Tuesday People

**TUESDAY PEOPLE**

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I woke up floating three inches above my mattress.

At first I thought it was a dream. Then I rolled over and hovered off the edge like a poorly rendered video game character. That’s when I screamed.

I screamed, dropped, thudded onto the hardwood, and my downstairs neighbor—Margot, who once tried to convert me to something called "oxygenic faith"—banged on her ceiling.

So. Not a dream.

---

Let me back up. My name’s Eli. I’m thirty-four, I stock vending machines across four counties, and up until this morning, I thought superpowers were for people in movies, or who died tragically at fifteen and came back as ghosts with unfinished business.

Me? I was just a guy with back problems and a barely-functioning coffee maker.

But there I was: floating.

Hovering, levitating, drifting. I could *will* myself up or down like a lazy balloon. With practice, I even managed to sit cross-legged two feet above the living room carpet like some Zen monk who’d just discovered THC.

Then the *other* things started.

I could hear the neighbors arguing three floors down. I heard the click of every light switch in the building. I could tell which pigeons outside were sick. Their heartbeats sounded different.

My eyes changed too. Everything was… brighter. Sharper.

I could see the graffiti on a water tower seven blocks away. I could read texts on people’s phones through their apartment windows, if I wanted to. I didn’t, but the fact that I *could* made me feel like the world had suddenly dropped its guard.

By 9 a.m., I’d stopped trying to rationalize it.

This wasn’t caffeine. Or psychosis. Or a brain tumor. This was something else. Something bigger.

I called out of work using the classic “diarrhea” excuse—no one asks follow-ups—and sat on my fire escape for the first time in years. Just breathing. Just watching.

That’s when I saw the man trying to jump.

---

He was standing on the edge of the Union Avenue overpass. Cars rushed beneath him like bullets in a trench. His suit was rumpled, his tie was off. He looked like a man who had already decided.

And I—floaty, freaked out, freshly aware of every human heartbeat in a ten-mile radius—couldn’t *not* act.

I launched.

Just… went. Shot across the street, barefoot, still in pajama pants, sailing like a goddamn ghost over a sea of honking traffic.

By the time I reached the overpass, he’d already started leaning.

I didn’t think. I grabbed his wrist mid-fall and *hauled* him back like a kite in a storm.

He collapsed, sobbing. I stayed floating. People stared.

Phones came out.

A woman gasped, “Did you see that? He flew.”

I didn’t say anything. I just nodded to the man—who now held my hand like a life raft—and I whispered, *“You’re not alone, okay? Whatever it is. You’re not alone.”*

Then I took off. Into the clouds.

---

By noon, I’d been tweeted, TikTok’d, and theorized by Reddit.

The “Floating Man of Flatbush.”

Some thought it was viral marketing. Others said it was a hoax or a drone or a new military prototype. One guy said I was the second coming of Jesus. (His comment had over 2,000 likes.)

I didn’t want any of it.

I just wanted to understand what was happening to me—and why.

I tried flying high to clear my head. Somewhere above Prospect Park, I closed my eyes and just… drifted. Up there, the city didn’t sound so broken. Just buzz and hum and wind.

Then something happened.

It was like… a pressure in my skull. A *ping*. Like a radar lock. I *knew* something was wrong, miles away. I could feel pain, violence, *intent*.

I turned.

A robbery. A man in a ski mask pulling a gun at a liquor store near Eastern Parkway. I could feel the fear of the clerk. The anger of the man with the gun. The chaos about to unfold like a rubber band snapping.

And I *moved*.

Not just fast. Instant. Like the world blinked and I was already there.

I stood between them before the man could fire.

He shouted. He aimed.

And the bullet—when it came—just… stopped. Mid-air. Hovering like a bee.

The clerk fainted.

I plucked the bullet from the air and crushed it in my palm. No words. Just silence. The man dropped the gun and ran.

I let him. I wasn’t a cop.

---

By 2 p.m., I’d stopped three muggings, one hit-and-run, and helped a lost five-year-old reunite with her frantic grandmother near the subway.

People were talking about me like I was a symbol. A myth in real-time.

I didn’t want to be a symbol. I didn’t want to be *anything* but anonymous. But I couldn’t ignore the pull. The pain. The constant quiet chorus of bad things about to happen.

It was like standing in the middle of a storm and knowing which tree was about to fall.

By 4 p.m., I was exhausted.

Powers or not, I was still human. I still needed food. Water. A *minute*.

I landed on the roof of a closed public library and just lay there, watching a pigeon poop on a bronze bust of Susan B. Anthony.

---

Then she showed up.

Not the pigeon. The girl. Woman. Person? I don’t know.

She didn’t fly. She just *was* there. Sitting cross-legged beside me on the roof like she'd been waiting the whole time.

“You’re leaking,” she said.

I blinked. “What?”

She pointed to my eyes. I was crying. Didn’t even notice.

She wore a hoodie, army boots, and no visible expression. She looked like someone who’d been up for days reading every conspiracy forum and still had questions.

“You’re not the first,” she said.

I sat up. “What are you talking about?”

She shrugged. “Tuesday people. That’s what we call you. You wake up changed. Powers, visions, whatever. Always on a Tuesday. Always random.”

I stared.

“How do you know that?”

“Because I was Monday,” she said.

---

Her name was Kenzie. She could phase through walls. Had been able to for almost two years. Said it happened after a freak lightning storm in Topeka. One minute she was dead asleep. Next minute, she sank through her bed and woke up in the janitor’s closet of the apartment building below.

“Only rule,” she said, tossing me a half-melted granola bar, “is you don’t go big. You help where you can, keep your head down, and never, *ever*, let them find you.”

I stared at her. “Who’s *them*?”

She didn’t answer. Just pointed to the clouds. A faint hum cut through the sky like a whisper wrapped in static.

“Too late,” she said. “They felt you. You flew too close.”

---

It wasn’t a ship. It was more like a gap in the world. A shimmer. A *hole* in the sky that blinked open and started scanning the city with pulses I couldn’t quite hear but definitely *felt*.

Kenzie stood.

“You’ve got maybe an hour. If you’re smart, you disappear. Change your name. Go inland. Stay off networks. Help people, sure—but stay small. Tuesday people who try to be heroes? They burn out. Or get caught.”

She started to phase.

I grabbed her wrist. “Why me?”

She met my gaze. “Doesn’t matter why. Just what you do with it.”

And then she vanished. Gone. A ripple in the rooftop gravel.

---

It’s almost midnight now.

I’m writing this from a bench outside the 24-hour laundromat on Grand. My hoodie’s up. My eyes still glow faintly if I’m not careful. But no one notices. No one *ever* really does.

Kenzie was right.

You can’t go big.

So tomorrow, I’ll buy a burner phone, shave the beard, maybe dye my hair. I’ll move west. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere forgotten.

And maybe once or twice a week, I’ll help someone. Gently. Quietly.

Because power doesn’t make you a god.

It just gives you a choice.

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**END**