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.

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.

A man recalls his intimate friendship with his former English professor, who resolved to fuel his unsatisfied desire for playwriting during the time they were apart. In their reunion decades later, instead of the brilliant play he promised, the professor shows his former student a disturbing product of his mental instability.

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

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.

A young girl works to impress her highly critical parents and submits to a terrible fate as she struggles to meet their impossible standards.

A high school English teacher becomes obsessed with a clip of a car accident, in which a yellow convertible—identical to his own—swerves off the road and hits a tree at top speed. Then he sees the video’s upload date: one month in the future.

As she wanders in and out of forests to escape her past and the boy she feels guilty for wanting, a woman gives birth to and abandons a child she thinks of as the physical embodiment of her sin.

A teacher on the Lower East side meets a friendly man with a presence resembling a dead English poet.

A wife leaves her husband in order to ensure his ultimate salvation after they are rejected from the Christian church for their polygamist marriage.