Found in a dirty and bloodstained sketchbook, written in a little girl’s scrawly handwriting, accompanied by extremely disturbing pictures drawn with crayons. Investigators have validated the handwriting to be that of 13-year-old Angela Hearce, although the language and grammar sometimes employed suggests the possibility of another author. The images were compared to other images found at her former residential home in Eastsector DownTown and seem to be genuine.

Scrawled in big letters across the first page: Daddy always calls me his little angel. And then the hurting starts.

There are no dates given, so the time frame cannot be determined exactly. It is suggested that the first entry was written at least two years before the execution of Search and Seizure Warrant 9374/AI364-073A.

Momma gave me this book for my birthday. She said that it is for me and that I shall write my wishes into the book. They come true then. She said I should keep the book secret from daddy, because otherwise he would hit mommy. I don’t want daddy to hit mommy. Please do not make daddy hurt mommy. Do not hurt mommy. Do not hurt mommy. Do not hurt–

I am afraid. Daddy has found out about Mrs. Sheldon next door. She teaches me how to write. She is very old and knows a lot of things. Daddy said he doesn’t want her to spoil his little angel. He sent me home and Mrs. Sheldon looked frightened when I left. I heard him screaming in the apartment across the floor and when he returned he hit mommy. He hit her very bad and there was blood. When he noticed me standing in the door he shooed me away into my room. Told me to be his little angel and everything would be fine. But he kept hitting mommy. She is still screaming. They are in the bedroom now and I am scared. I can hear him slapping her with his belt and I can hear her sobs. Please make it stop. Please! Mommy doesn’t stop screaming and moaning. The bed is rocking against the wall and I can hear daddy scream “Yes, yes, yes!” while mommy’s sighs are muffled. After she has screamed out loud, now everything is silent. I am afraid.

Mrs. Sheldon doesn’t want to have anything to do with me anymore. She calls me spoilt and rotten, but she is afraid of daddy and I don’t want daddy to hurt her like he hurts mommy. During the early afternoon daddy is sleeping. I can watch Teevee then. I want to be like Captain Contract. Or like Bloody Valentine. She is a serial killer and everybody is afraid of her, but she is strong and she wouldn’t let daddy slap her. I wish she would come here and help me.

Scrawled in tiny letters around the margins of the page: I wish she would kill daddy.

Mommy’s face was bruised again and there were ugly blue-yellow marks around her neck. Daddy was still asleep and mommy told me to pack my things. I ran into my room and began to gather up my stuff. But daddy must have woken up and he screamed at mommy. Said she wanted to poison him. That she put rat poison into his beer. He hit her again and things got broken. I heard him scream and I became even more scared. I wanted to hide and crawl under my bed so that he cannot find me when he comes looking for me, but the screaming and hurting didn’t stop.

I went outside and I saw them both in the kitchen niche. Mommy was holding a knife and daddy’s head was bleeding. There was a deep cut along his temple. He was furious in anger and when he tried to cut mommy with the broken beer bottle in his hand she tried to stab him.

I wanted to run, but I couldn’t. Mommy hit daddy in the shoulder, but daddy slapped the broken bottle into her face and mommy fell to the ground, bleeding and screaming. Daddy noticed me then. He screamed at me and I ran into my room. At the door I had to turn around and I could see daddy kneeling down above mommy, picking up the broken bottle. He hit her in the face with the shards. I ran into my room.

Outside daddy was screaming “Do you like this bitch?” and I could hear the squishy sounds. And then mommy started to scream at the top of her lungs.

I want to die. Please make me die. Please. Please. Please.

You can find the full story of "Little Angel" at my website: http://www.dnotice.de

