A 17-year-old girl grapples with a mental abnormality that causes her to associate imaginative scenes with individual words. She undergoes treatment in a sterile clinic to quell her brain's urges.

When a young boy witnesses an odd event from the window of his small-town house, he begins to doubt the stability of the world around him.

During their discussion of philosophy and the downward spiral of the world’s condition, a group of men is startled by a voice in the dark that recounts for them two stories of the human embodiment of battlefield carnage. When the voice finishes, the men struggle to pinpoint where it came from.

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 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 young man has been experiencing intense hallucinations for most of his life. When one of his nightmares begins to seem a little too real, he realizes there may be an explanation for these experiences, and it may have something to do with his mother's death.

After kicking her husband out and changing the locks, a mother imagines he is still living with her, distant and uninterested in sex. Lying in bed, she conjures up old memories and imagines new ones, grappling with questions of selfhood, identity, womanhood, and motherhood. One night, her real husband returns, and she lets him back in.

In discussing the altercations witnessed over the course of the day, Stephen Elwin and his family grapple with question of whether the downtrodden and those burdened by prejudice are nonetheless responsible for their own breeding and behavior. Elwin’s earnest and idealistic daughter Margaret valiantly defends their maid, who happens to be Black and also named Margaret, until she witnesses 'the other Margaret' breaking a piece of artwork.

A few men gather in a small house to discuss what makes humanity unique as compared to the rest of nature.

A creative writing teacher sits through a conference with one his favorite students. He takes us on a journey through the characters in the story, and in his life.