A slice of grim parts of life

In intense discussion a group leader ponders aloud, asking why hermits hide and what defines outcasts, among other cerebral queries. A group of friends discusses the oddities they have seen and perceived in their lives leather-clad hermits and criminal astronauts among them. They debate the purpose of hermitage, the classification of outcasts, and the purpose of their own reflections.

On a close-knit street, two women commit suicide a week apart from each other. When an ambulance arrives, the adults with a hushed-silence, and the kids joke about dead bodies to torment a local woman.

After 300,000 teens and young adults commit mass suicide, a student pursuing their PhD investigates what caused the Year of Suicide, forcing them to relive their trauma and navigate the process of healing from so much death.

In a town so small it can hardly be called a town, a black woman serves a rich white family until a series of horrific events causes the single joy in her life to vanish.

A large factory is shut down in a small town in Illinois, and the town's residents face a sudden economic depression — until a prison is built where the factory had been, invigorating the economy but bringing along with it unintended consequences.

In a dystopian society, a young widow is placed in a holding facility to spend her days learning home economics until she's chosen to be the wife of a new man.

A young teen in Southern California, after several months of living on the streets, tries to rebuild her life. She suddenly disappears after six months of sobriety, leaving her family to yet again wonder if she has relapsed and returned to live on the streets again.

A young news reporter writes about a peculiar man in his mid-50s who is impoverished and suffers from a chronic illness — but when the man is accused of lying, the news reporter must decide whether to continue reporting the ill man's story or to accept that his claims are false.

Set in Canada in the 1980s, an Indian-Canadian immigrant woman travels abroad, attempting to learn how to grieve her husband and sons after a terrorist attack on the plane kills them on their way to India.