The Hangman’s Rope

By Adam Kugler

The Hangman’s Rope is a collection of short stories and poems that was collected by the author that was written earlier in 2018 and was compiled into one book and is now being released into one collection. It is the place where the Hangman has come to sing his song, and to show his skill with his rope. Will he get his victory? You will have to read the story The Hangman’s Rope to find out whether the Hangman is victorious this time around.

There are also other stories, and the beginning of the novella, On Cherry Street. While this novella is just being introduced to us here, it is important, it is just the beginning of the story. The collection also has stories that talk about the need for family values and the things that I think are becoming more important now that they are becoming few and few in this world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adam Kugler
• Release date: Nov 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463558454

Adam Kugler

I am an unusual writer who is trying to write things that reach out to people and shows them things that they might not get to see in their life at any other time. I love to take the time to explore, with my characters, new and different things that are going on in my world, as well as the world around me. Although this story touches more on the supernatural and spiritual worlds, I know that there is more to life than that. Are we always going to be faced with spiritual challenges? No. And I am not the kind of writer who is always going to deal with that. I believe that we all face different conflicts in life and some of those can be hard for people to go through and understand. You are not alone in the world. I have grown up in a small town, and still live in a small town in rural Illinois. I like to study all sorts of things. I am not the kind that will sit down and think about one subject, I am always going through a whole host of things. I study history, politics, spiritual issues, and I try to grow from these studies. There are some people who would say that I am a tough person to get along with, but that is not always the case. I want, more than anything to be a person who is going to be a leader to the people around me, when I am called to be, and a follower when I am called to be that. I like to know that I can fit into those places when I am called to be there. I am not perfect, and many people do not know that. I don't even pretend to be. I have longed to put out words that will reach people and I am going to continue to write the things that I think people are going to relate to.

Book preview

The Hangman’s Rope

With The Hangman’s Songs & Other Short Stories

By

Adam J Kugler

Edited by

Colleen Kugler & Kurt Volz

©️2018 Kugler, Adam J

All Rights Reserved

All Names, Dates, and Places mentioned in this story are strictly used in a fictional manner. Any overlap is strictly confidential. All uses of names, dates, and places mentioned if they are the same as people I have encountered, it is all coincidental.

13 July 2018

The Hangman’s Rope — Adam J Kugler

Hostage

By

Adam J Kugler

Introduction

I open this story with the idea that here is a journalist and this journalist is chasing a story that is going to make his career. I think that there are a lot of authors and writers out there who can identify with this. They want to write and they are chasing after that dream story. They are looking for that story, article, or whatever to make them famous, but they never get the chance to do it.

Some resort to giving up, but in this story there is no doubt that the character is willing to do anything to stay on the top of his game. Even if that means that he has to travel all the way around the world for a 20 minute interview that may or may not happen.

I know I can relate to the things this character is saying. He’s really a picture of me. I want to be the person who’s out there writing the stories, and this is how far I’ll chase it.

I think also that as we see things change over the years and the hostages and the men who were KIA in the different wars this country has been a part of, well, there’s something to the need for people to report the stories that are coming out.

Part of this comes from my time as a writer for our local paper how I covered things that were a part of history. Some of them I understood, and some of them I didn’t. I placed this one in Vietnam, mostly because this is an era in American history I don’t understand, and I don’t think I ever will totally understand.

I know this may seem an unlikely source for me, but I think it’s important for me to show the different sides of the person I am. I know that I am trying to branch out with this story and try to put something out there that’s different. I want to be sure that I’m showing that there’s something else about me that makes me what I am.

12 July, 2018

Hostage

There are times in my life I wish things would have gone a little more smoothly than at other times. I was just one of the people who was working one day when it happened though.

I’d gotten to work and there was the elevator ride to the 17th floor. It was the same trip I always took. I loved it, mostly because I liked knowing there was something there to look forward to. I loved work. I was a newspaper correspondent. I guess there’s nothing like writing for a living. I wanted to do the job and I wanted to be the person who could bring the bread home to the family.

Yes, I had one of those—a family that is. I loved them dearly, and I knew that they needed someone to win the bread, and bring home the bacon to put on the bread. I know, what am I thinking? Where are my manners?

