The Bus

Change, Refuge, Belief, and Decay; an Anthology

You’re sitting on the bus. It’s your usual Monday commute, bland and gray overhead. The same bland grayness is reflected in the familiar faces of the others on the bus, strangers you know only by habit. Even their polite smile-and-nods as you boarded were the same bland, gray smile-and-nod as the one you gave in return. The pull of custom is a powerful thing.

As you scroll Substack on your phone, you feel the bus slow. You hear the pneumatic hiss of the brakes, and the squeak of the door opening. You tear your eyes away from

D.W Dixon

’s newest tidbit from

The Steam Stack

, ready to serve up another helping of leftover manners. Your eyes graze over the newcomer’s face, and your heart drops into your ass.

Photo by lilartsy on Unsplash

Your eyes remain fixed, staring blatantly at the glowing face of the being boarding the bus, injecting the first blinding hues of radiant color into the otherwise drab and meaningless day.

Without quite realizing how, the shining stranger is suddenly beside you, taking the empty seat to your left. Closer, you can read an expression of quiet terror quivering in the edges of too-blue eyes, trembling along the pale pink lower lip, puckering the luminous being’s rich beige forehead.

“I see that you can see me.” The stranger’s breathy voice is quick, clear, and quiet. “Please. I need your help. I’m in terrible danger, and there’s no one else who knows I’m here.”

Your voice is thick and dry in your throat, like candy on carpet. “I see you. What…what help do you need?” Your eyes dart among the bored and uninteresting people sharing the bus. No one has noticed the beatific stranger. And no one appears to be noticing you.

In a soothing and melodic voice, the stranger tells you of their plight. A holy seeker, their spirit had wandered away from their body during a transcendent experience.

Their body, meanwhile, had been disturbed. It had awakened, and wandered off. This disturbance summoned the spirit back from the Astral realm, but without a body to return to, the spirit could not interact with physical objects. And unless this spirit was reunited with their body, they would be trapped just beyond the realm of the living, forever.

You listen patiently and feel yourself moved by this being’s plight. The thought of being trapped half in and half out of life, wandering and helpless forever… It’s nothing you’d wish on your worst enemy. “I’ll help you.”

They explain that they knew their body’s routine, and assume it would just go about its business, even without a spirit. This spirit just needs help overcoming the physical obstacles — doors and gates and other barriers — that are preventing them from reuniting with their body.

The bus you share is already heading that way.

Photo by Tom Wheatley on Unsplash

You and the stranger exit the bus at your usual stop. Applestone Cemetery, is only a block further along the road than you’re used to. You walk with the stranger beside you.

Your steps are muted on the wet concrete. The rain has stopped, and you notice the smell of autumn in the damp air. It has the sweet-sooty smell of rotting leaves and wood smoke. Breaking clouds reveal patches of sky the same shade of blue as the stranger’s eyes. Birdsong dances through the rustling trees.

The caretaker is just opening the cemetery gates when you arrive. He greets you good morning. “Good morning,” you return. Your voice matches the warm, small smile on your tired face.

You and the stranger make your way along the gravel lanes between ancient markers. They were cracked, crooked, disfigured with lichen, and defaced by time; the forgotten memorials of forgotten souls, decaying and disarranged.

In a far corner, overgrown with weeds and the skeletal stems of the spring’s wildflower blooms, you find an ancient tomb. It is carved of somber gray granite, and the door is hanging askew from age and ill repair.

With the bone-deep weariness manifested through ages of endless wandering, you and your restless spirit crawl through the angled opening at the bottom of the doorway and return to the blissful peace of eternal slumber.

Together.