At 6:30 AM an angel boarded the 23. Already seated were six others and of course the bus driver. None of them mistook the angel for a costume, not even for a second; they wouldn’t be able to tell you why, wouldn’t even really be able to describe the angel to you. All they really remembered afterwards was blinding light and bright red feathers.

The angel scanned a bus card and sat down on one of those fold-out, wheelchair-priority seats, close to the door. Tyrone, who was sitting closest to it, scooted a little to the left but figured moving would be rude and might get him a one-way ticket to hell. Laila, seated near the front, was rapidly googling angels. She hit the Wikipedia page and quickly realized she was out of her depth. Ann — a whole thirteen years old, vampire-pale and currently dressed in a shirt with hand-drawn pentagrams — began to get up out of her seat. She was glared back into it by Gertrude from three rows over, who did not want to see a preteen’s soul get damned this early in the morning. Seated in the row across from her was Tetsuo, who was trying to decide if those new meds were worth it. In the back, Min’s hand twitched toward her phone and she resolutely told herself not to take a picture.

The angel got off after six stops, checking out its card and leaving without thanking the bus driver. The doors closed, the bus drove away, and its passengers quickly lost sight of the angel.

“Anyone here religious?” asked Brandon, a bus driver who’d previously quite enjoyed his job.

“Uhm. I’m Buddhist? Somewhat?” Tetsuo piped up.

“Somewhat?”

“Ah, I was raised Buddhist, but I don’t practice.”

“Do they got angels in Buddhism?”

“I... don’t believe so.”

Brandon groaned. “Do we have any Abrahamic religious people here?”

Crickets.

“Muslim? Christian? Jewish?” No response. “Zoroastrian?”

“What is Zoroastrian?” asked Tyrone.

“Anyone mind if I pull the bus over?”

Everyone knew why he’d want to pull over, and nobody was eager to die in a car accident, so nobody protested when Brandon pulled up into the flight lane and turned off the engine. Immediately, he squeezed his eyes shut and hit his head against the steering wheel.

“If possible, I’d like it if we could start driving again in some fifteen minutes,” Gertrude requested mildly, tapping her finger against her cane. “I have a funeral to catch.”

Brandon leaned his head out of the little driver’s cabin to look at her. “Are you not Christian?” he asked. “Everyone was Christian back in the day, right?”

“Everyone except my parents. Contrarians, the two of them.”

Laila snorted. She climbed onto the chair and leaned her arms on the back. “Oh, I know the type.”

“Do I hear a shared suffering?”

“My dad’s an ex-Muslim and my mom ex-Christian. They’re straight-up anti-theists.”

“And you?”

“I think they’re being a bit dramatic about it all.”

“So none of us are religious?” asked Min, who felt like this was probably a puzzle piece, though she had no clue what the puzzle looked like.

“I’m a satanist!” Ann piped up.

Laila raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t those Nazis?”

“Fuck no. Or, yeah I guess, some satanists are Nazis, but not all of us are in the Church of Satan —”

“Why the hell was an angel on the bus?” Brandon demanded, tired of beating around the bush. Everyone went quiet.

“...Maybe he... she... the angel tired of flying?” Tetsuo offered hesitantly.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all of us are atheists,” Min said, before quickly adding, “Except for the kid.”

“Why would an angel take the bus with someone who worships their mortal enemy?” Laila wondered.

“That’s not what satanism is!” Ann exclaimed. “It is —”

“Whose funeral are you going to?” Tyrone asked Gertrude, desperately wanting to change the subject away from the angel, because he could not process this and refused to try.

“My sister’s,” she responded.

“My condolences.”

“None of that, she was a bitch.” Tyrone choked on his own spit and Gertrude smirked. “There’s a reason I didn’t ask that angel if she was in Heaven.”

“I can say hi to her when I go to Hell,” Ann offered.

“Hell probably isn’t even real,” said Laila.

“We did see an angel,” Min pointed out.

“It could’ve been a Boddhisattva,” Tetsuo suggested.

“You don’t actually believe that,” countered Min.

“I do not believe in God either.”

Min inclined her head in a ‘fair enough’ gesture.

“Do we still not believe in God?” asked Tyrone, accepting defeat.

