Summary

Mary Shelley falls asleep while reading in bed but has a nightmare in which a huge crow sits on her chest and cuts her skin with its beak. Mary Shelley awakens suddenly and finds not a crow, but Stephen, sitting on her. She pushes him off but he lunges back at her and she warns him to stay back because when he gets too close, she can't think clearly because she takes on his fears. Mary Shelley implores Stephen to tell her what he has experienced so she can help him and he tells her about trenches filled with mud, gas masks and filth as well as bloodied bodies trapped on barbed wire and flashes of light that bring out the big black birds. Stephen tells Mary Shelley that the birds just keep...