Public executions have a variety of effects on the different towns they occur in. Although the common denominator seems to enjoy the spectacle, there remains pockets of quiet detractors who sit in silent judgment of their peers who enjoy the show.

In the town of Bethel, however, this is not the case. Each man woman and child that isn’t imprisoned walks to the gallows each Saturday morning with a look of blank anticipation dripping from their faces. in most cities, executions are comprised almost entirely of residents of the town. this is largely because when the order was passed, the prisons that were the source of countless complaints of overcrowding and underfunding were cleared out. after about a year of public executions there wasn’t any real need for prisons, most local governments had a county jail and the crime rate was so low that it only made sense for each small community to handle their executions internally. again, this was not the case for Bethel. During the year following the executive order, the government realized that some of the more rural American cities were living in total lawlessness and that

The walk from the cells to the gallows took the average man about half of an hour. Guards who brought the prisoners from the cells to the gallows were by all accounts, average men, but walking a man to his demise is something that weighs on a man, so more often than not, when the doomed prisoners were being walked to their deaths, the walk took closer to forty-five minutes. None of the guards did this intentionally, but corralling men on their final walk took some amount of effort, and occasionally a recalcitrant prisoner would get the idea to run, and the guards were in charge of ensuring that they were not successful. On this particular morning, the weather was fantastic. It was the first day of spring and the guards could not help but appreciate the excellent weather they were experiencing. Of course, nothing was said to the prisoners about the beautiful conditions outside, there is something morose about casually discussing the wonders of nature with a man condemned to die in an hour. Nevertheless, the guards silently appreciated the cool breeze and warm sun while they made their way to the gallows.

In the caravan of doomed men this morning there were four prisoners. All of them somewhat familiar with one another, but not familiar enough to have any kind of camaraderie between them, after all, dying is a companionless act, and each of the prisoners was too absorbed with the coming events to try and quell the loneliness that each of them was feeling. None of their crimes were particularly interesting so to speak, so although there would undoubtedly be some people in the audience today, it was not a public event as some executions tend to be. Moving slowly along, the men all did what they could to comfort themselves.