A team of workers hear a train whistle everyday on the job and speculate who is sounding the repetitive code.

A writing critic reviews the construction of Charles Chesnutt’s stories and how to write surfiction.

A man tries to find the perfect birthday gift for a woman in his neighborhood and, in doing so, uncovers the roots of unhappiness.

A professor tries to convey to his students the magnitude of the most perfectly crafted poem ever written in the English language: “Lycidas.”

In a world where mushrooms feed on creativity, an under-appreciated artist undergoes a risky operation to replace his dying inner voice. But when the first transplant fails, he must find another donor, or risk being banished from society forever.

A man attends a classical music concert and uses it as a surrealistic form of escape as he copes with the news of his mother's death.

A young lute player is aided by a harmonizing spider who resides in her lute, unbeknownst to her. Though the spider becomes attached to the lute player, she continues to feel loneliness and longing for her home among other spiders in the forest of her birth.

Searching for a muse to inspire a novel he is attempting to write, an author in San Francisco finds his passions ignited by something much more sinister.

A man's lonely life focused on the pursuit of reason and music leaves him questioning what more there may be in the lives of other people and of religion.

A teacher reminisces about all his wonderful students of the Narrative Studies courses he has taught around the world before his career comes to an end.