Plague of Euphoria 1.x

From the desk of the Editor-in-chief.

Welcome, Readers, to the 551st monthly installment of the ongoing saga known as ACTUAL magazine. We thank you for reading and for making us the foremost publication in the world of fashion. The issue you are holding in your hand right now has been a long time in the making and we’re very glad to have you be a part of it. It’s the beginning of a new chapter in our story. A shift in tone. A changing of the guard to the next generation.

We’ve settled in to our new headquarters in the Media district of lower Blackheath. The city of Essex is fast becoming the world’s premier fashion destination and in order to best keep our finger on the pulse, we had to move on from our cherished beginnings on the golden coast and head to the jewel of the eastern seaboard. Much of our family could not make it with us. Some of them made a choice to leave us. But most, in the interest of full disclosure, had to be let go due to creative differences. We wish them luck.

The halls of our new east coast offices are filled with fresh faces. We have a new creative core of our team comprised of young, remarkably talented geniuses who will lead fashion into the next era with what they show us within the pages of this publication. Photographers, writers, experts, designers, artists of all stripes. Out with the old, in with the new. The whole world is watching. All eyes are on ACTUAL. And we are ready.

Plague of Euphoria 1.1

Snow fell in a blanketing white out of freezing ashes from the black abyss that wrapped itself around the world that night. Black and white were the only options down to the details, leaving no room for nuance or complexity. Only blunt questions that came with answers too bleak, detached and chilling to think about asking another. The blue lights marking emergency phones, the green of a traffic light in the distance, the red brake lights of cars, the paranoid yellow of the lights lining the walkway. Black and white. Everything only black and white. And nothing else.

The campus of Stapleton University was deserted. It was a weeknight. Getting late. Midterms were going on. The main quad, referred to by students as the Front Lawn, seemed to sprawl outward from the main library, especially that night, forever. The iconic library building, on the cover of all Stapleton brochures, quickly faded into nothing in the immediate past. And walkways of the vast Front Lawn offered no attainable future.

Valerie Bristol was walking home that evening in a black and white present with no resolution.