Night Angel
A short fictional tale about the kind of girl men think they can follow home.
Content note: This story includes violence, sexual harassment, gore and a delicious ending. Proceed with caution.
The wine bar has the kind of lighting designed to make everyone look wealthier and more interesting than they actually are.
Low amber bulbs hang from their nooses, brick exposed, small marble tables barely big enough for two glasses and on the wall, a large chalkboard that lists obscure natural wines in looping handwriting.
Everyone speaks just a little too loudly. All of them so interested in what they have to say but vacant when they have to listen.
They lean across tables as if the room is a movie set about beautiful people discussing groundbreaking ideas instead of a room full of people pretending they understand what volatile acidity means.
I ordered a Portuguese orange wine because the waiter said skin contact three times and that seemed important. He said it reverently too. S k i n c o n t a c t.
I imagine him man-handling the grapes himself with his chubby ringed fingers.
Across from me, Lou is explaining something with enormous seriousness about a man she matched with on Hinge.
“He’s a creative strategist,” Lou says, lowering her voice dramatically, as if the phrase might attract journalists or someone who actually gives a fuck.
“What does that mean?” I ask but I don’t care.
“I actually don’t know,” Lou says.
She shrugs and takes a long sip of wine then stares at it like a coroner evaluating a corpse.
The wine bar smells faintly of candle wax, citrus peel, and damp wood. I can detect Santal 33 somewhere nearby.
Near the window a man is explaining fermentation to a woman who looks like she had long ago accepted that this was her evening.
“Natural wines are basically alive,” he says.
Alive.
At another table someone is photographing their glass from three different angles.
A man in an oversized blazer keeps saying fermentation notes like it is something erotic and salacious.
I hate it.
I hate them.
I also hate Lou.
Lou has the bright, frantic energy of someone who believes a personality can be assembled entirely out of Pinterest vision boards and familial wealth.
I take another sip of the orange wine. It has the same dry, sour taste it had earlier, like a bruised apple that has been left in a shoe to ferment.
The waiter had described it as complex. I had suspected that meant unpleasant and I am correct, as always.
I imagine the grapes sitting together somewhere in a dark cellar, pressed against each other inside their skins, slowly dissolving into something expensive.
Skin touching skin. Fermenting quietly.
Lou is still talking. Something about a weekend in Margate, something about a ceramics workshop, something about holding space for creativity.
I stop listening.
Instead I look at my reflection in the window beside our table. The candlelight softens me slightly in the glass. I look expensive and beautiful, as always.
By the time we leave, the street outside has that late-night London stillness that feels like both peace and a held breath.
Taxis slide past with soft mechanical sighs. The kebab shop at the corner spills warm light onto the pavement. A couple argue beside a bike rack.
We hug goodbye outside the tube station.
“Text me when you get home,” Lou says, pulling her coat tighter around herself as the cold air hits us.
“Yeah.”
“Promise?”
“Yes, Lou.”
Lou squints at me suspiciously.
“You’re going to walk home from the station?”
“It’s literally twenty minutes.”
“That’s still twenty minutes.”
“I walk it all the time.” I shrug.
Lou shakes her head immediately.
“I hate that you do that.”
“Why?”
“Because men are weird,” Lou says, lowering her voice like she is sharing a state secret. “Like properly weird.”
“They’re just people.”
“No they’re not,” Lou says, exasperated. “Not at night. Not when you’re a woman by yourself. They become something else.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Just text me when you get home,” she says again.
“I will.”
Lou hesitates one last second, then she leaves.
The platform is almost empty but there’s a man in a puffer jacket watching TikToks without headphones. The sounds burst out in annoying jabs and I want to grab his phone and throw it onto the tracks.
Or maybe grab him and throw him onto the tracks.
When the train arrives, I catch a glimpse of myself in the darkened glass doors.
My hair smooth, lip gloss intact, little black dress, coat buttoned neatly.
I love the way I look in this body.
Small, polished, expensive.
The kind of woman people assume needs protecting.
When I come up from the station, the street is darker than I expect.
One of the lamps has gone out, leaving a stretch of pavement swallowed in shadow.
The air smells like damp brick, fried oil drifting from somewhere down the road and the signature scent of weed.
I start walking.
Click.
Clack.
Click.
Clack.
Closed shops slide past on either side of the street and my reflection appears and disappears in dark glass. I admire how long my legs are.
Click.
Clack.
Halfway down the road I notice them.
Three men. They are still far enough away that most people would not have paid attention, but I notice.
Three shapes moving badly through the night.
Too loud.
Too loose.
The way some men walk and talk when they are performing for each other.
They have not seen me yet but I know they will.
“Well hello, you’re a beautiful little thing aren’t you!” one of them calls.
I do not respond.
“Oi, did you hear him?”
I keep walking.
