The damage done to the book was gone, even though Professor Keaton knew that a sample was taken from it. He had seen photographic evidence of it and it was unlikely that Doctor Pearson would lie, so by all logic and reason, the book should still have that piece missing. It didn't though and no one would own up to having it restored. Now, Professor Keaton could in fact ask Pearson about it, but after their previous exchange on the matter, there was no way that he could do that while also saving face.

Perhaps it wasn't all that big of a deal to most, but since he was getting paid to research this book, it mattered. It absolutely mattered. He was meant to document and explain any changes, but this defied explanation. If what his colleague was saying was indeed correct, then that meant that the book formed a scab and healed like a living, human, person would—not like the inanimate object that it was supposed to be.

It was a book. A book was a book and nothing more—well, depending on who one might ask, one could get some prattling on about the depth of what the contents might bring, but in the end, it was only paper. Paper couldn't heal and neither could flesh that was long dead. That was just the way the world worked. It was obvious to everyone, yet why—oh, why—did this book behave differently? The Professor couldn't wrap his head around it.

He kept returning to the book, day after day and sometimes multiple times throughout, always checking that spot. Sometimes, he would return to it for the sole purpose of checking that spot. He didn't know what he was expecting to see, exactly, but he never did. The lack of wound had wormed it's way into his thoughts, starting out small at first, but as the days went by, it became compulsion. Should the book appear in the forefront of his thoughts, he needed to go check on it. At first when he started to get this need, he at least had the agency to wait until class was over before he went to go look at it, but when he began to deteriorate, waiting became more and more difficult. He never wanted to leave that lab. He never wanted to look away from the book, just in the off chance that it might change.

It all came to a head, however, when the book suddenly vanished from the lab. It was the talk of the school, really. No one knew how the person got into the lab, since there appeared to be no damage to the door or windows, and no one knew who came out of the lab, as the security camera positioned at the door had it's lens blocked just before the book went missing.

Professor Keaton was unexpectedly calm throughout all of this, though. The book may had consumed his every thought before, but now he wasn't losing sleep over it at all. It was not readily accessible to him, so it wasn't worth worrying about, others assumed, although they did find his sudden changes suspicious as well as concerning.

It was in the police's hands now, as the university was very invested in getting that book back. It didn't really sink in for the professor until he saw them in the building. Then, he began to get nervous. For once, his trek back home was not plague by thoughts of the book itself, but rather, the consequences of taking it.

It defied every standard of ethics and of research itself, but he did. He touched the artifact with his bare hands, feeling the skin against his own unleathered skin. Like he had suspected, there was no blemish to be felt where the spot once was, but that was no longer of importance to him. Should the book not resurface and he not give an adequate excuse for his actions, he would be fired, his career would be over, and he may even go to jail. God, what would his family think?

He was a respectable man. He was a respectable man who lived in a nice neighbourhood, and upon getting off the train, he stumbled his way down the sidewalk through it on his way home. Clutching the strap of his bag tightly, he hardly looked where he was going as fear grew and doomsday seemed inevitable. It was because of that that he nearly leapt out of his skin upon approaching the one house in the neighbourhood that gave him and his family problems. The loud barking of the dog that lived there just on the other side of the fence in the minuscule excuse for a "front yard" greeted him again today, just like it did every day.

"Bloody animal…" he muttered under his breath, seeming to return to reality for just a moment. He wiped the sweat from his brow with his jacket sleeve. It was getting colder out and his nerves were making it worse.

Once he was in the front door and away from the cold, he felt like he should relax a bit, but that didn't happen. After taking off his jacket and hanging it and his bag up and out of the way, he was immediately descended upon by a vicious creature headbutting his lower back. Although he grit his teeth and tried to swallow his pain in the moment, he let out a grunt that went unnoticed by his attacker.

"Hello, daddy!" greeted the little terror as Professor Keaton turned around. "Mummy and I made biscuits!"

Regaining his composure, the Professor shifted his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose and placed his hand on top of the girl's head. "Oh, did you? You didn't just just eat the dough, did you?"

"No, I put the ingredients in and watched Ajax."

"Robert?" called a voice from a little ways in the house, interrupting them. Shortly after, the head of a woman came peeking around the corner followed by the rest of her. She carried a baby on her hip as she addressed the first child. "Jane, why don't you let your father get in the house first before you tackle him?"

"So I'm getting tackled either way, huh?" Professor Keaton asked, gently shooing his daughter further into the house while he followed after. With great reluctance, the girl obliged and allowed him to do so, sticking her tongue out and scrunching her nose when her parents paused to peck one another on the lips.

"How was your day, darling?" the woman asked. "You look awful…"

"Fine. I'm fine… That dog from next door made me jumpy, is all."

"Oh, that dog… I really wish the neighbors would actually walk him instead of penning him up all day. He barked at Jane on her way home, too."

"I hate that dog." Jane said. "It's mean and it always scares me and my friends!"

"I can't argue with that. Besides, if they did walk it, we would just have a badly behaved animal outside of the fence." With a sigh, the man stood in front of his chair, turning around in front of it before collapsing into it. The heaviness of his actions caused his wife to press her lips into a thin line as she frowned. After a moment of pause, she pressed on.

"Is there something else that happened?"

Shaking his head, her husband answered. "No, just…" he paused, throwing a hand into the air, "The usual."

"The book?"

Anxiously, the man nodded. "Yeah…"

"I'm sorry, dear… Hopefully they'll find it soon. I mean, what would someone who isn't studying it even want with it? It isn't as though you could sell it; it's stolen goods! Hopefully, they'll find the person who did it. It can't be too difficult. Then again, if the police are as lax as the school's security was for whatever reason, then maybe so!" The woman laughed to herself, giving her husband a pat on the shoulder as she approached him.

