SHADOW REIGN
When you ask around, people claim they no longer exist. The children of the sewers are just a legend, they say. But Chris stands before me, undeniably real. I met him above ground, in the park across from Bucharest’s main train station, Gara de Nord. Chris is one of thousands still living in the city's underground tunnels.
We’re in his “home-garden,” as he calls it, surrounded by low, heavy clouds. Nervous, he glances around constantly, wary of being seen. He notices the tattoos on my wrist, and I try to break the ice by sharing their meanings. I ask if his tattoos have stories too, but his arms aren’t adorned with ink; instead, they’re covered in scars. He explains how he made them with pieces of glass, trying to replace deep emotional pain with a more immediate, physical one. “Those wounds healed,” he says, “but the real pain always returned.”
At regular intervals, Chris inhales deeply from a bag swelling with Aurolac fumes—a potent solvent that numbs and destroys. It’s the cheapest and most accessible high, dulling hunger and cold while causing irreversible brain damage. “When I sniff this stuff, everything makes sense,” Chris says. “Objects move slower, colors brighten, and noise turns into music. I feel safe, like I belong.”
Chris’s childhood was a storm of trauma, his body and mind battered and scarred. He barely remembers it—or maybe he doesn’t want to. His eyes reveal what words cannot. After years shuffling through crowded orphanages, he ended up on the streets, part of a generation orphaned by families who couldn’t afford to keep them. Policies meant to boost the country’s workforce had swelled the population, but economic promises never materialized. Many like Chris sought warmth in the city’s disused sewers, a hidden world with its own rules.
Today, only a few NGOs, such as Parada, are left to help, offering food, school supplies, and aid. Once, thousands of street children roamed Bucharest; now, their numbers have dwindled, with most forced to the suburbs, becoming even more invisible. Chris remains underground, in one of the few central tunnels still inhabited, clinging to this shadowed existence.
