The Bird's Nest

by Shirley Jackson

I frowned a little, at a momentary loss how to proceed, and it was at that moment, I think, that I received the most shocking blow of my life. I sat, as always, upon a stool next to Miss R.’s chair, with a low table next me upon which I could write my notes; Miss R. lay back in the large chair, with her feet on a footstool and a pillow behind her head. I remember that I looked at her for a minute, in the half-light the room was in with the curtain closed, and saw her almost clearly, her face pale against the dark chair, the merest line of late-afternoon sunlight touching her from the crack in the curtain. Her face was turned a little toward me, her lips still parted in a little smile, and her eyes, of course, closed. Her hands were at her breast, still twined together; she is like a sleeping beauty, I thought childishly; I wonder, though, how I ever thought her handsome. Because she was not, I saw, at all handsome, and as I watched her in horror, the smile upon her soft lips coarsened, and became sensual and gross, her eyelids fluttered in an attempt to open, her hands twisted together violently, and she laughed, evilly and roughly, throwing her head back and shouting, and I, seeing a devil’s mask where a moment before I had seen Miss R.’s soft face, thought only, it cannot be Miss R.; this is not she. A moment, and it was gone; the laughter ended, and she turned timidly toward me. “Please,” she asked, “may I open my eyes?” I awakened her at once; I was myself too shaken b...