Listener Challenge: 420-Character Stories

Lou Beach’s new book of very short stories – 420 Characters – packs vivid descriptions into tiny narratives.

We want to read your 420-character story!
Submit yours below to enter our contest.

→ The story must be 420 characters or fewer -- including spaces.

→ Only one entry per author will be considered.

→ The deadline to be considered for our contest is 11:59 EST December 31, 2011.

The winner will be announced on the show and will receive a signed print of an illustration by Lou Beach.


→ Read stories submitted by other listeners

Click here for the complete rules and regulations for the contest.


Filter results:

December 31, 2011 01:21:44 PM
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BJ

:

Ixnay on Boomer's latest. Bein’ classy legit, an' no stooge, boss gave up a C-note Benji 'spite blamin' Obama biz is busted not boomin'. Seems strange grapevine says Dockside Inn's season's still goin' on, but good news is the jig's up for their evil bartendin' sleaze. Boomer's grateful them hombres ain't stiff cold dead 'cause they got the bar gig up for grabs. So yeah baby, Boomer's truckin' over to the Dockside.

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December 31, 2011 01:14:20 PM
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Jim

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Divorced, alone I move into a northside condo built on the skeleton of a dead motel. Startled awake he’s curled like a ball inside the wall. Who ARE you? “No home, food, cold!”. He dissolves. The crying mother with bloody baby at my bedroom door. Raven haired woman roams the hall. Lost, wandering. Spirits of broken love, fire, murders? Antidepressants no longer work. Let go. Just pull the trigger. Join your friends.

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December 31, 2011 01:11:03 PM
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Henrie

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Invitation
Her declension was rather elegant, consisting nearly of an ever-so-slightly raised eyebrow and a zephyr of a sigh, in contrast to his barely feigned fist-to-mouth muscling of a still audibly bellicose harrumph.
Tea...was not taken.

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December 31, 2011 01:02:59 PM
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Chris

:

The apartments where my brother and I grew up had a laundry room, its own building. Kids on big wheels, tricycles, bicycles, circling around it and through it, all day long. No talking, just monotony. One kid’s father was an engineer, like our father, an aeronautical engineer. I pedaled close to him and asked, “Your Dad’s an engineer?” He didn’t even look at me and snapped, “not the kind that drives a train, stupid.”

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December 31, 2011 12:45:21 PM
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Cheryl

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When I took a step toward home, his arms suddenly spread out wide. For a brief moment he appeared to change completely from an average-sized man to a looming hulk, a dark shadow enclosing me. With one lumbering lunge, he was on top of me. It felt like we were both moving in slow motion, performing a dream-like dance in the street. And yet before I fully grasped what was happening, he had grabbed me.

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December 31, 2011 12:30:42 PM
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Victoria

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When I was little, I would go out front with a broom and sweep the stoop to make it more bearable. The old man across the street watched from his rickety porch. "Boy," he'd say, "you're gonna' leave this hell-hole and make something of yourself." My family loved me, but they didn't have time to stop and tell me. He was the only one who ever noticed what I was doin', but I guess it only did take but one nice person.

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December 31, 2011 12:25:39 PM
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Laurence

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As a boy I learned not to trust technology. Summers at the arcade with a pocketful of nickels putting one after another into the claw machine. First you aim the mechanical arm before hitting the big red start button. Then the claw opens its four prongs and drops on the desired object. Through the glass the toys and treasures were so visible, so near. The claw, so stupid, so lazy. It just could not grasp my desire.

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December 31, 2011 12:21:59 PM
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John-Paul

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He didn’t realize at that moment, with his eyes still open and the ketamine-induced psychedelic elevators shipping caskets from ground floor to the top of the Epcot balloon, he didn’t realize that the dreams were all intentional. Pastels and alternate rainbows clouded his view of the sunset and the lunar eclipse, they introduced him to an unreality that expanded the more he tried to keep his eyelids from closing. Universes are not created in an instant, nor are shoulders relocated without pain.

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December 31, 2011 11:53:56 AM
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lisa

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"I'm vegetarian now," purred the tiger. "But what about the duck?" asked the monkey, peering down from her tree. "I heard you ate her." "Jealous rumors," said the tiger, licking her lips. "It was simply her time, to fly south, of course." "And you're sure you aren't hungry?" asked the monkey. "Oh, no," smiled the tiger, shaking her head. "I had a spinach salad. It was - delicious!"

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December 31, 2011 11:19:41 AM
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Catherine

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She watched the water in the pot, even though she knew it was counterproductive. She couldn’t resist the temptation of those hot beads of air pushing toward the surface. Kind of like optimism. The harder she stared, the more heavy those air pockets became, sticking stubbornly to the dark rings at the bottom. She knew she had poured too much water in, but she hadn’t yet adjusted to cooking for one.

