Rich Hosek

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Feb, 2020

Stories (7)

7 Stories

187 karma pts

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“The Yellow Curtain” by Rich Hosek

Submitted to Contest #130

“You can’t possibly have solved the case already,” Jeremy White said in utter disbelief. “We just got here!” “It’s obvious,” Isaac Black replied, in that nonchalant manner that drove Jeremy crazy. “How can you possibly know who killed this woman without knowing who she is, what she looks like or how she died,” Jeremy demanded, exasperated. “You don’t even know what color the drapes are,” he added. “Her name is Beverly Goldman, tall, brunette, green eyes. She was shot. And the curtains are yellow,” Isaac replied without skipping a beat....

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“White” by Rich Hosek

Submitted to Contest #129

The snow came down in large white clumps, so quickly that my my footprints were erased as fast as I made them trudging back to the cabin from the woodpile with an armload of logs. The satellite dish perched on my roof was buried in the winter’s snowfall and completely useless, but I didn’t need some fancy TV weatherman to tell me it was going to be a hell of a storm.The solar panels were likewise ineffective this time of year, so the television was nothing but a blank frame anyway. I had plenty of kerosene for my lamps, and the wood kept me ...

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“As the Tea Leaves” by Rich Hosek

Submitted to Contest #128

“What do I do next?” I asked the impossibly old woman sitting in the chair opposite me. She wore a crocheted shawl and had her pure white, whispy hair pulled up into a bun. Her skin looked like an elephant’s—an elephant who had been in the bath too long.She was so devoid of muscle or fat that you could see the contours of her skull and skeleton through her fine, wrinkled epidermis, like the Crypt Keeper on that old TV show.Her eyes were yellow—both the iris and the sclera—and her teeth, what remained of them, were of a similar tint, the...

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“The Charlatan's Conundrum” by Rich Hosek

Submitted to Contest #127

“Prove that I’m a fake,” said the man sitting across from me. We were in a booth at the diner where I frequently had casual meetings like this one.“I don’t need to, I know you’re a fake,” I told him.He dropped his chin in frustration, perhaps even despair. The expression was difficult to read through the layers of fatigue that were present on his face. He also looked as if he hadn’t showered for days which made me glad I was on the other side of the booth.“I know you know I’m a fake, but I need you to prove it. I need you to demonstrate...

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“Resolved” by Rich Hosek

Submitted to Contest #126

Roger looked at the woman curled up next to him on his sofa while the New Years Eve show they were watching played on the television. She smiled back at him. “So, any resolutions?” she asked. It was the same question he had heard from hundreds of different women in all the variations of New Years Eve he had experienced so far. It was the question that had started it all. The first time had been asked about his resolutions for the coming year he had laughed it off. But his companion on that first changing of the calendar seemed of...

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“Impatience” by Rich Hosek

Submitted to Contest #125

Jericho Maxwell Orelio, Ph.D., stood at his workbench conducting the final inspection of the array equipment that was carefully mounted, positioned and connected to myriad sensors. At first glance, it appeared to be something a child might assemble out of the odds and ends one might find in the dumpster behind an electronics repair shop. But a closer look would reveal a miniature version of a device that one would find among the experiments positioned in the targeting area of a particle accelerator.“Vivian, are we still a go on the temporal ...

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“The Patient” by Rich Hosek

Submitted to Contest #85

That's the thing about this city… although it looks and feels like any other city you might have visited—there are homes and shops and streets and parks—it's what isn’t there that makes it stand out.There are no people.Not a soul.But—and this is a pretty big but—there are—how shall I put this?—traces of people. For example, there are cars parked everywhere, but each day some of them have moved, or there are different ones in different places. There are some streets marked with “No Parking This Side On Mondays,” and sure enough, on Monda...

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Author bio

You can listen to these stories and more on the Written by Rich Hosek audio fiction podcast, available on your favorite podcast app. Rich has written for numerous television series with his writing partner, Arnold Rudnick, including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Star Trek: Voyager and The New Addams Family. He's also co-author on the popular Raney/Daye Investigation series of paranormal mysteries. His latest novel, The Dead Kids Club is available on Amazon.