Dublin, Ireland, in the early years of the twentieth century. It is a poor city, and there is hard drinking, dishonesty, and violence just beneath the surface everywhere you look. Glance inside a few people's lives, and you soon find loneliness and disappointment, self-hate, and despair. The people in these stories are paralysed: locked into the circles of their everyday lives, where they are caught waiting between life and death. For some, there is a way out - but will circumstances, or their own fear, stop them from taking it?