Damn, my head… I felt like my head was about to explode. Shit… I shouldn’t have drunk last night.

I felt dizzy and disoriented. My eyelids were heavy and I could barely see. Worse yet, I felt sick to my stomach, about to vomit whatever I put inside it last night. If not for my unbearable headache I would’ve probably done that, but somehow my body felt like keeping everything inside was a much better idea than pouring it all outside. It didn’t make me feel any better either way.

Still, I had to get up and put myself together. A big day awaited me on Monday, and even though today was Saturday, I still had to prepare for the interview. I was supposed to be promoted to a Vice President, Level ninety nine position at the company I was working at. It was a big deal, considering I was only twenty-seven years of age.

I rubbed my eyes, trying to clear my throat at the same time. It was too dry and I couldn’t gather any saliva inside my mouth.

“Ghaah…” I tried to cough, but it ended being only a gurgling growl. Good thing was it still helped me clear my throat, even if a little bit. I gave my eyes another rub and it started to become clearer.

“Those old geezers, they were too generous, and too friendly for my liking yesterday. Shit, I’m definitely not gonna say ‘yes’ to another drinking party again,” some broken pieces of what happened last night flashed through my mind. A certain someone showed her face at the forefront of my memory. Only briefly, though.

“Oh, yeah. There was this hot babe there as well. What was her name again?” I couldn’t remember, probably because she never introduced herself. “That old fart. Where did he dig up such a sexy ass? Tch… money wasting bastard.”

My headache was still happily banging inside my head, and my guts were still tying knots inside my belly, but my eyes started to adjust to a weirdly bright light. Although, I still couldn’t distinguish where I was.

I already knew I wouldn’t be at my own place. The old geezers would never be kind enough to take me home. Not that I wanted them to know where I lived. A shabby one-bedroom flat I was renting wasn’t something I wanted to boast about. Even with my head spinning, I could put me broken memory’s pieces together to realize I must’ve spent the night at the same hotel where we had the party at. Half of the hotel’s restaurant was rented out just for our company, or for us to be more precise. It wasn’t an official company’s party after all.

“I hope they didn’t put it on my tab. Aah… shit,” I sighed, but then shook my head. “No matter. I’d be getting a decent raise after my promotion. I can afford a night’s stay at this fancy… eeer… what was the hotel’s name again?”

The name of the place we were partying last night eluded my memory again. My hangover must’ve been worse than I thought. I was drinking all kinds of expensive drinks last night. Majority of the drink names I never knew existed. My young body wasn’t really used to drinking alcohol. I wasn’t a drinker at all.

Anyway, I decided taking a shower to clear my head would be the best course of action right now. I could understand at least that much. It would certainly help me see better. My eyes just couldn’t adjust to the bright light for some reason. I pushed myself to sit up, ramming my hands at what I thought would be bed’s mattress underneath me, but instead, I felt like I was leaning at the ground. My skin tingled feeling grass in between my fingers, and what it seemed like to be a tree’s root I was touching with my other hand.

What the… I forced my eyes to fully open, blinking rapidly so they could adjust to the light. I was hoping my mind was playing tricks on me, with the headache and my guts adding that sweet pain to the pot. However, what I saw in front of me blew my mind. The fuck…

I was stunned. Instead of waking up in a bed in some hotel, I was in the middle of the forest, or some part of it. I started to rub my eyes and my face frantically, hoping I was still asleep and was still dreaming.

“Ok, that’s enough. Time to wake up, Rockin Starling,” stating my full name out loud always helped me become sharp again, for better or worse.

It’s not like I was in love with my name, far from it. I hated it for the most part. My school years were especially dreadful, and I honestly hated Rock ‘n’ Roll music with a passion. But what can you do when your parents were the products of the eighties who loved Rock ‘n’ Roll more than anything else. Another luck was to have parents whose surname was Starling.

“Hey, look. The Rockin’Roll Star has arrived!” That was the most common greeting I would hear from my classmates, especially in my older years. I didn’t hate them for it, but in time, I got really tired of my nickname. Even the teachers would allow themselves to accidentally mispronounce my name, giving the whole class another excuse to tease and laugh at me.

You might think my parents were some rockstars or something. Far from it. They loved Rock ‘n’ Roll, that was a fact. But that was about it. They’d usually spend their days drinking, smoking weed and watching TV, with audio cassette player blasting some Rock music at full volume in the background.

