The worm wiggling in the Big Apple

You see them on every street. Actually, you only see them your first two days in the city; soon afterwards, your eyes are open, but you see nothing, them included. At the pace you carry on day three, after you have been submersed in the unnecessarily fast culture and have risen up looking more like the inhabitants, it's no surprise that everything else is a blur around you.

Yes, I too race through the massive human traffic at 6pm towards my bus, eagerly looking forward to that wide soft seat that is barely reclined even though it has the capabilities because the drudges of the city will start a fit "your chair is on my knee" they'll cry. In the bus, I experience serenity, peace and quiet...till a phone breaks the silence...

The worm:
At first sight, you see an extremely dirty looking man or woman, this is your first two days in the city, quickly you dart to the other side. You don't make it there because the human traffic does not permit, but you do get a solid foot away.

See, in the city you're always sprinting somewhere; to your 3 o'clock meeting, that you will arrive to fifteen minutes early, but so what?, to Ginger House where there's always a waiting line, and since there's always one, you can never get there too early or late, oh and you have nothing waiting on your desk, but still you sprint, to catch your train home, it comes every 10 mins, no particular schedule, it just comes and yet you sprint...

They're no longer human, well not a hundred percent. Their legs resemble tree logs; the texture and size. Short stumpy logs with dead skin the color of white chalk scattered over a dark brown base. An arch of green mold over each eye lid, on what looks to be where the eye brows used to be. Hair, either a massive confusion of dirty hide or a scanty wet rag over the face. They drag their legs behind their slowly decaying bodies when moving from one place to the other. They're the only ones who don't appear to be in a hurry. A sit here or there for an hour is not unusual.
One can't help but wonder where the destination is when they're moving. Surely if they had a place to go they wouldn't look like this. Yet when they are sitting in the same spot for a while, one wonders again "what next?" and food? What will they eat? Yet these beings exist in the financial capital of the world, moving in an exaggerated slow motion while the brokers, analysts, delivery boys, construction workers, yellow cab drivers, plaque holders and their types race around them with a speed so swift that the invisible, the homeless of the city spin in a defeated daze like ghosts wandering in a world that is not theirs.
Such is the worm wiggling in the Big Apple. It is disgusting, but no one sees it. The shiny red coat of the Apple is too alluring to most. It's lovers greedily take big giant bites without a care for what else is in it.

"Everyone in the city makes six figures now" except for that man or woman who cannot buy a dollar meal at McDonalds.