During a lavish masquerade ball, a mysterious figure dressed as a plague victim appears, and when Prospero confronts him, the figure is revealed to be the Red Death itself, leading to the death of everyone in the abbey, symbolizing the inevitability of death. 

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. Le Guin is a short story about a utopian city, Omelas, whose perfect happiness depends on the perpetual misery of a single, neglected child. The narrative presents a moral dilemma: citizens must accept the child's suffering as a necessary sacrifice for the collective good, but some, unable to bear the injustice, choose to leave the city and walk away into the unknown, never to return. 

In Percival Everett's "Exposure," a strained father-daughter hiking trip in the wilderness takes a perilous turn when they encounter a hungry mountain lion. As immediate existential danger replaces their emotional distance, the pair must rely on each other to survive the threat.