The only good part about me growing up was, I wasn’t starving as a kid. They got lucky that my grandpa left them a substantial inheritance. It wasn’t in millions of dollars, but it was enough to live comfortably for years to come. Good thing was my parents weren’t big spenders, so the money they got weren’t completely wasted. In addition, I was lucky my parents weren’t abusive either. I was their only child, which might’ve been the reason too. Or maybe not. They weren’t bad people, only weren’t very involved with parenting me.

My old folks days of drinking, smoking weed and listening to Rock music repeating over and over somehow didn’t look appealing to me down the road. Something clicked when I was in my fifth grade and I decided I will build a different life for myself. The inheritance could last only for so long. Even as a kid I understood that much. The cropping up health problems of my parents from drinking and smoking, bullying and making fun of me at school, and probably some other reasons I’d rather not think about, pushed me to build a healthy and wealthy life for myself.

I started doing sports, self-defense mostly. Not for beating others up, but to build up the confidence and discipline that I lacked. Well, not wanting to be bulled for the rest of my school years was part of it too.

I devoted myself to studying during the rest of my free time that I had. I found out I was good at math, and I developed an interest in sales and finances. I studied product development, mostly software products, which were on the rise at the time. Creating video games was a profitable business, but extremely competitive at the same time. Hence why I studied sales and finances in my spare time too. Long story short, I’ve learned that the best money could be made at the software development company and that’s where I focused to get a job right after my graduation.

I started from the lowest position available and worked myself up. I mean, I really, really worked my ass off to reach the very top. My hard work paid off and I was noticed by some middle level manager and became his personal puppy dog, doing all of his work for him. I didn’t mind that one bit. I was determined to climb up the ladder, or climb the management Levels as the company called it, so I did whatever was required of me.

The company had a weird way of describing job promotions within its organization. They called it ‘Leveling Up’. Almost like gaining levels while playing some RPG video game, which were popular products at the time. As stupid as it sounded, the term became my every day mantra. I didn’t care if it sounded ridiculous or absurd. If that’s how they called it, so be it. My main goal was to reach the highest ‘Level’ in the company.

Even if the company was developing video games, I never played any. I was involved with creating them, it was part of my work, but I didn’t waste my time playing them. My schedule was booked from an early morning until late night when I hit the bed. I had always put in the time to exercise, eat healthy to and never drank alcohol or smoked. I knew that I had to have enough energy to do the work I needed to do. I sacrificed my social life for it too, including not going on a date with a girl even once. Although, I had a ‘few’ posters of a certain someone on my bedroom walls. Just to look at them and not to… do anything else… while I looked at them.

Shit, I digressed. Right, about the video games that the company was developing. As I said, I never played any, but I always familiarized with each product the company was working on at the time. The better you know your product, the easier it is to sell it. And sales were the last stop of it all. It wasn’t easy to sell video games. Not at all. There were so many being released by so many companies every month it was hard enough to keep up with it all.

Anyway, I kept at it, working my ass off and ‘Leveling Up’ day in and day out. All the studying and putting in those extra hours was finally paying off. Everything changed when my idea for a new video game was approved and, fast forward, it was a huge success when it launched. The company made a huge chunk of money and my efforts didn’t go unnoticed. I received a ‘Level Up Boost’ and was on my way to reach ninety ninth Level in the company, only one Level below the highest. The one hundredth Level was held by the company’s owner.

Being second most important person in the company was good enough for me. I wasn’t greedy. Well ok, I totally was. I wanted to be at the top, just like anyone else who worked at the company. I just wanted it more than the rest. And that brings us to this day, or yesterday. A lot of the old folks, or the ‘Player Base’ as we were called, weren’t happy with me ‘Power Leveling’ so fast, but the company cared only about results. Sales and profits, nothing else mattered. But the company also made sure to reward its workers for completing Quests. I simply ‘Farmed’ more than others. Yeah, there were a lot of gaming terms thrown around. But like I said, I didn’t care. I just had to adapt and use everything to my benefit.

I don’t know why, but I agreed to attend the party last night, even though I wasn’t a drinker. I also knew a lot of those old geezers weren’t actually happy about my success, even if they insisted that the party was thrown to celebrate my upcoming promotion. I was to become a Vice President on the following Monday. I had to attend an interview first, which in company’s eyes was just a formality. So, I thought I could make an exception and humor the others by attending it.

Attending it was one thing, but getting drunk wasn’t on my agenda. Again, I let loose and choked one glass down. It hit the spot and I instantly lost my self-control. After a few more drinks my mind became blurry. I don’t even remember what happened after that, how the party went or when it ended. But that was the least of my worries now. Staring at the thick, overgrown forest in front of me wasn’t somewhere I expected to wake up at.