Save your feelings, my child. Soon you will be lost to oblivion and not even a single tear of yours might change your fate. It has followed you from the depths; since the day it saw you and your friend it has followed you, driven mad by your love each time it saw its rotten reflection in a pool of water or a shard of shattered glass. And out of madness grew its longing. For you.
You don't know how prophetic your name is, you don't know your fate, but I can read it and some even say I destine what your fate is. –No you don't know me, nobody does. I am hidden beneath the bodyguard of lies that is the truth. I only speak in dreams. You should listen then.
Ah, see them walking down the street, the rain pouring down like a fountain of love. See the street-lights glittering in the distance and watch closely for the never-blinking eye of blackness.
–Have you seen it moving in the darkness behind them? The girl knows deep inside, you can see that in the way she tilts her head just before she kisses him; but she doesn't listen to this voice inside.
–There, the shadow moving in the shadows, have you seen it? But you heard the soft noise when its knees knocked over a metallic bin. –I knew you did. They heard it, too, but he calms her down. Only the rats, he whispers in her ear before he kisses her again.
Can you feel its eyes staring at them, burning with desire, an unquenchable flame inside its cold and rational body? Their kiss lasts for an eternity, but finally she entangles herself from his embrace, smiling. It knows that the time has come ... it will be her lover and everything she has known about love will look like a dream when she learns about true love.
He smiles and says good-bye, ignorant of that he will never see her again, but in his dreams, haunted by his failure. Then he vanishes into the rain.
The girl stays, watching her lover disappearing into the darkness of a moonless night, and then she turns to face desperation. And when she walks down the street towards her home, it knows that the time is now and that its cold touch will caress her breasts, down there in the darkness of a trash-filled alley. All its love is hers and it silently rushes after her, bracing its rotten hulk against a cold wind blowing down the street.
And with the wind blows the knowledge of future sadness, the wail of muffled screams falling on deaf ears in dirty streets and the soft ripping noise of razor sharp metallic claws tearing through soft flesh.

You won't believe what life down here is like. I could tell you, but still you wouldn't believe. You're from above. You are Slay's people. We down here, we only belong to ourselves. Slay doesn't care about us and has forgotten that we exist at all; once there was a time when he cared, but at some point he simply forgot about us, residing in the sky, close to his chosen ones.
You are one of them, I can tell by the way you look, by the disgust on your face, when you go down here where Slay is but a memory of days past. You think that we cannot handle things down here, but you are wrong. Slay turned from us and so we took care of things ourselves.
People like you always tell us that we have to do what they say, because Slay gave them authority. Strange word this authority is; anyway, authority is irrelevant, whatever it may mean. We down here do things because they must be done and the stronger will commands us to.
You asked me about Tear and Cry; Ebons they are, of the chosen race of Slay, but like us he threw most of them down into the gutter and together we suffer here. They both said that this is Slay's ordeal for the truly faithful; they never faltered in their belief in Slay.
And then Tear is taken from Cry's side. Some say it was Slay's will that took her away, so that Cry might prove his faith. I don't think so. I know what lurks down here and believe me, I have never seen Slay coming down here, taking someone away in some strange kind of ordeal. No – 'twas something else, something sinister and evil.
When Cry learned that Tear had vanished, the light went out in his eyes; you could see his life dimming away in seconds. He went to the higher parts to pray to Slay, to pray for a wonder: he went to Shiver. Shiver belongs to Slay, too, like you do. But unlike your kind, there is only one Shiver, but he can be at different places. That's at least what some say. Others say, that there are many Shiver and that most are humans un-derneath their skin of metal. I don't care. Slay has forgotten about us and so did Shiver, too.
When Cry came back, he was broken. He wouldn't tell about what had happened to him above, when he was with Shiver, but he spent the day sitting in the rain, his mind lost somewhere else. I don't know what happened next; some say that Tear came back to him, like an angel, and she took him there where she was now, to paradise. Others say he got so sad about her loss that he simply stepped over the walkway and fell; and believe me, you can fall an eternity he, if you are not careful.

