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

An author discusses with his friend the best way to write about a poor aunt. Their words take on a new power when he manifests a literal poor aunt on his back and draws in spectators.

A young woman begins to work for an influencer, Seraphina, who she secretly hates. After vicious gossip about Serphina and the young woman pops up on anonymous message forums, the young woman must decide just how far she'd compromise herself for this job.

In Michigan, a recently divorced professor reflects on what it means to exist, first alone in his empty apartment and then alongside his student in a mission to find a missing girl.

A man working at the Met is given an interesting—and daring—proposition regarding one of the museum’s artifacts.

In an increasingly inappropriate recorded message to a customer, a department store clerk compares their product complaint to kangaroos he saw at the local zoo.

After a man's long term girlfriend confesses her submissive sexual fantasies, the couple goes to see a dominatrix together. The man becomes worried as his sexual incompatibility with his wife becomes evident.

When a scientist discovers science-based information that negates his world's established creation myth and belief system, he sends the world into chaos, with some zealots clinging desperately to their dogma, while others attempt to embrace the unknown 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 wholeheartedly agrees with a columnist in a recent paper about creating an amendment to abolish same-sex marriage, however, he takes it one step further: he suggest they also abolish "samish-sex" relationships, wherein overly feminine men date overly masculine women.