Twisted Tales for Twisted Minds

Atlas Didn't Shrug

Atlas Maynard was a nice guy. He knew that phrase, all its derogatory meanings, and he acknowledged that it suited his lack of ability to connect with women.

But he wasn't sure if it was because he was creepy or shy.

Ultimately, it led to him not hitting on women or even getting to know them as the "IhAvEaBoYfRiEnDs" started, whether he told them nice shoes or sneezed. At least with one of them, he would deserve it.

But asking for help sorting such things out was part of the great internet battles that he didn't want to deal with. There were worse things than being a Nice Guy, and some of the names flung around, like monkey feces, were inhumane and should only be reserved for jailable offenses.

It's one of the many nights he found himself making dioramas to fill up the empty decor of his apartment. That was a typical bachelor pad: a mattress on the floor, a TV and gaming console, a laptop, and a microwave were the only tangible things he owned in this world outside a wall full of involuntary modeling.

Each night, as he made another scene, he told himself he needed to go touch grass, as his aunts kept telling him. That was always sharply followed by, "Touch what grass?"

Tonight was different. The lady next door and her boyfriend hadn't been seeing eye to eye recently, and the fights were escalating.

He hoped they didn't knock any of his dioramas off the wall.

He hoped it was nothing like last weekend.

He couldn't tell if they were getting it on or if he was beating her at first. Later in the week, after seeing her, he realized it was both.

It bothered him. It was not his business, but it burdened him with the need to do something without the means to tell if he was going about helping the right way.

This was far worse than figuring out if he was creepy or shy. If he stepped in, was he a savior or telling them how to live their lives?

It made him anxious enough to sculpt the woman.

The first stage always left his hands shaking. He started with nude figures, and he hated associating a face with that naked body, as it gave him thoughts about what he'd like to do with them.

Those shakes were what dropped him in the no man's land of Nice Guy. A Good Man would keep his mind off wanting his neighbor. A bad one wouldn't be so terrified of himself as to tremble.

His mind eased into peace as he dressed her, right as the fight started next door. Her body hit the wall with a thud, finally knocking a figure off the wall, causing him to check it over and repair it with a quick measure that wouldn't hold forever. He'd have to rebuild it in the coming weeks, but there was plenty of time to wait on this one.

Then he switched over to making the bottom half of the man and found peace in the numbness of not caring about it being him.

Eventually, the fight settled into the rhythms of lovemaking as he took her figure and split it open from mouth to waist, making it a maw of a monster and shoving the half-formed man into her mouth.

Once he had everything staged and supported correctly, he turned on the apartment's oven and used it like a kiln.

As he took it out and painted it, the violence next door became disruptive enough to force him to call the cops as his earliest diorama crashed and broke on the tiled floor. Medusa's head fell back off. The shock of it caused Atlas to grab the chain around his neck before reality crashed back down. There wasn't anything that would save the Gorgon, not truly. All he could do was glue her back together—that model had passed away.