In an unlikely encounter, a homeless teenage boy recounts harsh events of his life to a writer. He nonchalantly tells of an employer whose assignments caused him to have permanent physical and mental damage.

A pessimistic father's belief that the world is actively against him and his family displaces his frustration on his wife and son. His opinion may prove to be correct after his child succumbs to a sudden illness.

A child with an intellectual disability is endlessly abused by his stepmother, but takes refuge in his grandmother’s kindness. However, when his grandmother dies mysteriously in a fire, he finds a different way to cope.

An accomplished but ineffectual columnist searches for fulfillment, until a death in the family causes him to question the family he took for granted.

A mother struggles to understand her autistic son as she grapples with her own self-doubt.

In his new job as an English professor, Tarzan finds himself annoyed by his students, hounded by his department chair, and alienated by the world around him, with solace only from his girlfriend Jane. Naturally, hijinks ensue.

A middle-aged man in a small Northern town is desperate to escape his mundane routines and imagines rash and violent actions that might give his life meaning.

Asked by his therapist to tell a fable, a man recounts his unenchanting life as a lawyer married to a depressed, drug-abusing woman, with a disabled son he's struggling to raise. By filling his unremarkable story with sorceresses, magic, and true love, he attempts to romanticize a life he's desperate to escape.

A woman dealing with conflicting emotions resorts to deliberately putting herself in danger to learn to value the life she's been given - but these unorthodox methods leave her more desperate than ever.

In a dystopian world, a student begins to spiral after he becomes dependent on the drug called "Good" that everyone is injected with daily. Faced with the cruelty of his family and friends, he befriends a strange girl whose family rejects the new societal mechanisms —which may be just what he needs.