During their discussion of philosophy and the downward spiral of the world’s condition, a group of men is startled by a voice in the dark that recounts for them two stories of the human embodiment of battlefield carnage. When the voice finishes, the men struggle to pinpoint where it came from.

A divorced 16 year old girl reflects on how the sexual trauma she experienced as a child perpetuates in her relationships with men throughout her life, forcing herself to grow up too early and leaving her starved for affection and love.

A son tells a series of stories, most of them about his father and stepfather. As the son describes a robbery that took place at his house in high school and his experiences with his father, a former Jehovah's Witness and current alcoholic, he begins to recall details from his childhood.

In an unlikely encounter, a homeless teenage boy recounts harsh events of his life to a writer. He nonchalantly tells of an employer whose assignments caused him to have permanent physical and mental damage.

After a drunk college boy falls off a balcony, a slew of characters--a groundskeeper, another student, a chaplain, and an RA--relate to his death in different ways. Their stories are sidelined for the core matter: that a boy died.

When an alcoholic-turned-family man in modern-day Cleveland has sleeping problems due to his son’s night screaming, he is haunted by his other family that he left behind a decade prior. During a nightmare about his old family, he wakes up to an even more grim reality.

A writer struggles to craft a story and begins to lose his own sanity when an idea finally comes to him.

An ordinary man gets an inch and a half of mention in the newspaper after stumbling into a low stakes rescue — and the small bit of fame sends him spiraling down a dark, egotistical path.

A 17-year-old girl grapples with a mental abnormality that causes her to associate imaginative scenes with individual words. She undergoes treatment in a sterile clinic to quell her brain's urges.

A man racked by nightmares is blindsided by his wife's declaration that she was leaving him. He is left in confusion and rage.