A son tells a series of stories, most of them about his father and stepfather. As the son describes a robbery that took place at his house in high school and his experiences with his father, a former Jehovah's Witness and current alcoholic, he begins to recall details from his childhood.

A teacher on the Lower East side meets a friendly man with a presence resembling a dead English poet.

A young girl works to impress her highly critical parents and submits to a terrible fate as she struggles to meet their impossible standards.

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 rambunctious teenager with an inquisitive mind causes much grief for all his New England family and neighbors when he visits them in the summer of 1914, on the eve of World War I.

As she wanders in and out of forests to escape her past and the boy she feels guilty for wanting, a woman gives birth to and abandons a child she thinks of as the physical embodiment of her sin.

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.

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.

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.

Asked by his therapist to tell a fable, a man recounts his unenchanting life as a lawyer married to a depressed, drug-abusing woman, with a disabled son he's struggling to raise. By filling his unremarkable story with sorceresses, magic, and true love, he attempts to romanticize a life he's desperate to escape.