In an alternate universe in 19th century Boston, a single mother commits an act of unnatural cruelty against her son. However, since women are invincible against a man's violence, the wife of an esteemed policeman takes on the task of executing her, only to have second thoughts in the cold gallows.

While waiting for the man she's been having an unsteady affair with, a forty-year-old woman living a dreary life in New York City plots his murder. Likewise, on his journey to her apartment, the man contemplates whether he should kill her or continue his affair.

A mother's mistakes haunt her. When a man brutalizes her, she accepts his punches as punishment for her sins.

A group of children in a family lives with their grandmother, but she is mean and abusive. The children soon become tired of her abuse and plot to kill her in various ways, though the task is complicated by logistics.

A man's jealous wife kidnaps any woman she thinks he shows any interest in to torture and murder in their basement. Deciding to finally put an end to this and escape the absusive relationship, the man poisons his wife and frees her most recent victim.

A successful middle-aged lawyer brings home her little sister, a woman who was institutionalized at a young age. In attempting to sort out her sister's history and her own corruption, the woman encounters continually perplexing behavior from those around her.

Upon the death of their tyrannical mistress, three old maids venture to the place she forbade them to go and reminisce about her life.

A woman in her seventh month of pregnancy is abandoned by her husband after he embezzles $150,000 from a local company in their small town—forcing her to go to desperate measures to try to repay the town.

In concentration camps of a distant past, a middle-aged mother seeks vengeance for her daughter's death with dark, heretical magic, despite her devout husband's disapproval. Ultimately, she sacrifices her life to save her soul and liberate her fellow prisoners.

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.