No scheming, no planning, no subterfuge. I had control. It was handed to me, and it came as a question. Could I take over? Just for the time being? If I had been more prepared, I would have held out longer. Really draw out the moment and made him grovel. But he was desperate, and I guess that I was too. For nearly three hours, we sat there, putting brush to canvas, forming something beautiful.

It's more accurate to say beautiful by our standards. Of the other paintings, it was easily the worst one. That’s probably more of him talking. I’m not one to harp on comparison in things like this. Although it is surprising to think that A had been capable of such things at one point.

Regardless, I was happy as I watched the scene in my head turn into something tangible in front of me. It felt powerful. Even if the lines were blurry, and the hill wavered as if seen through a heat wave. It wasn’t like that in the memory of that day, but unpracticed hands tend to make mistakes.

I hadn’t completed it either. There were two details that I chose to leave out. Something told me that the absence would haunt A more than anything I could render. That hill, on a warm summer evening, the air saturated with the smell of the earth. We had sat there, side by side with Clara.

He didn’t ask me to paint that scene, and I didn’t set out to do it when I first gained control. It flowed out of me, and I just continued to fill in the details. It showed the quaint little hill that was only a few blocks away where the earth rose up to meet the railroad tracks that ran through the town. It was less of a hill than a cosmetic covering of the concrete and steel of the rail line.

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That hadn’t mattered to us. It had sprouted a wall of wildflowers, and it gave a slightly elevated perspective of the sun setting over our sleepy little town.

When the painting had more or less come together, I felt a slight tug against the reins. I knew that this whole process had been humbling for him, and I also knew that it was always temporary. He wouldn’t have handed things off to me if he didn’t have the power to take them back. So, I returned them willingly. He could continue believe I was weak. It won’t always be true, but it gives me an edge if he thinks that it’s an unquestionable fact.

Either way, I finished the painting, backed away, and watched him study it. It wasn’t immediately apparent what his emotions were. I know what he wished he felt. He wanted to feel that what we had created was a waste of time. But even if he hid the exact emotions well, he stared at it long enough for me to know that he felt something unexpected.

I must admit that I feel different too. Something that grounded me in those moments of creation. A feeling wholly unfamiliar to me, and I suspect long buried for A. Something so calming, and yet once it was taken away, I felt like an addict pulled forcefully off the needle. I needed more of it. Cooperating had been nice, but when he took control back, I felt myself turn rabid. I would shred him down to scraps if he stood in the way of me getting this feeling again.