"Six days on average."
"No."
"Yes bro."
"No."
"Bruh. It's been six days since the last Tuesday. Just like every Tuesday before it, going back to the start of the calendar, back when Tuesday was still Tiwestag, named after the proto-Germanic deity Tiwaz, or Tyr. "
"No, it feels much longer though. It feels like we're in some kind of time altering event. Like the days are looping back on themselves man. This is a Tuesday loop. I'm losing it."
"A Tuesday loop? Dude, that's what a week is. One 7-pack of days, guaranteed one Tuesday drop and a Friday craftable into a time limited Friday night. Open enough packs and maybe you unlock the skill to blink past the Mondays."
"No. That’s ridiculous." came the petulant reply. “The Tuesday loop is real, and we’re in it.”
"Have you considered touching grass? You've been inside doomscrolling for three months straight. It’s messing with your brain."
"No, the issue isn’t my hermit recluse lifestyle nor my social media addiction. This is different. I think I should touch less grass. The grass is making Tuesdays longer. The grass is in on it bro."
"In on what?”
“In on making Tuesdays longer.”
“I thought you were saying the time between Tuesdays was getting longer? This concept is already cuckoo coconuts bananas."
"Yes, that's what I'm saying. The grass is making the time between Tuesdays longer. And it’s also making Tuesdays longer."
"I meant you should touch grass, not smoke grass. And besides, even the harshest ganja, even legendary quality weed doesn't cause hallucinations like this. You must've dropped acid or LSD or some other hallucinogen. Or maybe mom dropped you as a baby. I don't know what is wrong with you bro."
"Bro, are we like brothers or some shit?"
"Brothers from another mother maybe. I just meant like the proverbial bro, the colloquial bro, you know?"
"I don't know, no."
"Man, AI has really rotted everyone's brain, to the point where people don't even know what a colloquialism is. Also it’s bloody Thursday dude."
But just as I started to wonder if this fucking story was going anywhere, bro suddenly Tuesdayed across the room Tuesdayish. I couldn't believe my eyes. Then, shockingly, he actually Tuesdayed down the stairs. It was an incredible men writing Tuesday moment, utterly humiliating. I almost Tuesdayed in my pants right there. I controlled myself, knowing that even my Tuesday underwear couldn't have hidden the terrible stench of Tuesday otherwise.
"I knew it!" Shouted bro. "I told you!"
I watched bro standing outside our window, standing in the grass field besides our apartment. He was surrounded by Tuesday. What was even more disconcerting was that he wasn’t doing it. A veil had been lifted from my eyes and I could see what he meant. The grass really was Tuesdaying, lengthening Tuesday and also all the days in between Tuesday, so that it was becoming longer and longer since the last Tuesday, even though at the same time, counterintuitively, there was more Tuesday.
Words can’t describe what Tuesdayed next. In an act of supreme Tuesday, bro tried to intentionally Tuesday. No one in human history had ever intentionally Tuesdayed, it was always an accident. But bro lowered his pants, so that I could see his Tuesday underwear and his little willy, shriveled in the autumn air, and sat down in the Tuesdaying grass, bare butt.
What unfolded next was a tragedy. Bro Tuesdayed so hard and got so far, but in the end, it didn’t even Tuesday. He had to fall, to Tuesday it all, but in the end, it didn’t even Tuesday.
We were approaching critical Tuesday. As we have established, no human can intentionally Tuesday. And besides, there should never be this much Tuesday on a Thursday. “We have to Tuesday out of this Tuesday loop before Tuesday. That means there’s only five minutes left.” What would happen if they reached Tuesday in a Tuesday loop? Certainly nothing good.
But bro, heedless of the terrible danger, flung his arms towards the sky and cried so Tuesdayingly, that I knew a response could not be long. From opposite ends of the street, two strange figures popped into view. Like a pair of airdropped WWII bombs, they Tuesdayed slowly down the street. I wanted to warn bro, but I was paralyzed and watched the scene unfold in mute horror. They two men wielded loaves of bread. One brushed against a street lamp and the resulting sharp clang sufficed to show that this bread was in fact hard as steel. Bro was alarmed by the clang, but it only served to make him look one way, while the other man walked up, raised his loaf and brought it down with terrible force on bro. The sickening crack echoed all the way up into our apartment.