It must have been a dream. My whole life must have been a dream. Now it is a nightmare.
Once I knew a beautiful girl. I loved her like I never loved a girl before. Then she was taken from my side. I was broken, but I was not as broken as I am today; now that I know the truth.
I was sitting outside in the rain, and my friends came and went. I didn't notice them. I was looking down into the abyss, below the walkways. I could see us there, lost in our last kiss. The touch of her lips, the bouquet of her tongue, the touch of her wet body against mine. It should have last an eternity then and in my memory it almost does. But then I left her alone in the darkness, because I feared the others, the Lamentables. I still damn me for being such a coward. At least we would have died together then.
Finally I rose. I don't know how long I have been sitting out in the rain, waiting for everything to end, but life went on around me. There was no Serial Killer who would mercifully end my life, no accidental death in a shooting. My cursed fate was to live. Not even death at the hands of an illness. With my last will I decided that I had to end my life myself. I would fly to her. Perhaps she would catch me down there.
I went to the edge of the walkway. I could hear her voice calling me from below, I could almost feel her kiss on my lips, smell her sweet fragrance, but it was the bitter taste of my own tears that I felt.
Then I heard her voice behind me, softly, gently saying my name. I hurled around, and there she was, thinner, paler than usual, but finally ... there. She was. She had returned for wherever she had been. Returned to me. I hurried to her. Her hand was so cold. I asked her where she had been, but she only kissed me. Her whole body was so cold. She said she had found a new home, down in the depths. She wanted me to follow her and I did.
We went deeper and deeper into DownTown and finally we came to a ruined neighbourhood that was completely lost in darkness. I asked her how she could see here, but she was silent. Right then I was sure that this was all a dream, a hallucination on my fall towards death. But it was far worse. It was real.
She showed me our new home, a cave of darkness. We made love, but it wasn't as it used to be. She was so cold, so unemotional, so ... bland.
Later she showed me her new friends, my new family. They were all like her, tall, slim and cool. I thought that she might have gotten ill, and boy, if I knew how ill she had gotten...
It almost ended in violence. Later that night, the operatives came. I was in bed with Tear again and I gave everything to her and she gave everything to me she had.
She gave me her skin.
It was horrible. I was kissing her, penetrating her, when I felt the cold metal beneath her skin. Panicked I withdrew and I took her skin with me and then I saw that I had been loving a Manchine.
I was puking, I was shivering, I was crawling away from the bloodied skeleton of metal. I wanted to wake up, but I couldn't. She, it, was crawling after me, her bladed hands reaching towards me, begging me to come back. Everything would end well. It said, it loved me. It said it could be Tear. But how could it be Tear if it had torn her apart?
The door burst open behind me and the operatives entered. Slay had decided to care for me. They saved me. Somehow they stuck a deal with the Manchines to get me out alive.
It is right, what my people say. Slay doesn't care about us. If he did, his operatives would have left me to die down there. But they punished me to live a life inside a dream that has become a nightmare from which I cannot wake. And every morning, just before dawn, I wake from my dreams and each time I see her skinless face and her bloodied claws trying to get me.
And each time I curse that they didn't then.

He is covered in darkness, it is difficult to breath, the smell of earth all around him. He is buried alive in a coffin. His hands transform into metallic claws, rip open the coffin, slice through earth, his muscles transformed into unbreakable cords of metal, revenge on his mind, the horror, the horror ... Suddenly the earth opens, rain strikes his face, darkness, night, a storm howls, lighting crashes in the distance. He sits in a dug open grave, soaking wet and covered with mud. In front of him a gravestone; dark, wet, the inscription unreadable but for the short moments when lightning strikes, “Cean Mc Lean – The burrorwer in the dark”.

A dark figure squats on top of the gravestone, holding out one of of its hands. Lighting crashes again, revealing a cadaverous claw. Wet black hair frames a rotten face - the corpse face of Alice. “Take my hand”, her fingernails blackend, long and sharp like a dagger, dark rain dripping from them, her smile a cannibal grin, blood smeared all around her putrid black lips, her teeth bloodied and broken.

He has the feeling she wants to kill him. He backs up and runs out of the grave, away into the darkness of the cemetary. He feels the Alice corpse drawing a gun, hears the clicking of the safety, the action of the slide, feels her aiming for his back, hears the shot, dives to the ground, feels the bullet closing in like a homing missile, following his dodging spins and motions in the air.

He rolls over on the floor and the bullet misses only by inces, hears the slide stop, the cartridge ejecting and spinning in the air, another bullet loaded into the chamber, the metallic snap of the slide, ready to fire, hears another report, the inevitability, imminent death, no escape, feels the bullet with his name written on it. Suddenly everything stops, he runs into a body, standing in front of him like a statue.

The rain has stopped in mid-fall, no more storm, lightning, thunder or wind. She stands there like an icon of stasis, Drug Nun. “Watch the shadows, close your eyes, watch them with your mind.” Her bleeding eyes full of mercy and pain to see his suffering, she strokes his cheek. He can see the shadows, feel them moving all around him, feel the spirits. And suddenly his mind opens up and he sees the entire city from above, great, endless, stretching into all directions into eternity.

