Malachim
"You want to know." A voice began again, this one more measured and colder. It was not menacing, but much deeper, much more articulate. "I can tell you."
"Then tell me." Lawrence replied, no longer afraid of the outcome. It had felt like an eternity since another voice had graced the bus. Kutner was tired of the bus. He had walked every surface of it. He had sat in every seat.
"Tell me why I should."
"Why would you offer if you won't?"
"I can only give you answers, not questions. I can ask you no questions. I need no answers. I am here only as an answer. That is my purpose. I am a messenger."
"Fine, then."
"I am obliged to only answer. Not to offer." The angel appeared before Lawrence, clothed in blue. There was the eye of a peacock feather pinned onto the lapel of the angel's suit coat. He stood strongly, with a matching jaw that was clenched when he was not speaking. The Dark gray of his hair made him look distinguished, and reminded the doctor of an old colleague that he'd admired in his life. The thought was reinforced by the blue of the messenger's eyes.
"What's your name?"
"I am known as a Malachim, not by a name."
"Do you wish you had a name?" Lawrence noted his skill at this game.
"No." The angel replied tersely.
Lawrence looked deeper into the rims of the angel's irises. "What's going to happen to me?"
"I only respond to questions with answers of which I am certain."
"Am I going to stay on this bus for the rest of eternity?"
"No."
"How do you become an angel?"
"I deserved my title by telling the truth."
"Did you ever tell a lie?"
"Yes."
Lawrence was curious to the nature of the lie, but he was more concerned with his future than the Malachim's personal life. "Can you tell lies now?"
"Yes."
"Will you tell me a lie?"
"No."
"That's a bonus." Kutner said, smiling for the first time since his death. The angel did not reply. It took a moment for Lawrence to realize it was because he was not bound to a statement. "I am not an angel, am I?"
"No." The Malachim replied.
"Does God exist?"
"That is not for me to decide for you."
"What?"
"That is not for me to decide for you."
"No, I mean, can you rephrase that?"
"I am not meant to make that decision for you."
The consistencies of the angel's argument were frustrating. Lawrence knew the option of losing his patience was very really happening. "Is this Heaven? Is this Hell? Am I in Limbo? What's going on here?"
The angel smirked at the cunning of his own joke. "No. No. No. You are waiting."
"Are you supposed to be helping me?" Lawrence asked, his voice rising and speech quickening.
"No." The angel answered. "I am leaving." He blinked and as fast as he had come, without the light Amber had left behind, he was absent.
Lawrence took another stab at waiting, and collapsed into the bus seat behind him. He took a disliking to the Malachim. What was the point of that? He questioned, hoping, in vain, someone else would come to rescue him from the feeling of aloneness that he's been trying to escape with the bullet. If I had known death would have been worse than living in a miserable life, I would have hesitated.