Author's Note:

A very different sort of story compared to what I'm used to, but I like changing things up and challenge myself to discover other genres. For those of you who like thrillers and crime dramas, I hope this will somewhat suit your taste. Will be rated M+ permanently and irrefutably due to the rather constant exposure of dark minds, explicit language, brutal violence, alcohol and drugs, gore, death and sexual, both reluctant and willing, encounters.

Enjoy.

Prologue

There have always been four fundamental pieces in the eternal, endless cycle of crime: victims, perpetrators, investigators and finally, adjudicators, be it the obtrusive public eye or an appointed jury and judge in court. And these are all connected and born from the same thing.

Human avarice.

Everyone has their fair spot in society. It's our choices and the sometimes randomized or externally modified consequences of those which leads us from there. Nowadays, one can witness wrongdoings and severe acts of violence almost everywhere. Whether it's an uproar or a war on far distant soil, the rushed exploiting of poorer countries' resources or just the alcoholics down the local pub; countless of nameless, faceless people waste their energy on destruction, would it be their own or to cause it to someone else for self-satisfaction. Thus are delinquency, misconduct and grave forms of lawbreaking all vital parts to my unofficial study of the yet unsolved enigma to how we humans actually work. You could say that I'm being overly pessimistic and downright rather foolish myself and perhaps I am! But let me tell you this: didn't we already as children, while we teased our friends, laughed at something juvenile and stupid or played football or cat and mouse in the park or the backyard, support something much more maleficent? The omnipotent darkness that I've seen so many times, wasn't it always there, waiting, brewing and biding its time for us to take our games just a little too far?

That extra step that eventually sent us over the ledge. When our plays with sticks, toys, words and later also electronic devices caused others pain. Sadness. Grief and shame. Did you never feel even the slightest bit delighted over the rush of power that filled your veins when you managed to make some dumb kid cry? A close friend you were perhaps jealous of for snatching your love interest right under your nose or a sibling that just couldn't shut his or her mouth? Wasn't it just utterly gratifying to quench their happiness, if only for a tiny, tiny moment?

There's no reason to feel mortified or guilty. I'm not here to make you relive those moments and feel remorse for your sins, and I'm definitely not here to teach you some kind of boring, philosophical life lesson. You and I, your family and mine, your neighbors and mine, we all know without truly understanding why humans have become the way we are today. People are greedy, morbidly cruel and most importantly: reckless. A vice that makes us unpredictable and dangerous and has caused our proud race as many miracles and groundbreaking inventions as tragedies and scandals. We've grown up in an environment crammed with this information and even though it's there, clear and visible both during day and night, constantly within reach, we subconsciously shy away from the truth of our wretched existence.

I never intended to write this down. I want no one else to ever have to experience what I was forced to go through, even in simple text. Because words, as few, cheap, and dull as they may seem, carry weight, purpose and a message. I was taught this by a fellow friend of mine, someone you eventually will get to know as good as I, hopefully, did. I… I can never sleep without remembering the face of this person, someone I fervently wish I had met earlier and been lucky enough to know for much longer.

A human being I actually wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

The paper—or the computer screen—absorbs the author's thoughts and feelings, somewhat making this very personal and difficult for me to put down. I'll start slow. Unlike what you might have expected, the story doesn't start right off the bat. The main event, meaning the case of the Dark Angel, didn't come until after the main characters, namely the protagonists, had already met a few times. Laced with cigarette smoke, peppermint gum and a too short skirt, these two unhappy souls initially came across each other, unsurprisingly, at the messy scene of an earlier criminal's work after a "secret source"—under duress, I might add—had told the woman of the murder.

Interesting start, huh? No? Well, perhaps not. Reality rarely is as interesting as we want it to be, thus our willingness to date online. But don't fret, I'll try my best to make this enjoyable. Oh, and before I continue, I'd like to point out a few things to make it easier for you to read. Since I'm writing this in perfect hindsight, I already know the beginning and the ending of this story. Things might get ugly fast, let me tell you that. And to give it somewhat of a… twist, I'll write from different perspectives. I know the facts and I'm a pretty good guesser if I might say it so myself; I'll manage to cover up the rest with a touch of imagination.

