All he could hear was the clicking of heels, the squeaking of shoes on the rough concrete that shaved the skin off the pads of his fingers when he rubbed along the sidewalk. Underneath the sound of people walking was the miserable drone of car horns, and the rumble of engines of buses and trucks on the street. The air was stale and suffocating with the toxins spewing from the back of cabs and cars.

He was wrapped in blanket after blanket, given to him by charity after charity, as he huddled in the crevice of some odd building somewhere in the city. He couldn’t tell you what building it was or what street it was on. He couldn’t even tell you what borough it was in. He had long since forgotten.

Underneath the blankets, he was wrapped in a thin layer of newspaper that had been slowly deteriorating since the day he obtained them, a day that was long ago, forgotten by now. And, underneath the periodical blanket, skin that was covered with grime, filth and dirt. He hadn’t touched soap and water in years, decades, centuries, millenniums. His nails were black. The bottom of his feet were covered in ash and infected blisters, sores and cuts. His long tangled, knotted hair was dark at the tips, but gray at the roots. In his callused hands, he held an empty, broken Styrofoam coffee cup.

Pedestrians looked down on him with disgust. He was the trash they had peeled off the bottom of their brand-ne custom-made shoes that they threw aside and left to rot. He was worthless, not worthy of their spare change or a second of their precious busy lives. So he stayed there, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, millennium after millennium, waiting. Waiting for this stagnant hellish life to change, end.

He had some change that was given to him by the occasional immaculate soul that stopped long enough to drop a penny into his cup. It was probably enough to buy something to eat or drink, but he couldn’t tell how much exactly. He couldn’t even find a store or café to buy something to eat, even if he tried. He was hungry. He was homeless. He was blind.