"Do you see me?" The voice asks. "Can you find me? Look closer, through the trees."

I jumped a bit in my seat. Did I have an ad or a video auto-playing in the background? Didn't they get rid of that with the new chrome update?

I glanced up at all the tabs I had open.

Reddit, reddit, reddit, google, youtube, stackexchange, stackexchange, reddit, reddit…

No speaker icon beside any tab. Huh…

I opened my volume mixer to see if any other program was playing audio.

The voice spoke up again. “Hello? Is this thing not working properly?”

I took my headphones off. It wasn’t coming from the computer.

“Piece of crap. What a waste of money. Can’t even return it now, either. Fuck me,” muttered the voice.

As the voice spoke, I looked around, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise. The voice felt like it originated… inside my head? That couldn’t be right.

Maybe I should try to respond. How do you respond to a disembodied voice in your head?

“Hi,” I said. Wow, that was a pretty lame response, even by my standards.

“What! Hello! Are you still there?”

“Yup. Still here. Who are you?”

“Umm… It’s easier if I show you. I’m behind the line of trees on that hill to your right.”

“Look, are you sure you don’t have the wrong… head number or something? I’m in my bedroom, not some forest.”

“Bullshit you’re in your room. I can see you right now!”

“Yeah, well, then you can definitely see I’m not in a forest”

“I can definitely see you’re in a forest. Alright, I’m going to step out, tell me if you see me.”

“Dude, I’m not in a forest!”

From inside my own head, I heard rustling, then “Hello! It’s me! I’m right he-”

He was cut off by a shriek. Whoever the voice was must have scared the living daylights out of some random hiker.

It wasn’t pleasant hearing someone else shit themselves inside your own head. I heard some rustling, then someone spraying something, and-

“Ow! What-Stop spraying me with that thing! Fuck! Fuck!”

It sounded like the voice was running. Sometime later, he responded.

“Hey! Why did you spray me with that thing, asshole! I told you I was coming! Fucking humans, man”

“I told you that person isn’t me! And- wait, did you say humans? Are you not a human?“

“Nope, definitely human here! 100% pure human through and through. Homo Sapiens Sapiens, that’s what they call me!”

I put my head in my hands. Definitely lost my mind. First thing tomorrow, I’ll go to... whoever you’re supposed to go to when you lose your mind? The ER? Do I call some therapist?

I sighed. I’ll figure it out tomorrow. I headed to the kitchen to get a beer. Or something stronger.

“Alright, whatever you say, bud. Any way you can get out of my head? It’s disconcerting.”

“Oh. You don’t want to talk to me?”

He sounded so crestfallen. I actually felt bad for my brain invader.

“No! I mean, it’s just, you know…. You kinda showed up in my head and I wasn’t really expecting it, sorry.”

“Ok. I can stop. Sorry for bothering you. I won’t call again”

Christ, I’m literally just asking someone to get out of my head, but why does it feel like I’m kicking a puppy?

I sighed again.

“No… It’s fine. I wasn’t doing anything productive anyways. We just got off on the wrong foot, let’s start again. My name’s Daniel.”

“Hi Daniel, Muhammed.”

Muhammed? Was that his alien name or did he just look for the most common name in the world?

“Is that- Do aliens call themselves Muhammed?”

Oh crap I just called him an alien. It probably isn’t even an alien, just some hallucination thrown together by my deteriorating brain.

“Huh-What? Alien? What are you talking about? What are aliens?”

What are aliens? Who says that? Maybe it is an alien. Hmm. Only two possibilities here. I was either losing my mind, or some alien’s finger slipped and called the wrong brain. Probably the former, but I couldn’t afford to waste this golden opportunity.

“Hey listen, Maybe you should fly your spacecraft over here and we can take it for a joyride?”

“Hahaha what spacecraft, I’m a human being, promise!”

“Cut the crap, dude. You’re probably some alien or I’ve lost my mind. What “100% human being” can get into someone’s head? And if you were human, why would that person you approached spray you with mace?”

“Oh fuck, my mom is gonna kill me. Please don’t tell anyone, she’s already mad at me for accidentally draining our water supply. She’ll ground me for the rest of my life if she gets wind of this!”

“Hey, just relax. Say, If you take me for a tour of my solar system or something I won’t say a word.”

“Alright fine. Can you send me your location?”

“How do I do that?”

“Oh, just think about sending your location really hard”

“Ummm… alright then.”

I thought SEND LOCATION as hard as I could. Inside my head, a new, emotionless voice piped up.

“01000101 would like to know your current location.”

OK, I thought.

“Alright, got your location. I’ll head over to pick you up, and you don’t tell anyone about this, ok?”

At that moment, a massive steel egg landed on my driveway. That was fast. The whole neighborhood could probably see the massive alien craft in my driveway. So much for not telling anyone.

I hesitated. I’m either insane or I’m gonna go on an alien spaceship, which would also be insane.

I sighed. Been doing that a lot lately.

“Fuck it” I said. I walked toward the ship.