Bloody Magic!

I knew it was trouble. I felt it when I was in that square and I knew better than to stay there but that damn crowd just had to keep me trapped in there with them. Unbelievable.

That aside, it’s been over two weeks since I’ve arrived on the streets of this place and things have been a bit of a rollercoaster.

First off, sleeping up that tree on the edge of civilization was bloody madness! It took three days for me to come down from whatever magic the witch had cast and to come back to my senses and realise what was happening.

Apparently, whatever that witch cast back in the square was a lot more dangerous than it seemed. That’s because for that entire time, I wandered around the city, taking in the sights, walking among the people and having a jolly old time.

So to sum up. I had been walking around in an unknown society with laws and customs I didn’t know, having no grasp at all of the language and spending my nights in the wilderness where whatever dangerous wildlife, poisonous plants, insects not to mention unknown magical diseases were lurking.

When I finally snapped out of it and my thought processing capacity came back to normal, I came to the unhappy conclusion that I must have been enchanted with some sort of magically induced drug trip, that had me happy as a clam and without worries and concerns for three days straight. Leaving me to face the dangers of this new world completely unwary and with no reservations.

No matter what, from now on, I am staying away from anyone who even remotely seems magical.

Magic.

Is.

Dangerous!

But, I had to admit though, there was one benefit to the whole experience. During my three day spell trip, hunger and thirst hadn’t bothered me at all. Plus, I hadn’t collapsed from a lack of sustenance so I managed to leave my supplies untouched for a while giving me some more leeway to figure things out.

From that point on however, things took a more serious turn as I began to familiarise myself with living in this city.

Given my skill set, work experience and education level, in the face of dire circumstances I could find myself somewhere to take refuge and take stock, all the while I became accustomed to the situation I found myself in - if back on Earth.

Here however, with the previous advantages null and void, plus my complete ignorance of the local language and not to mention the lack of usable funds, I have found myself in the position most suitable in conjunction with my circumstances.

I’m a bum.

No other way to put it. I’m jobless, I live on the street and I scrounge food from bins at night and soon, I feel like I’m going to have to resort to my final option with the rest of the lowest of the low here.

I tried to fight it but this was just how I was going to end up here I think. It escalated pretty quickly actually.

I had had the good sense to ration my food and water from the beginning but there is only so long so much food can last and it took only a week until it had all disappeared. From that point on, it was scavenging through the city's leftovers. But that is far from a sustainable source of food. The only easy part was that it was all gathered in one place.

It seems the slums were where they were for a reason. Despite the lower degree of civilization here their waste disposal is fairly successful. All bits of rubbish were put into big bins at the ends of streets that, when full, were picked up by some sort of garbage men, and escorted through the slums to be dumped in a big pile next to the river on the edge of town.

The slum side of town.

And so, I had moved out of my little tree residence and had moved in with the rest of this society’s unfortunates, within the outskirts of the dump, scrounging whatever food scrapes and any other possibly useful material I can find.

By this point there were no other options. Hunger will trump most other arguments against living in a garbage dump if there is some food available and having been living rough for over a week, you can make adjustments if necessary. But of course, even more problems arrived with this new change in lifestyle.

It was nerve wracking of course, integrating into a homeless society, especially one you can’t communicate with, but I soon found a spot to settle down away from others where I could get in quick to the new garbage arrivals. It was simple really, just wait for the bins to come in and then move in fast when the garbage men go away.

One thing I will say about the food here, even the leftovers mixed in with the other garbage, is that it’s delicious.

It is the one true upside to this world that I have found so far, the food is by far so much better. It’s tastier, it fills you up faster and you don’t feel as hungry between meals so you can last longer between meals. An especially important factor for me currently as I scavenge for edible food scraps amongst the other rubbish.

But there’s only so much food that can come in and though I have been living well until just recently and I have some more weight and height to my body compared to everyone else, even at the bottom rungs of society, people band together.

So it was, that it wasn’t long before the garbage dump natives banded together to push back at this interloper who was eating from their source of food.

It happened after I had been there for just about a week. By now, I’m almost properly homeless; I’m dirty, I smell and though my clothes are still in good condition they are stained and wrinkled as they hang on my body. But everyone else at the dump, they’ve been like this for years, and so when the bins came in yesterday they made a show of force.

After the garbage men left, all the others swarmed up much faster than usual and started sorting through the rubbish. I soon began to walk over but before I could join them they all turned to me.

I don’t know if you’ve been stared down by 30 odd hungry, tired and dirty tough looking bastards but it’s not easy and the look in their eyes made it clear what they thought of me.

If I tried to protest their decision too, it was clear that they were going to answer any protest I made with their fists.

Talking could have been an option, but I can’t talk to them. Fighting could have been an option too, to win their respect and be accepted, but I’m no fighter, especially against 30 odd of them. So I retreated away, my presence there clearly unwanted.

I spent some time going around to different dumping points but apparently word had spread among different groups and the hundreds of people living in the dump had reached a consensus that they did not approve of this interloper.

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Today is the day I’ve run out of options after two weeks in this new city, in this new world.

I can’t get any more food at the dump and my hunger has already become unbearable. I can still get water to drink in the river, which I have been praying is relatively clean, but that isn’t going to hold off the pain in my stomach anymore.

So there is only one option left. I’m going to have to go where most of the homeless who are too weak to fight it out in the dump are.

Tomorrow I go down to the docks.

Tomorrow, I will go begging.