After being recruited for a so-called neurological study, man meditates on the imaginary city he sees in his dreams.

Under the cover of secretarial work in a psychiatric unit, the protagonist records patients’ dreams in a logbook dedicated to Johnny Panic, believing themself a disciple to the omniscient master of fear and creator of all dreams. When the protagonist spends the night at the unit for unfettered access to patient records, the clinic director takes them away to a secure room for electroshock therapy.

As a woman slips in and out of sleep, her dreams become windows to moments in her life.

A writer arrives at an eerie residency near a lake where she camped with her Girl Scout troop as a child. The writer revisits a past trauma at the hands of the other Girl Scouts and comes to conclusions about what it is to reside in one's own mind. Along the way, she navigates a mysterious illness, a fellow resident whose identity and words are impossible to remember, and the appearance of a severed rabbit on her doorstep.

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

Everything all at once in word form.

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 couple spends a hot summer night regaling each other with the dreams that have stirred them awake, leaving them to consider their relationship and whether they want to remain together.

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.

Upon returning to Paris after a decade-long hiatus wandering the French countryside and writing an epic, a poet encounters an enigmatic young woman who believes he is a god and wants to be his disciple,