry the trial. You just make sure everything is in order and there are no glaring errors.” He noted that although the rules allowed for a hearing to consider important new evidence, “in my time there had never been one called.” When I asked him why Hurst’s report didn’t constitute evidence of “glaring errors,” he said, “We get all kinds of reports, but we don’t have the mechanisms to vet them.” Alvin Shaw, another board member at the time, said that the case didn’t “ring a bell,” adding, angrily, “Why would I want to talk about it?” Hurst calls the board’s actions “unconscionable.”

Though Reaves told Willingham that there was still a chance that Governor Perry might grant a thirty-day stay, Willingham began to prepare his last will and testament. He had earlier written Stacy a letter apologizing for not being a better husband and thanking her for everything she had given him, especially their three daughters. “I still know Amber’s voice, her smile, her cool Dude saying and how she said: I wanna hold you! Still feel the touch of Karmon and Kameron’s hands on my face.” He said that he hoped that “some day, somehow the truth will be known and my name cleared.”

He asked Stacy if his tombstone could be erected next to their children’s graves. Stacy, who had for so long expressed belief in Willingham’s innocence, had recently taken her first look at the original court records and arson findings. Unaware of Hurst’s report, she had determined that Willingham was guilty. She denied him his wish, later telling a reporter, “He took my kids away from me.”

Gilbert felt as if she had failed Willingham. Even before his pleas for clemency were denied, she told him that all she could give him was her friendship. He told her that it was enough “to be a part of your life in some small way so that in my passing I can know I was at last able to have felt the heart of another who might remember me when I’m gone.” He added, “There is nothing to forgive you for.” He told her that he would need her to be present at his execution, to help him cope with “my fears, thoughts, and feelings.”

On February 17th, the day he was set to die, Willingham’s parents and several relatives gathered in the prison visiting room. Plexiglas still separated Willingham from them. “I wish I could touch and hold both of you,” Willingham had written to them earlier. “I always hugged Mom but I never hugged Pop much.”

As Willingham looked at the group, he kept asking where Gilbert was. Gilbert had recently been driving home from a store when another car ran a red light and smashed into her. Willingham used to tell her to stay in her kitchen for a day, without leaving, to comprehend what it was like to be confined in prison, but she had always found an excuse not to do it. Now she was paralyzed from the neck down.

While she was in an intensive-care unit, she had tried to get a message to Willingham, but apparently failed. Gilbert’s daughter later read her a letter that Willingham had sent her, telling her how much he had grown to love her. He had written a poem: “Do you want to see beauty—like you have never seen? / Then close your eyes, and open your mind, and come along with me.”

Gilbert, who spent years in physical rehabilitation, gradually regaining motion in her arms and upper body, says, “All that time, I thought I was saving Willingham, and I realized then that he was saving me, giving me the strength to get through this. I know I will one day walk again, and I know it is because Willingham showed me the kind of courage it takes to survive.”

Willingham had requested a final meal, and at 4 p.m. on the seventeenth he was served it: three barbecued pork ribs, two orders of onion rings, fried okra, three beef enchiladas with cheese, and two slices of lemon cream pie. He received word that Governor Perry had refused to grant him a stay. (A spokesperson for Perry says, “The Governor made his decision based on the facts of the case.”) Willingham’s mother and father began to cry. “Don’t be sad, Momma,” Willingham said. “In fifty-five minutes, I’m a free man. I’m going home to see my kids.” Earlier, he had confessed to his parents that there was one thing about the day of the fire he had lied about. He said that he had never actually crawled into the children’s room. “I just didn’t want people to think I was a coward,” he said. Hurst told me, “People who have never been in a fire don’t understand why those who survive often can’t rescue the victims. They have no concept of what a fire is like.”

The warden told Willingham that it was time. Willingham, refusing to assist the process, lay down; he was carried into a chamber eight feet wide and ten feet long. The walls were painted green, and in the center of the room, where an electric chair used to be, was a sheeted gurney. Several guards strapped Willingham down with leather belts, snapping buckles across his arms and legs and chest. A medical team then inserted intravenous tubes into his arms. Each official had a separate role in the process, so that no one person felt responsible for taking a life.

Willingham had asked that his parents and family not be present in the gallery during this process, but as he looked out he could see Stacy watching. The warden pushed a remote control, and sodium thiopental, a barbiturate, was pumped into Willingham’s body. Then came a second drug, pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the diaphragm, making it impossible to breathe. Finally, a third drug, potassium chloride, filled his veins, until his heart stopped, at 6:20 p.m. On his death certificate, the cause was listed as “Homicide.”

After his death, his parents were allowed to touch his face for the first time in more than a decade. Later, at Willingham’s request, they cremated his body and secretly spread some of his ashes over his children’s graves. He had told his parents, “Please don’t ever stop fighting to vindicate me.”

In December, 2004, questions about the scientific evidence in the Willingham case began to surface. Maurice Possley and Steve Mills, of the Chicago Tribune, had published an investigative series on flaws in forensic science; upon learning of Hurst’s report, Possley and Mills asked three fire experts, including John Lentini, to examine the original investigation. The experts concurred with Hurst’s report. Nearly two years later, the Innocence Project commissioned Lentini and three other top fire investigators to conduct an independent review of the arson evidence in the Willingham case. The panel concluded that “each and every one” of the indicators of arson had been “scientifically proven to be invalid.”

In 2005, Texas established a government commission to investigate allegations of error and misconduct by forensic scientists. The first cases that are being reviewed by the commission are those of Willingham and Willis. In mid-August, the noted fire scientist Craig Beyler, who was hired by the commission, completed his investigation. In a scathing report, he concluded that investigators in the Willingham case had no scientific basis for claiming that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes of the fire. He said that Vasquez’s approach seemed to deny “rational reasoning” and was more “characteristic of mystics or psychics.” What’s more, Beyler determined that the investigation violated, as he put it to me, “not only the standards of today but even of the time period.” The commission is reviewing his findings, and plans to release its own report next year. Some legal scholars believe that the commission may narrowly assess the reliability of the scientific evidence. There is a chance, however, that Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the “execution of a legally and factually innocent person.”

Just before Willingham received the lethal injection, he was asked if he had any last words. He said, “The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for twelve years for something I did not do. From God’s dust I came and to dust I will return, so the Earth shall become my throne.” ♦

David Grann has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2003.

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