Story 1: The Forest

Sitting up, Louis blinks at the bright light filtering through the tree tops. He groans and grips his head, a headache pounding through his skull. He feels around his head and finds a rather large goose-egg bump on the back of his head. Louis then takes a look around himself. It wasn't the first time that he's woken up in random places, but the forest was a first. How did he get here, and why did he have a head injury? He tries to remember the last thing he did but all he could remember was the swanky dinner his older brother Patrick was hosting and talking to someone with a pretty smile, but he could not remember more as everything else was still fuzzy. He looks down at himself to see that he was no longer wearing the black tuxedo, but wearing an unfamiliar black t-shirt, jacket and blue jeans.

Louis stands up and brushes himself off. He turns around, looking for any clues as to where he was. He spots a rushing river and stumbles towards it, bending down to scoop the water from the river into his hands and sips it. The water was cool and sweet, refreshing his parched throat.

He continues to turn around, looking for any clue at all as to where he was. The forest itself was largely unfamiliar. He didn't even recognize the trees, they were not common to his area. A loud rustling in one of the low bushes sounds to the right of where he was standing on the river bank. He bends to pick up a large rock from the river bank as a large, brown rabbit hops out of the bush, stopping to regard him and clean its whiskers before it hops away, disappearing into the dense greenery.

A gut feeling told Louis to stay close to the river, he wasn't really sure why though, he had zero survivalist training and hated to even go camping. As he was looking around his surroundings more, looking for a way to cross the river without getting totally soaked, the left pocket of his jacket begins ringing. He jams his hand into his pocket and pulls out a small, white phone. The display name says "Amanda" and he rushes to answer the call, his thumb slipping off of the phone in his panicked state. Finally, he is able to answer the phone.

"Hello?" He says into the phone.

"Hello, Mr. Montriche. Listen carefully to everything that I have to tell you. Any decision you make henceforth could be life or death for you," says a sweet, feminine voice filtering through the phone and into his ear. Sweat begins to bead at the top of his forehead as the voice brings back a blinding, flashing memory of the night before...

©L. Young, 2024