Rundown
All panhandlers ask for dimes—but this one had a very special purpose!
The subway train announced its arrival with a screech of grating steel. The man was shoved from the car onto the platform by the eight p.m. crowd. The noise and the abrupt handling of his body brought him to awareness.
Not that he had been asleep or unconscious. Although he might have been. He didn't know for sure.
He found it hard to concentrate, but soon a sign over the platform came into focus:
WESTBORO
It meant nothing to him. The second thing he became aware of did.
Another train had replaced his, and directly in front of him was an army of people, dispassionate towards everything but its one objective—to get on.
They came at him all at once, forming a pushing, elbowing, cursing, jarring mass of humanity. He glanced off one to collide with another. He escaped the punishment by a lunge to one side which ended with a crash to the cold cement floor.
He regained some semblance of steadiness on his feet and looked at the sign. It was still Westboro. It still meant nothing to him.
He was lost.
What was worse, he couldn't remember where he was lost from .
He turned to walk, he didn't know exactly where, when he smashed into a little boy eating an apple.