Eric Straton

“Get those figures for me by five-o’clock tonight Dave or you’re fucking fired,” Eric Straton yelled into his black iPhone, as he sat uncomfortably in the rear seat of the CTA car. Straton, a 51 year old man with wiry graying hair, born in Chicago 35 years ago, looked uneasy as he hastily placed his phone in the pocket of his recently pressed black suit. Working as a hedge fund director for Morgan Stanley, Eric Straton finds that he is not living the life he once dreamed to be a ton of money handed to him on a silver platter. He is responsible for billions of dollars of his company’s investors’ money, and one mistake can literally cost him his life.

Having gone through an undergraduate program at The University of Illinois in economics and achieving a MBA, Eric has worked very hard to attain his position of power. Yet during almost every day of his life, he is constantly depressed. He doesn’t have any time to spend with his two children, Ben and Sarah, nor does he ever have a moment to be intimate with his faithful wife, Rachel. All he thinks about are economic figures and profit margins. Gone are the days of the true love he felt when Ben was born, or when he first met Rachel. His phone rings again and he feels a tug in his gut of yet another call of bad news due to the recent economic downturn. He clears his head of all emotion and trudges onward, miserable and alone.