Even the chattering teenage girls pause in their gossip as he makes his careful way up the car. No one needs the sign he holds up that reads “victim of acid attack” to know: he is flesh dissolved and remade into new shapes, stretched stiff and taut over a brittle scaffold of bones.
The shadow of shocked silence that proceeds and follows the sight of him makes his muffled request for spare change stand out like a shout.
He moves between the cars to the next, and the girls restart their conversation tentatively, then with more vigor, like birds beginning to sing again after a clap of thunder fades in the distance.
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