When a notebook full of top-secret designs is looted from a Brooklyn saloon, a Latino drummer and his inventor girlfriend must go on a quest to retrieve it from a rival Manhattan gang.

A writer struggles to craft a story and begins to lose his own sanity when an idea finally comes to him.

A team of workers hear a train whistle everyday on the job and speculate who is sounding the repetitive code.

A young boy who lives in the prairie is excited for the rare opportunity to go into town to see the fourth of July parade and celebrations. However, his day takes a turn for the worse when the family's car will not start.

Apollo is an ordinary kid at a party, a crime fighting justice-seeker, a victorious basketball player, a police officer doing his job, a scared boy running from a villain. His story begins again and again, and he's different every time — but every time, his story ends in the same, terrible way.

A man walks with a writer around London who tells him about the novel he wrote that was lost which can never be matched in beauty by any other.

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.

After a young man runs away and is said to be hiding in a canyon, his co-worker sets out to find him and ends up sharing his painful backstory of fear and lost opportunity.

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.

In a small town, a resident watches as the people and place change. He recounts eight seemingly disparate stories, but the town connects them all.