Lord Ashley took the bible from his embrace, lifted his arms and slammed it down on the messy laboratory worktable. Its thud, enough to materialise a cloud of dust.

Then leaning with arms outstretched he flung them in just one hefty burst, taking the mileu of the worktable with it. Causing a litter and debris of scattered research papers, broken work implements and smashed specimen belljars which lay scattered about his feet across the cold concete Floor.

Breathing frantically he leafed through to its endpages, his eyes widening in surprise. “Oh, dear god. You #rst take away my wife and now this...” His look tightened to a look of furious anger.

Jenny had been the perfect wife. Memories rushed to his head. “I remember the moment you were born of our daughter, the perfect Genevieve.”

In the room above, Genevieve was virtually a prisoner of his taking in her bedroom which was placed conveniently. In someway far enough from the main part of the house as to drown out her screams, buffering too her cries from her father’s ears. He needed a still mind if he was to find and deliver a solution to their nightmare.

“Oh father, why.............? why.............?” Genevieve's words billowed, a single tear crawling down her face, these words leaving no trace for anyone but her. “You said it wouldn’t, it couldn’t happen again, why.............?”

Her father paced the laboratory "oor, a sounding of broken glass scrunching and popping beneath the weight of his hard bearing soles. Wiping away the blear from redened eyes he maintained a trans#xed gaze on a single shiney specimen belljar.

In the belljar was a thumbnail-sized foetus-like thing cocooned in a matt of hairs. He remembered having walked into the drawing room seeing his wife choking and fitting. And being braced with tension seeing her cough-up the thing, carbonising her flame and the overbearing smell of bile which lingered days later.

It had been 15 years ago ago. And there was just one thought now! To stop this heinous curious phenomemom from seducing the beautiful Genevieve as it had Jenny. But how?

Moving in a start to the worktable, stamping his left fist firmly over the open bible, he tore with the pinched #ngers of his right hand its endpages.

Keeping the pages scrunched tightly against his chest, leaving from the darkness of the laboratory, he ran fast. At pace making his way upstairs lighting up a glimmer in his eyes. But which was hastened by desperate shouts of “No! No!, it has to be done this way. You must understand. Forgive us.”

Catching full breaths Lord Ashley pinched the iron key from his breast pocket, placed it in and turned the lock. Peculiar to him, bar his own audiable breaths, he imagined “why can’t I hear her?”

Then approaching her bedside he was in hope she’d found a peaceful moment. Glancing at the wallclock he noted the time – 11:39pm. “Maybe nothing will become ill of us afterall.”