Fearing a lonely life in the company of her ailing husband, a woman begins an extramarital affair with her friend, but soon realizes that her worst nightmare might come true anyway.

A lonely man in his forties imagines a domestic life with a woman he briefly met who is interested in his furniture, but not his marriage proposal.

A lonely man makes calls to automated call services and anonymous strangers as he searches for comfort in the hollow telephone conversations he shares with answering machine.

A man reflects on the loneliness of his childhood home, where his family would fervently clean the house every Saturday for guests on Sunday who would never show.

A starving man wandering the countryside finds solace in a young woman's cottage where she offers him food and rest. But when the young woman starts to behave as if the man is a threat, he must decide whether or not to live up to her fears.

When a woman finds her purse stolen, she retraces the steps of her eventful day only to realize that the encounters, and her life as a whole, are empty and purposeless.

An institutionalized man struggling to overcome his paralyzing paranoia hates his weekly "days out" in the city. But during a particularly turbulent two weeks, the realization of his worst fears in the outside world possibly bring about an improvement in his condition.

A self-reliant but lonely woman becomes excited by the incidental visit of two boys in her apartment. When she unwisely lends them her long-buried trust and kindness, she quickly regrets it.

A businessman haunted by loneliness after his wife's death shelters a half-dead young man with a terrible secret.

In a series of commentaries on the human condition — life, truth, happiness, death — a spinster sister takes in her dead sister’s children; a man is entranced by the endless waves which roll and crash in the ocean; a carpenter wrestles with the burden of being everyone’s confidante; a dying railroad crossing watchman shares a simple but complex wisdom.