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. Continue reading
Jeremy Hurd 