Matthew Hubbard

Just a little writing I’ve been working on. Not sure if I’m going to head in this direction, but I thought I’d share:

Presley was experiencing what every true-blooded American wanted. He was living—actually living—a scene from a movie. Of course, it was not the same type of scene for which most yearn. You see, Presley was at the height of a cinematic meltdown. Despite the fact Hollywood is known to widely exaggerate, they hit the nail on the head when portraying the loss of one’s grip. 

His palms were growing sweaty and his face clammy. Heartbeats shuddered to a painstakingly slow thump, each beat echoing against the hollowness he felt on the inside. The music muffled to a distant, dull roar in the background. His peripheral vision swam in and out of focus. Everything was in slow motion, or at least it felt that way to him. Little by little, his bated breath escaped from the vise-grip of his lungs as faces danced into his field of vision, each one glowing happy from the trip down memory lane.

Ten years? Has it really been ten years? He asked himself, his inner voice resounding through clenched teeth. 

He had blinked, and ten years had passed. He had blinked, and life had gone on without him. He had blinked, and he’d forgotten to live. Ten years. Nothing slaps you in the face and makes you realize the slippage of time like your ten year high school reunion.

What had he done with his life? Not a damn thing, that’s what. Of course, there was the debatable five years in college—or, as he told people, “four years or so” because he did not want to go into detail about how he drank away most of those formidable, academia years. 

But during those four years or so, he somehow earned himself a degree he didn’t give a rat’s ass about. He’d had no say in the way his life turned out. All Presley had to do was show up, and his father saw to the rest. 

Upon graduating from high school ten years ago, he had needn’t worry about his future; it was set in stone. Go to college. Get business degree. Graduate. Take over father’s company, Stone Enterprises, when his father retired. Easy as pie, as his mother liked to say. 

His past-self had reveled in not having any worries about the future, but his future—now present—self wished he would’ve had some qualms. Not being able to pick and choose his own path in life hadn’t granted him much of a life at all. 

And so, here he sat in a cheap, plastic chair at a table adorned with former classmates, all of which had evolved into actual, functioning adults. But not him. He was still the same privileged boy with two last names.

Presley Ryland was disguised as a man. At twenty-eight years old, he still relied on his family’s wealth to carry his weight. He didn’t know the meaning of “hard work.” His job at Stone Enterprises was about as phony as they could come. The title of Executive V.P. of Marketing Strategy and Business Analytics just screamed, “My father pulled this job out of his ass so he wouldn’t be faced with the repercussions of his son having legitimate responsibility.” He knew this for a fact because there was no such department for Marketing Strategy and Business Analytics; it was just him all alone on a top floor office looking out onto downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee, and all he had to do was just show up.