The people sneer at the leper, and throw stones from time to time, and sometimes coins. He remembers when he used to be a man, an ordinary man, and he threw things at a leper or two back then. He tries to think of that now. Then the remonstrance of God was a secret dread, something he could conspire against, something he might yet evade.
Lately there is a rumor afoot, a fevered dream of lepers, of a power and good will that can restore the purity of the body. Even now it walks somewhere in the city, and they try to seek it out; who could stand to be the last leper lost before all the world is forgiven?
But it's hard for a leper to push his way through a crowd, hard to face the people of the city, who every one of them vie for the same absolution, and who still shower stones on the damned. They fear him, he knows this. They hate his begging, his ugliness, the noise and inconvenience of him, his survival. But most of all they hate him for the tidings he bears written on his body, word death is real, it is already come, and for the way the leper raises his failing hand to Jesus, clamoring for the touch that could save him.
Christine, Dreaming