A research psychologist visits a peculiar asylum patient who recounts his life story. The patient warns the researcher about how obsession with the pursuit of knowledge can make one lose sight of their humanity until it is unsalvageable.

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.

After spending his adult life under the shadow of his father, a former NSA whistleblower, a man comes to terms with his complicated family history and what he wants for his own future.

A man recalls his intimate friendship with his former English professor, who resolved to fuel his unsatisfied desire for playwriting during the time they were apart. In their reunion decades later, instead of the brilliant play he promised, the professor shows his former student a disturbing product of his mental instability.

A man reflects on the past week while an unexpected storm rages outside, and he compares the events that follow with the fall of the Roman Empire.

A teacher invites her adult students — many with personal ties to the Holocaust — to attend a symposium on genocide, but the event is interrupted by incessant screams of an unknown origin.

As they hide from an enemy in their house, a woman and man argue about the nature of the enemy--whether it is human or weather-related.

The impact of an absent father emerges in the gruesome stories of a young daughter as her alcoholic mother listens and reflects on the struggles of raising her alone.

A Confederate officer begrudgingly fights in the American Civil War until his disastrous last battle helps seal the fate of the war for good. After the war, he constantly repents for his critical mistakes until, decades later, he comes to a shocking revelation about the fateful battle.

After struggling to appeal to their state governor, a dysfunctional family anxiously awaits the public execution of a relative. As they wait at home new of the execution, tensions and strife erupt in a dispute over the relative's innocence.