A great spiral of shadow, a black dance, turns underneath the city, its threads pooling in light-flooded mansions in Spire Park, in Cathedral street, the corporate centers in the DownTown area, all along eastern border of the city, spinning aournd its nexus in Resthaven Park, north of the great Cathedral. And in the wake of the great spiral, hidden in threads of shadow, he sees all kinds of Ethereals, everywhere, lingering in darkness, waiting. And suddenly he stands atop a hill in Resthaven Park, in the center of the Great Spiral at the heart of its nexus and he feels His cruel gaze falling on the city from outside, a gaze the city hasn’t felt for more than nine-hundred years.

The city stretches forth from him, swallowed under a burning sky, thunderous clouds racing in black and red. Alone, from a cove of trees, Drug Nun emerges, walking unaffected by the storm and rain, her hair fluttering against the direction of the wind. She stops in front of him, "Do you like my gift?", and tears away her flesh with a razor blade for the oily and shadowy form of the Flibbertigibbet to appear underneath the skin. And with a triumphant, roaring laughter, echoing Alice's cries, pain and pleas for help, he falls into darkness ...

I don't remember everything. The last thing I recall is the Presence laughing at me. The Pig laughing, inviting me to play trotter. BUT I DON'T KNOW HOW TO PLAY TROTTER!.
i fucking don't know... they told me i am a memory, adrift in the path of the walker. I don't know the Walker. I only know Apathy. I remember, between the bouts of apathy, I remember. Once I was a Dark Finder. That meant something to me, but I don't remember what. I was powerful, I was influential. Someone called me a friend. And I knew Nina.

The voices say that Nina has passed here before, trottering. I guess she learned how to play the game. right now i don't care. i couldn't care less. What should it matter, when you're dead. and i'm dead for sure. I still see the ethereal images of the city, but none recognizes me and I don't recognize anybody else, but the Presence. I cannot read, what is written on the walls of the buildings, everything dies in a haze of light. the only thing i can see clearly are the images on television screens, but i think i have never seen images like them before. i guess i'm just a dead soul. Apathy says, don't care. and i don't.


The street lay in darkness. A thick fog crawled slowly across the pavement, smelling of spilled blood. The few streetlights that were still working flashed in and out, cloaking the street in temporal spots of complete and utter darkness. And the rain beat ceaselessly down. Most of the buildings were run-down, the doors decayed and windows broken, only some of them illuminated in the constant, shifting colourful light of television screens.

Piles of dirt and trash covered the pavement, slowly turning into a slicky coat of slime in the endless rain. Further down the alley, beyond the rows of street vendors selling sushi, pizza, guns and drugs, the silhouette of a slim building. Originally the walls seem to have been white, but over the ages dirt and the poisoned air coloured them a hazy smudge-grey. They are tall enough for the upper levels to be lost in the darkness above the illuminated street.

Once the building had a purpose but that has been forgotten for ages. The squad didn't know its purpose, and neither did they care. They only knew that their mark was inside and that Shark's Fin wanted it dead or alive, preferrably dead. They quickly covered the empty space between the row of street vendors and the building while the Dark Finder who had employed them stayed shortly behind. They were good, he knew. Two of them were covering each other while they darted to the entrace. At the same time two of them were covering the side windows, one on each flank of the building.

On command of their leader they shot smoke grenades through the broken glass windows while the two at the door threw it open and rushed inside. Then he went in, too. The building was silent and thick fumes of smoke were coiling inside. There was no movement, and while the squad was searching the building he began cusing his bad luck.

Four months of investigation and another dead end. Then the doors slammed shut and he heard the voice coming from above. There she was, Nina, seemingly floating above them in the damp air, wet from the rain that fell through the broken roof, her body naked, putrid, bloate dand rotten, her eyes blazing with ... blankness.


Wounded, the Dark Finder stumbeled towards the doors and threw them open. He fell to the ground, crawled down the two steps to the dirty street while he knew that Nina was looming behind him, silently mocking him, her presence calling him. They were all dead, but he was grinning and insanity swam in his eyes and with a roaring laughter he hurled himself to his feet and fled into the night ...