“Nope.”

“Nuh-huh.”

“Can’t say I do.”

“I’ll consider it.”

Tetsuo had already given his answer, so everyone looked at Brandon.

“I don’t know?” he said, a tad hysterical. “You’re all taking this pretty damn well!”

Tetsuo shrugged his shoulders. “I recently started anti-psychotics,” he said, something he had been almost as ashamed of as the psychosis itself. But he was at most the fourth weirdest person in this bus — excluding the angel — so all of a sudden it didn’t seem like much of a secret. “I have seen weirder.”

“How do you know this isn’t some kinda collective hallucination or something?” asked Tyrone.

“The same way you do, I assume.”

Tyrone hid his face in his hands. “I was hoping that was just me,” he muttered. “Psychosis would be easier to solve.”

“Hear, hear,” said Brandon, raising his hand as if making a toast.

“Counterpoint: the doctors are white,” said Laila.

Tyrone groaned. “How the hell am I supposed to fly a plane like this?”

“A plane?” Brandon exclaimed, turning around to look at Tyrone with the utmost sympathy. “I’m so sorry. And I thought a bus was bad.”

“At least you can park it.”

“Why would an angel have a bus card?” Min wondered out loud, cutting through the conversation.

“Maybe they stole it?” suggested Ann.

“Isn’t that a sin?” asked Laila.

“God’s a massive hypocrite tyrant so there’s probably some loophole for angels,” Ann answered, nodding to herself, satisfied with her train of logic. She was so smart.

“If so, why not simply fare evade?” countered Gertrude.

Ann deflated, and Gertrude smiled at her. “You’re not wrong about God being a hypocrite tyrant, though,” she said, and Ann instantly bloomed up again, giving Gertrude a beaming grin.

“If the angel has a bus card, does that mean they also have a bank account?” Min had been following her own train of logic and wasn’t liking its destination.

Brandon laughed. “Fuck, they might as well at this point.”

“I have a card but no bank account,” Ann offered.

“You have a youth card, those are wired to your parents’ account. Are you saying the angel’s card is wired to their parents’ too?”

“Wait, does that mean God has a bank account?” Laila interjected, giddy at the thought. “What bank do you think he’s with?”

“Aren’t there Christian banks?” asked Tetsuo. “One of those, if so.”

“Of which denomination, I wonder,” mused Gertrude, “Oh, I’d just love to know.”

“Looking to cause problems in the nursing home?” joked Laila.

“Obviously. It would be akin to a bomb.”

“My kinda woman!”

“Do I have to watch out for angels while flying?” mumbled Tyrone, who had not been paying attention to the conversation, too busy imagining an angel smacked into his window like a dead bird.

“It’s unlikely a plane could kill them,” offered Tetsuo.

Tyrone twisted in his seat to look at Tetsuo, an expression of relief on his face. “That actually helps a lot,” he admitted. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

A harsh beeping made half the bus jump.

“It’s been fifteen minutes,” Ann announced, waving her phone, timer visible.

Brandon hit his head against the steering wheel.

“Oh honey, you set a timer?” Gertrude seemed more surprised at this than she’d been at the angel.

“Of course,” Ann looked at her with utmost seriousness. “You need to be on time for your bitch sister’s funeral so you can spit on her casket.”

Laila burst out laughing, attempting to muffle it in her arm. Gertrude snorted and pointed at Ann. “That one’ll go far,” she announced to no-one in particular.

“Fine!” Brandon said. He slapped his hands onto the steering wheel and pushed himself upright. “We will schedule my mental breakdown for when I’m not on the clock.”

He started the bus back up and pulled onto the road. Tyrone seemed much calmer after talking to Tetsuo, and the two were now commiserating about layovers. Laila was on her phone, texting her parents with a shit-eating grin. Min in the back had taken out a little notebook and was fervently writing in it, frowning. Ann moved to sit next to Gertrude, cautiously at first, but soon she was excitedly explaining the demiurge while Gertrude listened with a surprising amount of interest. All of them got off at their own stops as normal, and then Brandon went home, as normal.

Still, the angel left a lasting impact on all their lives. The story was quite the hit at parties.