I first heard her voice when I was twelve. The blistering summer heat beat down relentlessly on my friend Amy and me. It was only a short walk from the park to Amy’s house, yet we panted and gasped with every step. It didn’t help that we had spent the last of our money not on drinks but on cloyingly sweet candy that popped in your brain and stuck your jaws together.

The woman who pulled up behind us in the silver car could not have been more of a welcome sight. As she spoke about the event currently happening at the youth centre, with drinks and chocolate and a DJ and boys, I was sceptical. Not of her motives, but of how hard she was trying to make it sound cool. It was probably full of losers. Or maybe there would be no boys there at all. But she was offering us a ride in an air-conditioned car, and, if nothing else, the youth centre was closer to Amy’s house.

Our mothers had lectured us on stranger danger countless times, but it never once occurred to us that this woman counted as a stranger. We had been warned of middle aged men with vans full of puppies. Not young, pretty youth workers with blonde highlights and a clutch bag.

To be honest, my hand was already on the car door handle when I heard it.

“Walk away. Go home. Onto the main road. No shortcuts.” The voice was stern, like a parent, yet also sweet. Hearing it made the back of my neck tingle. I knew immediately the voice had come from inside my head, and I wasn’t afraid of it at all. I trusted it completely.

I tried to drag Amy away but she fought back against me. She said I was being “weird” and embarrassing her that I should just get in the car. I’d like to say I fought hard to get her to come with me, but I don’t think I really fought hard enough. I was angry that she called me weird when I was just trying to help. So off she went in the car with the woman and I soldiered on by foot.

Everyone said Amy was lucky; she was found three hours later, “physically unharmed”. When I told my parents about the guardian angel I heard in my head, they tried to tell me that it was my own brain, and congratulated themselves on raising a sensible daughter. They didn’t understand. There was nothing sensible about me at all. I’d been ready to go with the woman and there was not a doubt in my mind.

Amy didn’t want to be my friend anymore. She thought I had abandoned her. She wouldn’t tell me what happened in those few hours, but I knew that it was scary and that she thought she was going to die. I would never say this to her, but I felt such pity for her, because evidently, she didn’t have a guardian angel of her own.

*

My guardian angel popped up again every now and then through my life, more regularly during my young, wild days, and decreasingly so as I became a mature, boring, risk-averse adult.

There’s a saying - “it never rains but it pours”. And for me, it poured indeed. In the space of three months, my boring, adult life fell apart around me.

My husband’s affair blindsided me, and overnight, the man I had loved for all those years vanished. I had expected him to grovel and cry and ask for forgiveness and I considered that maybe, once he’s suffered enough, I’d grant it. But no. That never happened. His affair being exposed was a “weight off his shoulders” and now he realised what he really wanted; to pursue a new life with his mistress.

My daughter, who I’d always been exceptionally close with, blamed me for her dad leaving and took every opportunity to tell me how much she hated me, until eventually she decided to go and live with him instead.

I lost my job, my mother became very sick, and the roof started leaking during the wettest month of the year.

Yep. It was a bad three months.

I started drinking more than before, and somewhere along the way I stopped brushing my teeth and getting dressed every day. I started hearing my guardian angel more, and it was the only thing that kept me going. It was like a silver lining. To be truthful, I would sometimes behave recklessly in the hope of hearing her voice again. Knowing she was watching over me stopped me from feeling so lonely, and it began to occur to me that my guardian angel was now my only friend in the world.

Sometimes, when the drunken or emotional haze would descend, her voice would kind of fade into the background.

That’s what happened on the day I died.

I won’t go into details of what happened - only that I either couldn’t or wouldn’t listen to her quickly enough, and I ended up clinically dead for a minute and a half. There were no pearly gates. No fiery pits. No dreams. There was nothing. It was like I blinked and then when I opened my eyes again, I had been resuscitated. Brought back from the dead.

Since then, my guardian angel has changed.

Her warm, comforting voice is now cold and sharp. Instead of keeping me safe, she just screams and screams, as if she’s in pain. I have tried to speak with her, to find a way to help her, but I get nothing back. I have tried to ignore her, to push the voice away, but it just gets louder and louder.

There’s another thing too. I can see her now. I see her behind my reflection. At first glance, my reflection looks just like me, but as I look closely, I see these cold black eyes. And as she screams, this thick black ooze streams out of them. Her grey, leathery skin peels off in clumps and she claws at her own face with long, sharp talons, ripping the skin away.

I have tried to cover up all of the reflective surfaces in my house, but now I have started to see her whenever I close my eyes. I’ve been so scared to close my eyes that I haven’t been sleeping and I’m scared to even blink for a second too long.

I finally slept last night. I was too exhausted to keep it up any longer. When I woke up, my own skin was peeling off and thick black liquid was coming out of my eyes.

I can see her in the corner of my eye right now, and each time I look at her, she gets closer.

Please help. I think something is wrong with my guardian angel and I think there is something wrong with me.