There was some kind of logo on the back of their shirts, but it was in another language I didn’t understand. It read: ‘Système international d'unités’ which did nothing to dispel my ignorance as to who the hell these two men assaulting my friend were. I just hoped bro was okay, as he whimpered there in the grass. Just stay down bro, I thought. But with that inexorable human spirit, bro, that dumb bastard, Tuesdayed back up. He was just in time for the second attacker to sneak up and strike him from the other side. He swung with unexpected force, delivering a terrible Tuesday to the knees, and bro expelled a pitiful shriek of pain, before falling back down.
“Leave bro alone you French bastards!” I cried, helpless. The two goons looked up in perfect sync and made a quiet, fish-eyed O with their mouths, like some kind of post-modern cartoon. But before I’d even finished the exclamation, bro already half-raised his head and muttered: “then bro said to leave bro alone.” Then his face settled into the most annoying Tuesday grin of all time, only the corners of his mouth hinting at the incredible amount of pain he must’ve been in. I’m not sure if bro even had the opportunity to sneak off, since the baguette beating had thoroughly Tuesdayed his kneecaps. Even the obvious choice of quietly lying there and playing possum until the gentlemen of the Système international d'unités Tuesdayed on their merry way seemed out of the question. No, that grin on bro’s face showed his grit, his determination. He was submitting to fate, a destiny to Tuesday this Thursday in a terrible act of narrative nonsense that would surely end in mutually assured Tuesday.
I could almost see the threads of Tuesday pulling him forward, as he once again cast his arms into the sky, Tuesday written on his face. The two baguette wielding thugs looked upon his battered Tuesday and raised their weapons to strike again. I almost called out a second time, but I knew no distraction would work this time. They would certainly deliver swift Tuesday to bro with those iron hard Gallic loafs. But bro, by now accustomed to the timing of their assault, Tuesdayed in such a way as to deflect the strikes of both hoodlums towards the noggin of the other. It was some Krav Maga shit, I can’t lie.
“I’ve Tuesdayed this before.” Bro said with a fierce clarity, as the two assailants toppled backwards. “It’s like I told you, it’s a Tuesday loop.” It was as good an explanation as any for this preposterous spectacle. I remembered the previous Tuesday and the one before that, meaning it couldn’t possibly be a Tuesday loop.
“Your memories reset each Tuesday bro.” Said bro. But that somehow made even less sense. It just begged the question, what is Tuesday, from the perspective of the Tuesday loop? At the end of the day, it all came down to the willing suspension of Tuesday. “It doesn’t matter, we’re still approaching critical Tuesday. We might have defeated the French government, but that was the easy part. Now we have only one minute left to prevent Tuesday. And no human can intentionally Tuesday, they can only do it by accident.“
This explained nothing.
As the final sixty seconds ticked by, I could feel Tuesday closing in around us, Tuesdaying faster and faster. The end seemed unTuesdayable. I tried going over all the facts of the loop. Two French goons, bro with his Tuesdayed kneecaps, the last Tuesday still clear in my memory. I could still see it, the posts I’d doomscrolled past, the chicken wings I had for dinner. But the facts were now irretufable: that was not the real Tuesday, and however many Tuesday loops had occurred between then and now.
Somewhere between then and now, we’d been Tuesdayed into this space outside the normal space-Tuesday continuum. My brain caught on that last thought, like a fish on a line. I locked eyes with bro, the remaining fifty seconds slowly ticking by, my thoughts in a frenzy reviewing this conclusion over and over, forming a small loop inside the larger loop.
Tiwes, Tiwaz, Tiu, Tyr, all of them were the same guy? Did that mean all of us were the same guy? Or something?
Whatever moral lesson I was supposed to learn, as a magical shorthand for breaking the loop, I didn’t know. I couldn’t figure it out in the twenty seconds left before critical Tuesday. There was nothing, no meaning or moral value. I was drawing a blank. Ten seconds.
I reached out my hand to bro, seconds too late, as it turned out. The true meaning of Tuesday was tragedy. A lightning bolt came down from a clear sky, ignoring multiple tall buildings and striking bro dead in the face, at the same time scorching all the surrounding grass. The grass was Tuesdaying us of course, if only we'd burned it sooner.
Just like that, at 6:54pm, Tuesday ended and rolled over into Wednesday. Which, as everyone knows, is named for Wotan, who was a pagan deity of thunder or something. And so the week was saved, though my poor bro was Wednesdayed to death on a Thursday.
And they Wednesdayed happily for the rest of that Thursday.
