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.

Other than that call, he was forced to give a statement to the cops after they had cleared up the mess next door. He salvaged the old diorama and placed his new one next to it while waiting for life outside his walls to leave him in peace.

Months passed. His neighbor remained the same as always, but her boyfriend left after that day.

Atlas picked up a girl friend named Jane.

Not a girlfriend, but a female who enjoyed his macabre artwork and thought he should make a website or a YouTube channel about them, even offering to help him set that up, as her talents lay in that direction.

The very idea of exposing himself like that terrified him, so he put her off as politely as he could manage.

But this friend was social and sociable.

She dragged him out to buy a proper bed, a couch, and various pieces of furniture. He no longer lived like a beggar with an apartment. Atlas chronically wondered why they were just friends, but he let sleeping dogs lie.

She chatted with his neighbors in the halls, elevators, parking garage, shared buses, and taxis.

He learned more about the world he lived in from this friend, so he was grateful, but he avoided the conversations, especially with the neighbor.

His friend spent half an hour after leaving his apartment chatting with that neighbor. That woman he avoided at all costs. He wanted nothing to do with her after he made that statue, as her issues pushed him into calling the cops.

All in all, just looking at her made his skin crawl—not because of her, but because he could still remember sculpting her flesh. He did not like how much more attractive she looked after his hands had made every inch of her.

Thankfully, there was blessed silence in the halls as he contemplated making a fresh diorama of his new friend's build.

He had warned her he sculpted in the nude.

She had offered to model without a stitch of clothes on.

His hand was already in the tub of clay, shaking as he felt its surface.

Jane had insisted that he sculpt her tomorrow—something about getting ready for her debut as a model—as she left.

The pounding on his door didn't wake him from this dream until he had sunk his fingers into its soft, cold, firm depths. Nothing like a woman until he warmed it up, working the clay.

What did was his door slamming open.

"You!"

Atlas stripped the excess clay from his hand, closed the lid, and absent-mindedly rubbed its remnants on his thigh as he looked up at his neighbor. "Well, shut the door if you intend to come barging in on me."

She looked at the door, warring with the need for privacy and the fear of what he'd be like when she shut them in together. Privacy won the war. The door closed with a silent click.

Atlas stayed still, worried eyes looking her over. The long raincoat hid everything, but the heels and stocking implied a dress underneath. He blinked at thoughts he didn't need toying with his mind before he stammered out a question. "Why are you mad at me?"

"You sculpted me without my permission, didn't you, you little pervert?"

Atlas shook his head, not because he didn't make her, nor because his conscience was clear of twisted and dark thoughts.

He moved to his wall, ignoring how she was breathing like an enraged bull. The latest shelf held her and the one he fixed. He pulled it down and turned it towards his neighbor to display the open maw, shredded clothes, and half of a man stuck down that massive yawning throat.

His neighbor paled, then roughly stripped open her coat, displaying her topless figure as the maw started gaping open in response to her rage. "You! You did this to me!"

"It doesn't work that way. You wanted to fight back, to end that man's life." He shook his head again, looking away because monsters didn't scare him, and he hated his mind more. "You have to have the will to fight and to want the power. You were crying out to God for help. It has very little to do with me, as all I did was figure out what monster lurks beneath your skin. Everyone has an inner demon."

The monster gulped back her rage, buttoning up the coat as she moved closer to him. At least she had no intention of biting him. "Can you undo it?"

"It doesn't work that way." Atlas began...

She was close enough to touch him. "What is your name?"

"Atlas..."

"No, not the lies you tell to make you human and almost approachable, except that you're creepy as hell."

Atlas laughed as he shrugged. "That's not your business."

"It is my business. Look what you made of me!" She hissed, gesturing wildly at the statue, only to dash the sculpture to the ground.

It cracked at the waist, like he expected.

She dropped to the floor, gasping and scrambling to get off the ground, but her legs would no longer respond.

Gently, he picked her up and draped her across his couch, both knowing where this was going and dreading it.

He turned away.

"Help me!" Atlas could hear the tears in her voice.

He picked up the display and pulled a needle out of his pocket. It often nicked his hand, drawing blood. With both in hand, he lanced the sculpture's skull, and the woman became silent. The diorama wound up on the table.

He turned around. She was slumped and glassy-eyed. Atlas intended to reforge her from the start, but this state was easier to handle.

He rummaged around in the kitchen for the air-dry clay. He went back to sit across from her as he started packing it into the cracks. It would do for a temporary job. Next, he made a clay lock and applied it to the sculpture's maw to hold her shut in the real world. He grabbed the chain around his neck to pull up a tiny hourglass that he unstopped and took the barest scrape of sand from. Then he pulled the needle out and patched the hole with that sand.

The woman yawned and stretched behind him, so he turned to greet her with as much cheerfulness as he could fake. "Good evening, beautiful, ready for your session?"

Her face clouded over with a frown, and she looked down into her coat with a startled squeak. "Uh, how dressed am I supposed to be?"

"I told you that I only work in the nude, but as for your pose, you're the one who said you wanted to pose as lust."

Atlas's neighbor turned beet red but grinned as she readied herself for a pose that had made his hands shake only days before. He loved when these angry creations tried to seduce him.

He wished this had been her choice, but the welt that wound its way across her back, from where she broke her statue, made a better sculpture necessary. It needed to be perfect to preserve her. That she would be obsessed with a man she despised until the sands ran out was the price she'd pay for being able to protect herself.

And he had learned a lot about hiding the monsters that lurked within after he had done that favor for Minerva.

Besides, who would think that Vulcan was truly a Nice Guy?