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December 31, 2011 10:51:08 AM
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Gloria

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Once upon a time in the town of Arnaught, there lived a beautiful princess who was wise & kind.
She loved a poor man; her parents did not approve.  One night, she was abducted by a dragon.
Her love heard the princess' scream & the beast's cry.  He rushed to her aid.  With a well aimed
arrow, he pierced the dragon's heart & caught the princess as she fell from it's lifeless grasp. 
Her parents were awed by his heroism.  They realized his worth for their daughter & allowed them
to be wed.  They lived happily ever after.

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December 31, 2011 10:36:26 AM
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Thom

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Tucson is now a memory and Austin is yet to be discovered. A half-moon overhead looks down on the luminous clouds taking the shape of a buffalo, while the sun not yet set breaks through to paint the mountains crimson and grey. A river twists through the hills and mountains, eager to become one with the ocean and I fly on yearning to be one with a new love.

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December 31, 2011 10:22:17 AM
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Shannon

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We dug a hole behind the barn, threw logs in, started a fire, and covered our new pit with strong wire mesh. We’d butchered a pig, and now we placed slabs of meat on the wire, and the twenty-or-so of us sat, stood, or lay--telling tales and laughing while the whiskey went around and smoke rose in the slate-gray winter day. Later, the boss cut some meat and handed out bottles of hot sauce and loaves of bread.

Comments(1)
December 31, 2011 09:35:49 AM
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aileen

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we have not had sex in six months. the absence deprives our bodies but also isolates us from a shared place - a secrete we no longer have. tied to this is the stress of my unemployment and to this, his doubt of my love for him. when we speak it is with foreign accents. the words intended exerting contorting gravitational pulls on those spoken. the sadness is born, and it is the knowledge that this isn’t the decline you’re experiencing but a definitive absence. hope is the glow of light from a dead star.

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December 31, 2011 07:16:14 AM
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MaryBoone

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They sent me home without my chocolate. Standing in the wreckage with no alibi, I tried to apologize, but “sorry” was not as good as the good china. I willed time to stop and go backwards to where I never reached for the small knob on the lid of that fancy blue dish, but time never flinched and the porcelain dropped and scattered in razor edged pieces across my party shoes. There wasn’t even an Easter egg inside.

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December 31, 2011 05:45:04 AM
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Liam

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They released the lyre-player after our brief, sincere letter. So we pled for the son of our greatest poet, Pshavela: It is the hope of the Writers’ Union, we wrote, that you will respect the memory of the pride of our nation and accelerate the discharge of his son. And, in a sense, they did hear us. The poet’s son was taken outside and summarily shot. If he were Pshavela himself, they declared, we’d still shoot him.

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December 31, 2011 05:43:31 AM
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Liam

:

Akimbo, admiring the school and community he’d built, the Jesuit held a cigarette. A lanky cynic from South Baltimore, Padre, as they called him, had given thirty years to these sundry poor. Striking a match, he turned to his diminutive partner, the nun: “Paz, I did it,” his voice soft and gruff like an old Don’s, “blood, sweat, some panhandling, but by God I did it.” “I?” said Paz, eyebrows raised, “what arrogance.”

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December 31, 2011 05:42:54 AM
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Liam

:

“Everyone thinks I came as Jackie O,” Mariana wryly told him, “but I didn’t.” Her hands joined at her waist, a small purse dangled from a wrist. “It’s the hat and the sunglasses, I suppose,” she said, “that make me look like Jackie O.” Angelo squinted, cocked his head. Mariana’s knees touched, one heel rose from the floor. “I’m not,” she added, “nearly as pretty though.” Angelo stopped squinting, reached for a drink.

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December 31, 2011 05:41:56 AM
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Liam

:

Europeans hadn’t encountered altitude sickness before the priest, De Acosta, traveled to Lima from the Atlantic coast with a detail of soldiers. A certain pass in the route they took through the Andes was well over ten thousand feet. As they continued over this pass some of the men started to feel a great pressure pushing down on them, some vomited, some turned to De Acosta, gasping for air, and confessed their sins.

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December 31, 2011 05:41:24 AM
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Liam

:

“When not antagonizing Athos, Porthos, and Aramis,” the Pedant noted to his dinner companion, “Richelieu ground the points off the knives in the Palais-Cardinal, thus inventing the modern dinner knife. Was this to avoid postprandial violence in a time of artless court intrigue? No,” he answered his own question, “Richelieu hated watching people pick their teeth.” “Thank God,” said the Cad, “they invented toothpicks.”

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