Close third person.  Tone: journalistic.  Mood: dread/loss.

The trains came in like giant caterpillars and exploded, their guts spilling out through their pores onto the platform and scuttling away until the body was left hollow and lifeless, all skeleton and no flesh.  Jonah was one of the last to leave.  He watched the train’s crew emerge from their cubbies, disoriented like post coma patients in a hospital.  He heaved his bag onto his shoulder and exited out into the cement damp of the platform, gulping the November air like a drowning man, letting it fill his lungs until he felt bloated with breathing.  He did not know where he was, exactly.  He had found a phone number scribbled on a torn off scrap tucked into the back of his address book, and had caught a train thinking that maybe he would call the number when he got there.  Now he wasn’t so sure about his plan.  What if nobody picked up?  What if the person who picked up didn’t know who he was?

He walked into the departure hall and paused by the ticket teller’s window.  None of the other passengers had stayed around, so the hall was empty except for the few homeless who seemed to be unaware of each other, or of him.  The teller behind the barred window was deep into a book.  A tiny bit of spittle had collected at the edge of his mouth and his tongue idly glided across his lips trying to find it.  He clung to the edge of the book with his hands as though it might blow away in a sudden gust of wind.

“Excuse me” someone said, in Czech, and Jonah felt a flutter at his neck.  He spun around, too quickly, in time to see an old man tumble into one of the marble benches behind him.  His skin was taught and thin like paper.  Jonah didn’t know any Czech, but he reached over to try and grasp the old man by the elbow to help get him back on his feet.  The old man shrugged him off.  He wrestled his body to its feet, and walked past Jonah.  His flannel shirt gathered in folds between his shoulder-blades.