My name is Jared Pastel. I’ve been a writer for a few years and I’ve come to love it. I have come to love all the things I did for a living and there was a good reason, I’m sure of that. I’d been a good guy, or what I thought was a good guy for several years. I thought I wasn’t going to be a very good person. I was the mistake that my parents said they had. I guess I was a happy accident. They never told me any different.

My mother and father were both hard workers. My mom was a secretary at a big law firm in Atlanta, Georgia. My dad just happened to be a court justice in the same district. He loved his job, and I guess, well, I was just left with the nanny most of the time. It was Sarah, the nanny, who taught me about stories. She insisted on telling me a story every single time she was over. As I grew up with those stories, I knew there was little I didn’t want to do but to become the teller of great stories myself oneday. I loved the things that happened. I was a good listener. I loved the stories she told.

She’d told me many times about the Man and the Woodshed . I’d never been one to show any fear and there were good reasons for that. My dad told me he’d faced bad guys all the time, and he said that it was important to remember that they were just people, too. I knew that was the case. I guess that’s why I never fell for the story of the Woodshed man Sarah had told me about. It was like there was something more to the man, something I was never going to have to worry about. I liked knowing that there was a man who wanted to be a part of the life I was living.

I was looked at as just one of the average kids, but I wanted something so much more, even after my parents decided I no longer needed a nanny and after Sarah had decided she had enough money to get a proper education. She was still in touch with me. I would often email her. It was the age of no paper, no snail-mail. I was the kid who took the time every great once in a while to write that long handwritten letter and send it to Sarah. She was the one person who really wanted to make a difference in my life, and she’d done just that.

No matter what I did I couldn’t forget the stories Sarah used to tell and I had decided in high school that I too wanted to tell stories. I wanted to tell the stories that were true, but I was willing to put a spin on them. I guess that’s how I managed to land the gig I had now.

I was the international correspondent. I pretty much traveled anywhere the paper wanted me to go and I reported the news to the paper. I was a good man in general. I wanted to tell the stories like they were. I’d been through the trouble in Chad, the incidents of the Darfur Region. I never thought I’d see something so totally devastating as what I saw there.

I was also sent to places like Iraq, Iran, South Korea and several other places. I loved seeing the things that were out there, but it wasn’t always the safest thing to be where I was. I guess, that’s why—when this week the announcement came—that one of our enemies had agreed to give up a prisoner of war, a hostage, I was being sent out to do the story. It was a dangerous place, and he was coming home to an America that was not likely to be the place he remembered.

I’d been to Vietnam, and I knew that North Vietnam was still very much against the American people. I knew that it was big news that this POW was coming out of this region. It wasn’t unheard of to have POW’s come out of regions that were like this, but what was making them give up this prisoner now? That was one of the questions I was being sent to ask. I guess there’s a lot of things one has to take a closer look at. I was sure there were plenty of people who would have loved to take this story, but there was something that the United States Government wanted me to do. They wanted me to make contact with this man and let him know things were alright.

Now, I needn’t remind you that I wasn’t a hostage negotiator, nor was I an official diplomat. I knew there were things that were outside the walls of an embassy. I think that there are plenty of people who wanted to put two and two together. They knew more than anything I had been to the region and I knew what it was like, but I had also covered stories here, so I could tell this man the things that had taken place while he’d been a POW.

What I didn’t know was that there wasn’t going to be the freedoms awarded to the man I thought were going to come out of this. It was easy to think just because this man was coming out of one captivity, it was my job to get his story and then share it with people. At the same time the U.S. Government was going to be placing him under arrest as soon as we landed on one of the bases. His story was one I was unsure of. I’d been told one thing, but it seemed as if there was something else going on. What was it? What did the American people not need to know? What did they need to know?

These were the things I was supposed to find out as I made my way to the airport. I had been told I was only going to have 20 minutes with the hostage. 20 minutes to get all I could out of him. 20 minutes to cement the ideals of this man into the minds of the reading public. Was there any way to do it?

My phone rang as I sat at one of the stop lights in the back