"Yeah… Maybe…" He couldn't look her in the eyes while he said it. The shame he felt and the guilt weighed down on him too heavily. Soon, a new weight entered his arms, though. The baby boy that was being carried by his mother was given to his father, cooing the whole way.

"Well, anyway, now that you're home you can watch Ajax for a bit." the woman said, smiling as she made her way toward the kitchen.

"Cheryl- Wha?"

"I've had him all day. Surely you can manage your own son long enough for me to get dinner on the table."

"Yes, but-"

"I don't want to hear it, Robert. You're a smart man. You can manage. Or we can all just not have dinner. Hm? What'll it be? Baby and dinner, or no baby and no dinner?" she teased before disappearing entirely, leaving the Professor alone to tend to his own offspring.

Now, to clarify the situation, it wasn't that Robert was completely inept at handling his children. Far from it. He, like many good men could fall into poor habits in relationships that negatively impacted his female partner, but in this case, he simply didn't know how to even look at his son. The boy in his arms was about a year old—still learning about the world around him and brimming with curiosity and wonder, yet still having seen so little. In essence, the boy hadn't lived yet. It was completely unfair. He had no idea what his father had taken from him with his idiotic act. Professor Keaton knew. He knew that his son might grow up with a con for a father and a mother who resented what Robert had done to their family. It was stupid—stupid, stupid, stupid! And this boy hadn't done a thing to deserve it. His daughter hadn't either.

She would be old enough to remember a time before her father's mistake. In a way, that was almost more tragic. She would remember when things were steady and Robert's reputation hadn't been tarnished, all because of that bloody book and it's bloody leather!

"Daddy! Can I show you something?" Once more, his terrified mental ramblings were cut short by the girl. Blinking, he scrunched his eyebrows upward with a struggled smile.

"Of course you can. What is it, Jane?" He struggled to hold the baby in his lap and keep him from grasping at the piece of paper his daughter held up to show him, but very gingerly, he managed to do it with one hand and gingerly grasp the paper with the other. "Oh? What a nice drawing! Is that you?"

"Yeah! The one right here is me."

"What have you got in your hand?"

"A sandwich."

"Yeah. A pizza sandwich. Like we get at Gigi's." The corner of the Professor's mouth twitched upwards, knowing she was probably referring to a calzone.

"And what about this?" the man questioned, pointing to the other figure in the drawing.

"That's Peppa." answered the girl gesturing to the creature. It was a shadowy humanoid with red eyes and a surly demeanor. It sat next to the girl, wearing a frown. "She's sad because she can't eat sandwiches."

"Peppa? Like Peppa Pig?"

"Yeah, only she's not a pig."

"What is she, then? Why can't she have sandwiches."

"She doesn't have a mouth, see?" the girl gestured, pointing to the creature's face. "She said she'll be getting one soon, though. Then she can eat all the sandwiches she wants!"

"Sounds awful… How does she talk?"

"I don't know, but she does. She's probably magic." Nodding, Jane folded her arms surely with a rather smug expression. "Yeah, that's it. It's obvious, Daddy. She's magic, so of course she can talk without a mouth."

"You seem really certain about that. Where does Peppa live, then? In the land of the faeries?"

"No, no! Not at all!" the girl smiled. "She lives in your office."

A charming thought, the professor pondered. He wanted that childlike wonderment to last for as long as it could. That was why he needed to find a time to sneak the book back into the laboratory as soon as possible. Until then, he had no choice but to allow it to stay in his home, where it clearly did not belong. Hopefully, everything would return back to normal if he could just pull it off. He would never pull another stunt like this again if it would all just blow over. He would carry out his job with only the appropriate amount of curiosity and would never let it get the better of him again. This was the solemn vow that he made to himself for both his and his family's sake. All he asked was that these days of normalcy lasted forever and that their future remained open as something to look forward to, rather than something to dread. If only the impending sense of doom he felt would cease, that dream would come true.

But it was not to be. Doom came for Professor Keaton and his family and went. In the days leading up to it, nothing seemed amiss on the outside. The neighbourhood was quiet, apart from the neighbour's dog going missing. The missing pet signs littered the streets to no avail. It was the first and only warning that the neighbourhood got before that fateful evening. By the time the second came, it was already too late.

A 999 emergency call was received from the home in the twilight of evening. The sun descended, it's dark orange hue staining the sky in one last pained cry before dying out into the night. Professor Keaton made that call shortly after returning home. He had a late class. He always did on Tuesdays. How was he to know what was waiting for him at home? He knew the situation he had put his family in was bad, but this? This was beyond comprehension. He couldn't understand it. Panicked and pleading, he tried his very best to understand it, all the way up until the chance to even try was robbed from him permanently.

A call was made from the Keaton household. It rang out, was received, and was answered as quickly as possible, but unfortunately, it simply wasn't quick enough. The sun had set, leaving only flashing blue lights to light up the neighbourhood. The sound of a dog barking was noticeably absent from the chaos of it all and the Keaton family home stank of blood.


A/N: Greetings, everyone~! No sign of the duo yet, but I hope this is alright. I'm kind of experimenting a bit. Let me know if you think it turned out alright, because I'm honestly not sure if it hit right...

It's not that late, but I'm tired and I have to get up tomorrow... A bit of a full day, y'see... Not because of Independence Day-I don't really do much for that-I just have a lot of errands to run and I'm not looking forward to it one bit~!

Anyways, I hope this chapter was at least entertaining. I'll get started on the next one as quick as I can!

Until the next chapter, my duckies~!