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Frances Hogg Lochow

Author on Reedsy Prompts since May, 2022

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11 Stories

159 karma pts

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The Color of Nothing

Weekly Contest #352

Shirley Harbrecht hissed into the receiver. “Richard! What about the car insurance?”She needn’t have worried about Jeffrey overhearing her, because her young son was lost in the project that lay before him. Jeff was drawing a picture of his grandparents’ house. They lived out in the country in a big old house with lots of trees around it and a river cutting through the back. Shortly after Richard ran off to Orlando with one of his political science students, Jeffrey and his mom had packed up their things and spent a few weeks at Grandma’s ho...

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Hindsight

Weekly Contest #344

CW: Physical violence, gore or abuse; Mental health “I’m so glad that you’re finally visiting, sweetheart! I know you’ve always had issues with Natasha.”“My reason for staying away has nothing to do with your wife, Dad.”“I understand. You must have so many terrible memories—”“No, Dad. That’s the point. That’s why I’m here. I don’t have any memories.”He looked surprised. “You don’t remember living here?”“Barely,” she said. “Remember? After I was sent to the foster home, you never came to get me!”“Barbi, I’m sorry. It was for your own good. I ...

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"You're it!"

It was the last night of the video shoot for the reality show, “Phantom Chasers.” Peter Findstrom was one of four so-called paranormal experts in the cast. Of course, he was no such thing. He had grabbed the roll after his character, Cash Harrington, had been killed off on the daytime serial, “Hearts of Fire.”The gist of the show was that the team of paranormal researchers went to a different haunted location every week. They undertook scripted interviews with local folks about the supposed haunted house or hospital or orphanage and then spe...

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In Goa

Weekly Contest #309

Grilled lobster over a bed of mango rice was the most expensive item on the menu, but Rosemary had decided to splurge on her last night in Jamaica. She had also enjoyed more than a few drinks. When the busboy started removing tablecloths, upending chairs and sweeping the floor, she knew it was time for her to return to her rented bungalow, tucked away amid the palm trees. Rosemary paid for her meal and painfully pushed herself up from the table. The ache in her bones was nearly constant now. Her multiple myeloma had entered its terminal ph...

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Evangeline

Weekly Contest #269

Jennifer Smythe was good at this. Good at being interested in something without appearing to be interested. It was a skill she had honed during more than thirty years of poking through attics and garage sales and attending auctions. With just a hint of a flared nostril, a downturned lip or a disappointed sigh, she could shatter expectations and lower hopes. She had carefully built her reputation as an expert appraiser of antique dolls and had even appeared on the Antiques Roadshow and a BBC documentary about the dolls of Princesses Elizabeth...

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Owls in the Trees

Dan woke up feeling bad. The worst he’d felt yet, as if there was a knife in his gut or some small animal in there eating him from the inside out. He dragged himself out to the porch to sink into his rocking chair and closed his eyes for a while, feeling the warm sun on his face. He knew he should eat something but he’d had no appetite for days. Dan looked out over his small world. Some barrels and the Ford truck sat in the clearing in front of the cabin. The woods that rose beyond it were backed by low mountain ridges that ch...

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The End of Bliss

Her Aunt Rosie had a camera that could do that. If you looked through the lens while you pushed a little dial with your finger, the image would get bigger. It took a little while for the picture to come back into focus—but then you could do it again, and the image would get bigger still. Tammy had always liked playing with the camera. Liked leaning with her elbows on the windowsill, peering at birds in the treetops of the woods behind their house. She was in those woods now. Without the camera. High in a tree. It was night but she wasn’t co...

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The Call of Lawanda

Weekly Contest #184

Avi had once chided him about the GPS. “You can’t stand having a woman tell you what to do.” That little remark, made with love and in jest, nonetheless upset Jason. Because his insights about valuing the contributions, intellect and intuition of women and others was part of what had made the two of them wealthy men. So, Jason had grudgingly brought the GPS with him at Avi’s insistence, but he’d avoided turning it on until this afternoon when he realized he’d driven thirty miles in the wrong direction. He had been scheduled to speak at a hi...

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DUST

Weekly Contest #160

It came up from the west—an angry, roiling black wall a thousand feet high and moving at sixty miles an hour. Clayton saw it coming and threw a tarp over the chicken coop. He put the mule and cow into the cowshed and tied grain sacks loosely over their heads. Olive stuffed damp tea cloths and sheets into the cracks around the doors and windows, though she knew nothing she did would be enough to stop the dust. As suffocating darkness swept over their little farmhouse, the husband and wife huddled together under blankets. Grit peppered the win...

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The Inheritance

Weekly Contest #154

“For his grandson, Eric, I will translate,” said the white-haired lawyer.Eric felt embarrassed. Why was this old guy rubbing his face in it? Was it his fault that his mother died when he was a baby, so he had never learned to speak Chinese?Mr. Po settled his spectacles on his nose and looked at the document in his hand. “Chen Wang provides to Ling-Yu, his eldest daughter, the jade horse.” Everyone clapped as an assistant handed a statuette of a galloping green horse to the lady sitting across from Eric. Then another aunt received an ivory ne...

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The White Woman

Weekly Contest #144

Antony hefted his equipment bags to his shoulder and watched the lights on the elevator panel tick upward. When the doors opened, he saw her at the end of the hall. She wore a long, black coat and held a shopping bag in one arm as she fitted the key into her lock. He was struck by two things—her abundance of platinum-white hair that fell past her slender hips, and the pure-white Afghan hound that waited patiently at her side. He was pleased to see that the new tenant was a woman, and wondered if she was single. He'd broken off with Ashley...

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