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Ambivalence Over Anarchy

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By Jord TuryPublished 6 years ago 6 min read
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On the darkest hour of twilight, Kings Cross station looks rather peaceful from a bird's eye view.

Travelers are rare and trains are as common as unicorn blood, leaving only vacant streets with little to no noise other than the howling winds passing through the cracks of the railroad tracks.

The homeless cup themselves away like flowerbeds, tucked in the dingiest corners of every shop window, holding out hands like crooked dinner plates.

The world does not move on these hours, and yet it still manages to breathe; inhaling life into the city one breath at a time.

Overhead lights flicker and make only fragments of the world visible; cobblestone pavements and the odd newspaper dancing along the curb side, floating like confetti.

The world still breathes at Kings Cross station, but only very slightly.

London overall is not a place to doddle when one does not have a motive for being up at such ridiculous hours; and yet there are still those who do it, other than the homeless and the castaways.

In the abyss of every blackened charcoal alley lies something waiting for you to tread astray; something as cruel as venom and as sinister as the reaper's sickle.

I speak now of the districts one should not cross unless they have perfectly good reason to; the boroughs of London left out of the papers in the morning; the pieces of the world left to whisper rather than to scream.

We’d never usually speak of these places unless we have to, and if you were looking for trouble then we’d be able to point you in the right direction alright.

Just shy of a mile up north lies a small place known to us as Camden Town; the piece of the puzzle that breathes endlessly through the night until dawn.

Camden is a colourful place, let me tell you that; packed to the brim with the necessities you require to get by on the rough.

In the day you’ll see every corner plastered with market stalls, fluorescent banquets, and fruitful buskers, all thriving to make Camden the most popular town to visit for the outsiders; the pamphlet packers, the dirt, the tourists.

Every penny, every five pound note that flows through the veins of Camden comes purely from the snapshot twatsacks that flock through the streets like cattle; throwing their hard earned cash about like grain in a field.

Locals are treated like slaves to a trade; pushed about like herds of sheep to a bucket of grape water; all under the sick and twisted strings of the tourist.

Endless wind up cameras snapping photos of the overhanging Camden Lock Bridgeway and the quirky stalls that ran ruthlessly through the bulging veins of the back alleys.

Laughter and foreign lingos all spoken like a cough to a splutter; vile and grim.

Herds of sheep gather left, right and centre each and every day; trading stories and acting a part of something much bigger than life itself.

All the while we sit behind our smiles and we keep quiet, knowing full well who they are and what they really stand for.

It is they who dance beneath the strings during the day, but it is another who controls them during the night.

During the sunlit hours you’d barely bat an eyelid at Camden Town, not daring to think twice about the fuel that’s very well injected into the underground society.

And yet the night portrays another story; a more pale and murky tale that none choose to speak about unless provoked.

The tourists know nothing of this parallel universe known to us as the underground, and that’s the way it was kept for decades.

Camden Town has a very dark secret, and if you’re unlucky enough to witness it you’d be considered either dead or stupid.

Once the lights extinguishes and the reckless flock onto the last train home; the revolution comes out to play.

Smiling from ear to ear the underground ignites at dusk, and from the embers emerges the world known to us as the playground skirmish.

A whole world opens up once the tourists evaporate, and that’s the time nobody would want to be lingering in unforgiving territory.

The underground world of punk rockers, meth dealers, and dodgy watch salesmen; all swarming together to create the society we came to know and love, almost like a family; a family that doesn’t like outsiders who stray too far away from their warm and comfy bedsheets.

Women with smudged lipstick stains and watery liquid liner eyelids roam the streets scrapping for pennies and needles.

These are the kind of people we’ll happily call our sisters, and whoever dare defile them wouldn’t have the happiest of fairy tale endings.

Camden isn’t a happy-go-lucky town fuelled from cheesy grins and loveable irises, I’ll tell you that.

It’s a hole that if you chose to descend into, the ladder heading back north would soon crumble before you and cut off your escape in mere seconds.

You could say that once you inject yourself through the teat of what is modern society, there is no turning back to normality and the profanity of living life under the slavers hands.

You live by the underground, and you become one with the underground, everything else comes next to nothing.

You live here, you breathe here, you sleep here, you eat here, you fuck here, and you die here.

Camden becomes your home; the heroin coursing through your bloodstream and bringing you to life each and every night.

Of course, every place has its dark history and rough edges; but Camden tells a different story.

To some it is a cesspit for the broken, and yet others see it as an escape from reality.

We see it as home, and there’s nothing more we can say about that.

The underground is not one to be messed with, and chances are if you lived through a night out here on the streets of Camden Lock, you’ll be eager to run away back to your parents before sunrise.

It isn’t for the faint hearted; it’s for the ones that know pain and feel oppression press upon them every waking moment of every single day.

It is a place for the outcasts; the shattered souls that were torn up and spat out through gritted teeth of the impeccable ones.

This is no place for pish posh totty folk, and it never will be.

And so that is why I asked myself on one standard Thursday night, pushed against a wall looking through the filter of my cigarette: “Who is this man approaching through the alley of Camden Lock, and why is he treading these dangerous waters at this hour?”

His arms were shrivelled and shoved deep into his hooded pockets, shedding off the impression that he had something to hide beneath the cotton of his designer outfit.

With a flat cap tilted low enough to shield the identity of his drooping eyes, he approached with caution, but holding on to a small segment of confidence in his heart.

His lips trembled and his footing swerved diagonally from one curb to the next, zig-zagging like a junkie hallucinating a pinball machine.

I already knew he wasn’t from round here. I could tell in a matter of moments.

Call it intuition, call it a guess; but deep down I knew he wasn’t a local, even if he did portray himself as one of us.

I could see straight through the bastard; what with his brushed off shoulders and charcoal black polished shoes.

The way he breathed, the way he walked, the way he came off and oozed utter desperation like an egomaniac searching for a compliment – I just didn’t like it.

So as he approached me that one night; I just wanted to know whether he knew or not.

Was he really aware of the waters he was treading and how deep they were in comparison to his tiny, flaccid armbands?

More importantly, the question everybody was asking themselves on that night; was he prepared to deal with the consequences of sinking further than he could dive?

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About the Creator

Jord Tury

Just a regular guy living in the West Midlands, UK.

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