"Leave your troubles behind man, 15 creds!"
I turned the music up, drowning out the dealer's voice. It was an old tune, but apt for the situation.
🎵I don’t wanna drown no more
Sick of the same old people
The kind that will sell your soul
Trade it for a shining stone🎵
It'd been better, back before all the troubles started. Businesses closing, economies tanking, governments fighting. Half the folks I'd known who were doing well before were just like me, now. Living day to day, scrounging and getting by on whatever scraps of goodwill and hard work you could find.
Or, they turned to the pushers, hawking their poison from every balcony and street corner as far as the eyes could see. A problem for every solution and a solution for every problem.
A skinny man in a red jacket waved and pointed at my headphones. "I just wanna talk man!"
I knew what he wanted to say. Turn the music louder.
🎵Keep the wolves from the door
I hear them scratching like I don’t know better🎵
He flipped me the middle finger as I ignored him. As he'd done every day this week. As he would do every day next week, and the week after that... until one of us wasn't here anymore.
There weren't many ways out of the camp. It had been a city once, but when everything started to topple so too did the illusion of order. Mass evictions as landlords tried their best to keep themselves afloat pushed people onto the streets and then the government of the time collapsed and banks went under and... well, wouldn't ya know it, the same landlords that pushed everyone out were out themselves. Now nobody owned anything you couldn't hold onto by force. Which, thankfully, wasn't necessary very often. We'd gone from order to chaos and eventually met somewhere in the middle.
The government promised a return to our illustrious past but of course, that came with strings.
"Sign up! Join the Forces today! Clean water, daily meals, and a cot of your own!" The recruiters hawked the same corners as the dealers, two sides to the same twisted coin. Each selling a different version of 'don't worry, it'll be okay'. I had my own way of dealing with things and focused on the music.
🎵I don’t wanna go back home
Too many staring faces
Wishing they could drag me down
Waiting to pull me under🎵
Jobs are few in the camps, most everything happened Outside, and the only way to get there was through a government channel which all required military service. If you were lucky, you might work in the factories after fighting whoever it was we were mad at this month. But, camp folks still have needs - things the government handouts just don't keep up with.
I adjusted the sack on my shoulder, spotting the first picking of the day down an alley. Shards of glass from a bottle someone had carelessly broken. Gingerly, I picked up every piece larger than my fingernail and dropped it into the bag. It didn't promise clean water, meals, or a safe spot to sleep, nor did it promise blissful oblivion... but at least I was working for myself with my own two hands. Sell the glass to the blowers for melting and remaking. Cardboard to the pulpers. Rags to the paper-makers. It wouldn't be fair to call them businesses and businessmen, but left to themselves folks will always produce some kind of industry. In a walled city of destitutes or floating fortresses of the elites, it didn't matter. People, end of the day, were people.
🎵Friends of mine are only in it for the free lunch
See us we only deal with the real stuff brother
Cos all that glitters ain’t gold bruv
I can hear the wolves outside the door but money can’t buy my soul, no🎵
Hours later I passed the same dealer, still hawking his poison from the corner. "Don't sell me a dog, mate" I say without making eye contact as I turn the music up again.
Scraps and garbage paid for another meal, and another bit of water, and surely they'd do the same tomorrow. That was life, in the camp.
Image: The Bone-Grubber, after a daguerreotype by Richard Beard, illustration from London Labour and London Poor by Henry Mayhew, pub. 1862 (litho) by English School, (19th century); Private Collection; English, out of copyright
Song lyrics are from Wolves by Rag'n'Bone Man: 
and are used within the scope of Fair Use guidelines.
Join the Worldbuilding Community!