The Detective: The quick-to-think, clever-brained hero or heroine of the story. Whether he or she is real or not comes down to the flaws and this story's "hero" is far from perfect. He has a damn ugly attitude with an even fouler language to match and eyes as sharp and intimidating as daggers. Once a prodigy within the federal police, he stepped down from his prime position when he got married and had kids, hoping to be able to spend more time with his family. But as with all men, he fell under the inevitable spell of temptation and lost it all. He was too arrogant to be depressed over the separation and time gradually mended most of the wounds between him and his ex-wife. Things are slowly brightening up for our hero even though the thirties have made him grumpier and snappier than ever before, and he now works as a top-tier investigator together with his partner and the accepted blissfulness of nicotine instead of other women.

The Journalist: Confident, gorgeous woman who knows her way around almost everywhere and everyone. Also equipped with sharp, venomous tongue as the Detective but with a more sympathetic heart than most, her biggest dream has always been to become an author of horror or thriller novels. But consequences from previous choices had her become a journalist and bad luck and unfortunate circumstances meant she had to start from the bottom of the bottom. She is all but writing crap about celebrities or posting erotic poems online.

The Partner: The Journalist's dear darling brother who invariably battles and gets caught between with the question of whom he fears the most: his boss, the sometimes sadistic Detective, his girlfriend, a silent but stern, raven-haired woman with knuckles of steel, or his sister with her excellent persuasive and threatening skills. An unusually amicable person, I must admit, not as rotten as most of this story's characters are, and strangely… innocent.

The Beast: A typical term I use for all those sloths known as criminals. Also, it sounds a lot better than "Bart Barney" or something like that. These are the absolute scums of the earth. Despicable and best to avoid. Only, you never really know who might or might not become a slave under their insatiable hunger or always have been, since we humans are such deceptive creatures.

The Beauty: Sometimes money, sometimes love; the Beast does anything and everything to find his or her Beauty. It's the desire of possession that drives them, keeps them tempted and urges them on to. These are the victims of the crime but also their own creators.

Uh-hum. Yeah, that'll be good. Now, let's commence with a touch of human sanity—a short preface of some sort. Just for you to have a taste of this dreadful but ever so true story.

The Beast

Another muffled scream. The balding man had to resist the urge to hit her again; he wanted her fully conscious while he ferociously ravaged the most precious parts of her body. He wanted her to feel what she had made him feel when sleeping with that other guy.

Simply fucked.

"You whore," he grunted and trusted his hips forward. Beads of sweat started forming on his red forehead and gravity dragged them on a strenuous journey across his flushed, round face and down the sturdy valleys of his thick neck, soaking the v-line of his gray, too snug t-shirt. His breath reeked of the strongest liquor, deep-fried potatoes and cheap cigarettes in the same order.

"You whore," he repeated as the woman eventually went limp in front of him, resigning to her assailant's savage needs and ancient rhythm. She had been through this many times before, ever since her mother's third boyfriend frequently started visiting her during the nights. She had even forgotten what having sex really meant: a display of love and trust for one's partner. It had and would always be a game for her.

And as with all games, there's always this unknown darkness which lurks about, patiently hovering at the participants and waiting for something to go wrong. For things to cross the boundaries of what was technically allowed. Many a times, the man had restrained himself from breaking that golden, unwritten rule, making the darkness disappear, dejectedly and grudgingly, but also bound by his or her own rules. The man had always been kind as a kid and grown up in a loving family of five and a dog. He had been a good, diligent student with high hopes and dreams that never came true but that he had humbly accepted. He was usually reasonable but rage and alcohol was what drew him this night and so he decided to play dirty. To take a leap into madness and rise, triumphantly and with a new craving to suppress. Like a vampire was boundlessly attracted to blood, he realized he was immeasurably, fanatically attracted to women.

It was the birth of yet another Beast.