During the first scene, a man complains to his wife about Western civilization and tries to convince her to live in the desert with him. In another scene, a different man comes home to his sister and tells her about his quiet day observing daily chaos at the bar.

After being offered a 100,000 pound advance to write a book on the twentieth century, a historian/writer struggling with depression takes to London to begin this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

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.

While narrating a story, a woman suppresses some details while highlighting others, to expose the injustice she witnesses in her neighbor's irresponsible behavior.

A father gets a call informing him that his son was arrested in a far away town, so he goes through every effort to find him and get him back.

A man reflects on his childhood growing up in Memphis during the Great Depression, specifically his relationship with his best friend. As he remembers his friend's odd relationship with his family, unusual approach to romance, and alluring charm, he begins to realize how different they were and still are.

When the narrator is raped by the minotaur in Minos’s labyrinth, their friends stand by and film it, leaving the narrator and King Minos to discuss what happened

A man is forced to witness the brutality of nature during a trip to Africa to film content for a documentary. When his coworkers begin treating the only woman on their team like prey, he must grapple with his own understanding of animal vs. human nature.

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

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.