“Where the freaking fuck am I?” I cursed out loud, giving my eyes yet another rub.

Big, tall trees, with the branches so thick, I couldn’t even see the sky. Although, it was bright enough to indicate it was day time. Plenty of bushes and green grass told me it was a very healthy and rich forest. The surroundings looked a little different, however. Different in a strange way, because the greenery didn’t resemble any forest that I was familiar with, not that I visited many forests in my life.

I inhaled deeply, with my nostrils becoming much clearer and I caught a refreshing, clean scent of the air around me. It felt rejuvenating. That was a blissful realization, considering I was inhaling the city’s smog for the past few years, doh… However, the shocking realization finding myself in an unusually looking forest wasn’t allowing me to enjoy it for long.

“Tch… Is this supposed to be a joke?” I murmured, making a frown. I wasn’t impressed if it was.

On the other hand, that’s just what the old coots would do if they wanted to discreetly mess with my Leveling Up to the Vice President’s position. It was a big role and everyone would probably sell their parents if it meant they could get it. So, this ‘joke’ of theirs might still put me in an awkward position. If I don’t show up to my interview on Monday, I could kiss my Vice President’s position goodbye. That definitely wasn’t an option.

Right, let’s just try and think about it rationally. I gently slapped my cheeks with both hands to help clear my head.

Remembering what happened and how I ended up here would help me the most right now. Fortunately, my headache was subsiding and I wasn’t feeling like vomiting anymore. Unfortunately, my memory of what happened last night was as blank as an empty sheet of paper inside a turned off printer. The best I could remember were flashing pieces of me swallowing burning liquid down my throat and then alcohol hitting my head like a hammer would hit an anvil. An image of the hot babe lingered at the back of my mind as well, but I couldn’t even remember her face. It was all too blurry.

The dryness of my throat reminded me how thirsty I was. At least that part was real. If I was feeling thirsty it meant I was alive. And if I was alive, it meant I would get myself out of this mess. The only problem was, I didn’t know where I was.

“Uughh… ghaah… cough, cough,” I tried to inhale through my mouth to help clear my throat, but I choked and started to coughing. I grumbled with the last cough which helped to clear my head at the very least.

I checked my clothes. I was still wearing my top notch, stylish dark navy color suit. I was glad to learn it wasn’t dirty or ripped anywhere, considering I was lying on the ground in the forest. The top two buttons of my white color shirt were unbuttoned and I was missing my tie. I quickly checked my pockets. I found it in one of my suit jacket’s pockets. I must’ve taken it off last night when it became too hot. Not that I remember doing so myself. My other hand stumbled upon something small in the other pocket. I took the item out to see what it was.

“A lighter? Oh…” I was almost surprised to see I had it since I wasn’t a smoker, but then my memory was kind enough to enlighten me.

I remembered I had that lighter almost forever. It was my father’s, but I nicked it from him, because I couldn’t afford to buy one of my own at the time. Buttering up ‘Higher Level’ staff at my company meant lighting cigarettes for them would get me extra ‘Level Up’ points as well. The lighter was refillable which made it much easier for me. I would have it with me at all times.

One distinct thing about the lighter was that it was put inside a leather case with my dad’s favorite Rock band’s initials on it. The case would close tight, protecting it from getting wet, even if I were to plunge the lighter into the water. Needless to say, my old man became a little depressed when the lighter was ‘lost’ and he couldn’t find it anywhere.

“Aah, shit… My wallet’s gone,” I grunted, quickly running through every other pocket in my clothing.

I was about to cuss out loud again when I remembered I had never brought my wallet with me to the party. The party was all paid for. Honestly, I would’ve never went to it if I had to pay even a cent out of my pocket. But right now, it posed a little problem. No matter where I ended up at, I needed money to get a drive back home. I’d have to find my way out of this forest first, of course.

I stood up tall, fixed my suit and tried to give my surroundings a proper look. The forest was thick, but not too overgrown. What caught my attention was that trees and bushes looked a little unusual. The shape of the leaves and how the plants grew gave away a strange, unfamiliar vibe. Pleasant, yet puzzling. If I were to indulge my mind to speak freely, my mind would tell me you’d see this type of environment in some fantasy story, especially for kids, where they wanted to show how beautiful the world was.

I scoffed at my own mind, then shook my head, puzzled by my own thoughts. I added a shrug and quickly dismissed the unnecessary thoughts, redirecting my mind towards finding my way out of this forest. There was no way I would allow myself to be late for that Monday interview. It didn’t even cross my mind that I might’ve been sleeping for longer than eight hours, but I had no way to confirm it right now.

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