“Danny…” The message bounced around Danny’s mind as he tried to ignore it for the third night in a row.

“Danny…” The message repeated and Danny could sense a certain desperation to it.

“Why are you ignoring me?..” The message declared as Danny lay on his back staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom. This time the desperation was quite clear.

“What have I done wrong?..” Danny could not reply, maybe if he continued to ignore her she would go away. Maybe she would stop contacting him. Maybe.

“Please?..” The message begged. “Please… Tell me what’s wrong. Danny? Danny? Can you even here me Danny? Are you even there Danny? Danny?” Each time his name popped up the message became more insistent.

Finally out of sheer desperation Danny shot back a reply.

“Leave me alone.” It was simple and too the point, and Danny hoped that it had got the message across. It hadn’t.

“Danny… Oh thankyou… Please tell me what’s wrong?” The voice insisted even more desperate now that it knew Danny was there.

“I can’t talk to you any more.” Danny replied feeling a great deal of anger at what he had too do. “I’m too old for imaginary friends…”

Ever since Danny could remember, he could talk to aliens. They came to him while he slept at night and whispered to him in the dark. Not the little grey men from the television, no, these were blue and beautiful angels of physical perfection. Danny had spoken to them for his entire life and had never seen the problem with it. He had spoken to one of them in particular, more than all the others. An alien girl his own age. Danny had grown up with her as his best friend and they always spoke every night. Now that Danny had hit his teenaged years the talks moved on from friendship and became something else. But Danny’s parents were not pleased at all with his peculiarity.

Danny’s parents had known almost since Danny did that Danny could talk to aliens although unlike him they did not believe it was true. Danny had told them while he was too young to know any better and his parents had treated it like what any parent of a four year old would. With mild curiosity and amazement at the child’s imagination. As the years progressed however his parents began to see something wrong. Danny did not develop friends with the children his own age. He always sat alone and never seemed to show any interest in anything anybody else was doing. He sat there, fiddling and staring into space.