My Hands Shook as I Made the Cut — I Almost Ruined Everything

Part 1

My hands have always had a slight tremor.

It isn’t usually a problem in my day-to-day life.

But when you are staring down at a piece of gray plastic no bigger than a fingernail, every microscopic shake feels like an earthquake.

I took a deep breath, trying to steady my fingers.

The fumes from the open bottle of sprue glue drifted up from my cutting mat.

It was a noxious, chemical smell, but to me, it smelled like potential.

I had spent the last two hours carefully snipping pieces off the plastic sprues with my specialized clippers.

This wasn’t just any miniature model.

This was a survivor for the brutal, unforgiving tabletop game Greg and I had been playing for months.

In that game, humanity lived in absolute, terrifying darkness.

We guided our fragile characters out into the void to hunt monsters like the White Lion and the Screaming Antelope.

Death was permanent, and madness was practically guaranteed.

If you rolled a one on the survival table, your entire settlement could plunge into despair.

I was notorious for rolling ones.

That was exactly why I wanted this miniature to be perfect.

She was going to be my new lead survivor.

I wanted her to look like a hardened veteran of the darkness.

The kit came with dozens of tiny, interchangeable pieces.

You could customize everything from the weapons they held to the expressions on their faces.

I had carefully selected a face from the rawhide armor set.

I paired it with a glorious, sweeping ponytail I scavenged from a different box.

I even picked out this bizarre, intimidating antler mask for her to wear.

She was going to look like an absolute badass.

But first, I had to assemble her without gluing my own fingers together.

Dipping the tip of my precision applicator into the homemade sprue glue felt like handling hazardous waste.

This thick, disgusting goo was created by melting leftover plastic shavings directly into liquid cement.

Filling the awkward gaps between customized joints required exactly this kind of toxic slurry.

Carefully, a tiny drop was dabbed onto the miniature’s shoulder socket.

My hand trembled, threatening to smear the melting plastic over the fine details of her collarbone.

Exhaling slowly forced my tense muscles to finally relax.

Tweezers pinched the tiny arm.

That microscopic piece clutched a bone dagger.

Rolling a perfect ten with that weapon earned a precious survival point in our campaign.

Those points kept your character alive when the nightmarish monsters tried to bite your head off.

Pressing the arm into the socket initiated the chemical reaction.

The plastic immediately began to melt and fuse together.

Holding it there for thirty agonizing seconds felt like an eternity.

My pulse hammered in my ears as I waited for the bond to set.

When I finally pulled the tweezers away, the arm stayed in place.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding.

Okay, that was the easy part.

The hard part was the other arm.

This arm was going to be holding up a lantern.

The lanterns were crucial in the game, our only defense against the encroaching shadows.

From a painting perspective, they were also my favorite part.

I loved playing with dramatic, directional lighting.

I had painted our original four survivors with distinct, colorful lantern glows.

Zachary had a warm orange light that cast deep shadows across his face.

Lucy was bathed in a vibrant yellow.

Alister had a spooky, ethereal cyan glow.

It made them pop on the table, and it helped Greg and I tell them apart during the chaotic fights.

For this new survivor, I wanted the lantern to be held high, casting light down across her antler mask.

But that meant attaching the arm at a weird, elevated angle.

Gravity was not going to be my friend here.

I wasn’t just sitting alone in the quiet, either.

My phone was propped up on a little stand to my right, streaming my work surface to a handful of viewers.

I had recently started broadcasting my miniature painting and assembly sessions.

It was a small community, mostly fellow hobbyists and fans of the game.

The chat scrolled slowly on the screen.

Someone named Laughing Cat Mom was asking about the different types of kits.

Another viewer, N squared, had just dropped in to say hello.

I glanced over at the chat, smiling as I answered their questions out loud.

I explained how some games gave you single-piece, pre-assembled figures.

Those were easy, but they lacked personality.

This brand, however, offered these insane, mix-and-match sprues.

You could literally build your survivor from the ground up, piece by piece.

I told the chat about how I had been looking forward to this specific build ever since Greg and I bought the core box.

Talking to the stream helped distract me from my own anxiety.

It made the isolating work of tiny details feel shared and communal.

But it also meant I had an audience watching my every move.

If I messed this up, I was going to do it live in front of twenty people.

I turned my attention back to the tiny gray arm holding the lantern.

I applied another bead of the sprue glue to the left shoulder socket.

I carefully picked up the lantern arm with my tweezers.

I positioned it against the torso.

The angle looked awkward at first, almost like she was stabbing herself.

I adjusted it, angling the lantern outward.

The pose suddenly clicked into place, looking dynamic and alive.

I just needed it to stay there.

The sprue glue takes longer to set than super glue.

It actually melts the two pieces of plastic into a single solid object.

That meant I had to hold it perfectly still while the chemical reaction did its work.

My hands decided this was the perfect moment to start shaking again.

A fine tremor ran through my wrist.

The tiny lantern bobbed wildly in the air.

I pressed my elbows hard into the edge of my desk, trying to anchor myself.

I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, silently begging my nerves to calm down.

When I opened my eyes, the damage was already happening.

I watched in horror as the tiny plastic hand holding the lantern began to slide, the toxic glue failing to hold it against gravity.