I dream about them all the time. My angels come to me swathed in the colours of the rainbow, take both my hands and pull me from my sleeping body.

As we take our first unsteady steps out of my earthbound senses, the sound of my fading heartbeat gives way to that of their mighty wings unfolding in the silver stream of moonlight. My companions always look straight ahead, their profiles cutting a safe path through the opalescent limbo-land of mortal consciousness.

They keep a firm grip on me as I shudder, first in fear, then in delight, at the nearing sight of our destination, a blindingly luminous white triangle. The brightness makes me blink, my lashes get heavier and heavier, the spells of darkness longer and longer each time until I'm suddenly shot through with a bolt of blue to the sound of a deafening crash of thunder.

When I open my eyes, I find myself lying face up in tall grass with my guides kneeling beside me, still holding my hands, their faces now turned towards me. They are beautiful but sexless, complete in themselves like the last drops of April showers I used to catch in my palms as a young girl on a break from my homework, catch, caught, caught, bring, brang, no, brought'¦ brought.

My angels give me a barely-there nod, greet my half-smile with a squeeze of my fingers then help me to my feet. We now stand in waist-high grass swaying around us in the fragrant breeze, shh, shh, like tape hiss, or an old broom on a kitchen floor. My companions' gentle, attenuated fingers keep in contact with mine as we set off together with the breeze in our face.
The tall grass caresses us as we seem to almost glide through it as if through water, the waters of iridescent liquid skies of long-gone summers, pregnant with eternity.

Then we reach the lake. It stretches before us: seething black depths curbed by the flat, silvery gauze reflection of looming rain clouds. We hear something, or someone call us from the impenetrable depths before us, an insistent, querulous call that draws us in almost despite ourselves. The patchy monochrome sheen of the lake flickers beneath our first tentative steps as we obey the disembodied command in our ears.

The sound grows and mingles with another, a deep hum, emanating from the murky depths below. Don't look down, my companions tell me again and again as the hum swells into a ferocious, deafening roar, drowning out the call in the distance. The touch of my angels' hands is no longer enough to keep me guided; I try to catch their eyes, but they're resolutely staring ahead at the blurred, bleeding horizon as we advance through the infernal din.

Desperate, I let go of their hands to try to block my ears. Don't look down, they scream one last time before I lose them. My feet ache; every step is an effort of will. Where are you, I keep yelling, come back, I need you.

The unbearable pain in my feet forces me to the ground. The silvery gauze beneath me rips open and I'm dragged into the blind, silent void and fall, fall, fall.

I come round curled up.

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