On a cold December day, parents grieve for their son who was killed in a football game. A friend of their son helps them realize their son may have hid the feelings he was too afraid to show.

After a lifetime of secrecy, a young girls father finally includes her in the family business, giving her a sense of belonging while also drawing her into the generational curse that comes with a life of taking on other people's pain to allow them a peaceful death.

A boy spends the day singing around his sister, as he and his family watch her sink into a tar-pit as punishment for killing her husband. He toggles between the maturity and the child-like helplessness this jarring experience brings out in him.

A boy and his dysfunctional parents take a holiday trip, where the father's stress, misery, and disappointments instill murderous desires in him.

An extended visit from a relative leaves a young boy terrified in his own home.

The impact of an absent father emerges in the gruesome stories of a young daughter as her alcoholic mother listens and reflects on the struggles of raising her alone.

A young man remembers his sexual trauma while idly watching the torturing of a kidnapped kid.

A rambunctious teenager with an inquisitive mind causes much grief for all his New England family and neighbors when he visits them in the summer of 1914, on the eve of World War I.

After a drunk college boy falls off a balcony, a slew of characters--a groundskeeper, another student, a chaplain, and an RA--relate to his death in different ways. Their stories are sidelined for the core matter: that a boy died.

While on a summer vacation to California’s wine country, a family discovers the dark secret between a child and a deceased grandfather.