I’m pleased to announce that Pear Tree Press has reprinted my short story “A Rehanging at Nine” in their current issue of The Literary Hatchet. You can download a digital copy of the issue from The Literary Hatchet store (for free until the next issue is published) and purchase a print copy from Amazon. Issue 41 is a special double issue and contains 29 short stories, 41 poems, and 11 works of original art/humor.

“A Rehanging at Night” was initially published in the Murderous Ink Press anthology Crimeucopia: Through The Past Darkly in June 2024.

And now a sneak peek at my story:

A Rehanging at Nine

by Karl El-Koura

Sheriff Jeremy Martins didn’t get home until well after ten o’clock that night. He’d stayed late talking with the Governor, both of them sitting on the scaffold, their feet dangling below like Ernie Johnson’s feet should’ve dangled, the Sheriff explaining, or trying to explain, what had happened with the execution, and negotiating (or trying to negotiate) to not have to rehang Ernie at nine the next morning.

As he pulled into the long unpaved driveway of their newly built farm house on two acres of land about thirty miles outside the town of Elam, one more time Sheriff Martins played out the scenario in his mind of how he was going to explain everything to his very pregnant wife. He’d promised her a trip into town the next morning, which he now had to cancel unless her ideal outing involved getting up early to execute a twenty-three-year-old rapist and murderer and then bury his sad, lanky body in the prison cemetery.

Keep reading by grabbing your copy of Issue 41 of The Literary Hatchet.