“Don’t be rude, we’re giving you a compliment.”
They spread out slightly as they approach, a slow widening arc. A predatory tactic.
My heart begins to beat harder. Not faster. Harder.
The men smell like lager and sweat when they get closer.
“Where you going, sweetheart?”
I look straight ahead.
“Too good to talk?”
“Bet she thinks she’s something.”
“Look at her, fucking slut. Walking like she’s in a fucking perfume advert.”
I do have a good walk. I have practiced it, actually. Years of watching myself in shop windows. Shoulders back, chin level, effortless.
Another step. Another.
The street narrows slightly ahead where a service alley cuts between two buildings. A weak yellow bulb buzzes above it.
One of the men moves closer.
“Why you ignoring us you stuck up bitch?”
His hand brushes my arm.
A hand touches my waist, then another.
Then the shove.
The world tilts suddenly. I stumble into the alley, one of my boots slipping slightly on the damp pavement.
“Careful” one of them laughs.
Another grabs the back of my neck.
“Someone needs to teach you some manners.”
My back hits the brick wall with a thud and for a moment I go very still.
Small.
Quiet.
The perfect frightened girl.
One of them leans close enough that I can smell beer souring on his putrid breath.
“Thought you were better than us, didn’t you?”
His fingers tighten around my wrist and his other hand gropes my breast roughly.
That is when I smile. Not nervously, not politely.
A slow, delighted smile. It is a very pretty smile.
The kind someone gives when they have been waiting a long time for the main course.
Ravenous.
Something shifts in my mouth. Soft and wet, a quiet clicking sound.
Something inside my body relaxes, like a knot untying. My spine loosens first, then my jaw, then my teeth. It feels so good.
I can hear their breathing. Three separate rhythms. One fast, one uneven, one steady and stupid.
The man pressed against me has not realized anything is wrong yet.
His pulse beats against my skin, slow and heavy and I think of wine sat in a barrel fermenting quietly. Skin contact, just like the waiter said.
My hand moves so quickly it looks like a trick of the light. Fingernails sliding into the soft hollow of his throat, a sharp crack, the delicate snapping sound of cartilage giving way.
A symphony.
Blood comes out in a sudden hot rush, splashing across my perfectly blushed cheek.
The second man stares, confused, his alcohol poisoned brain buffering.
I bite him before he can step back. My jaw widens with a slick popping noise, teeth lengthening as they slide into place like knives finding their sheaths.
I tear into his neck with the enthusiasm of someone ripping open a bag of crisps after a long day. I love crisps. My favourites are Walkers cheese and onion flavour.
The third man screams and tries to run but slips on something wet.
My body is different to the one they pushed into this space. Taller. Spine slightly hunched, shoulders rolling forward with a predatory looseness.
My fingers have lengthened into narrow hooked things, nails dark and thick like polished bone. Blood drips from them and my delicate chin.
A dark stain spreads across his crotch. Pathetic.
“Oh my god,” I say lightly, in the same practiced voice I used earlier ordering wine.
“You’ve pissed yourself.”
“Please—” But I am already moving.
There is a dull cracking sound when I grab his arm. Bone. It folds strangely, beautifully.
The smell of his piss reminds me of the orange wine.
That same sour edge, that fermented heat. Something that has been sitting quietly inside a body for a long time.
“Oh,” I say softly.
“That’s interesting.”
I laugh, like the delighted sound someone makes when bubble wrap pops unexpectedly well.
When it is over, the taste lingers on my tongue. Warm, metallic, sour. Almost pleasant. I know someone in East London would pay £14 by the glass for this taste.
I frown slightly when I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a window.
“For fuck sake.” I mutter.
My lip gloss is completely ruined.
I pull the small tube from my bag and reapply it carefully, then straighten my coat and flatten my hair back into submission.
Perfect, as always.
I nudge one of the bodies with my boot.
“And these were my favourite Miista boots, prick.”
I land a final kick to the third man’s limp contorted body and step back out onto the pavement to look back and admire my work.
I imagine the grapes again, sitting together somewhere in a dark cellar, pressed against each other inside their skins, slowly dissolving. Skin contact. Fermenting quietly.
The street is still empty and dark but a bus rumbles faintly somewhere in the distance.
My phone buzzes
Lou: Text me when you get home!!
Me: Home safe x
Lou: Okay good, I was worried you’d been abducted by some horny men hahah
I smile slightly. If only she knew.
Then I start walking again.
Click.
Clack.
Click.
Clack.
Ten minutes down the road a group of men stand smoking and laughing loudly.
One of them notices me walking past.
His voice follows me down the street, then his feet start to move.
“Oi.”
I do not stop.
But I do smile.
Click.
Clack.
Click.
Clack.
The night is still young.
This was a good reading and also satisfying, considering all the times women are bothered or harassed by some men nowadays
Very nice!