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Marjorie runs her fingers over the blank canvas with a light touch. It's warm in the room — too warm, but the necessary north light streams in and she can't be distracted by the sound of air conditioning; besides, the heat makes her suffer and her suffering makes her create. The paints are rainbow squiggles on the palette — Cadmium Red Light, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna, Cadmium Yellow Pale, Yellow Ochre, Cerulean Blue, French Ultramarine Blue, Permanent Bright Green, Viridian Green, Burnt Umber, and Van Dyke Brown. But she sees nothing but black and white and gasps as even that turns to a dull and mottled gray. She sheds her soaking t-shirt, standing there naked from the waist up as she glares at the telephone in the studio, willing it to ring.  She's left him an urgent message but he's probably in class; she no longer knows his schedule. She sighs and extracts a brush from a jar, her favorite — a flat bristle — and drags it across the canvas, making imaginary lines.
Nothing.
She clutches it white knuckled and begins tracing it around her nipples, down her stomach, back up again. It leaves scratch marks and she considers that she should have used a sable tip brush instead but she realizes that she's enjoying the pain. She steps out of her now dampened panties.
At last, the bell of the phone and she rushes to answer. It's him, speaking softly, instructing, as if ten years hadn't passed since she'd last seen him, when she was his student and she'd confronted him after class to offer him her soul in return for the creativity he'd managed to sap. But he would only take a piece, whispering to her while she undressed, never touching her, just whispering, whispering, until she found release and she returned to the studio and painted with a new insane passion. As she presses the receiver to her ear, she listens; she doesn't speak but just absorbs his gentle voice and conjures him before her, his wild dark hair and heavy lidded eyes, filled with desire but unwilling; the photograph of his wife and young son thumb tacked to the wall. She blinks as droplets of sweat trickle into her eyes and then the room whirls and the colors, brighter than ever return in almost supernatural form as she dips the brush into the blues and greens and reds and makes violent stabbing streaks until her ferocious attack causes the paintbrush to crack in half. Finally, weeping silent, she replaces the receiver on the phone.
She removes the splintered brush from between her thighs and stares at her breasts and belly — a masterpiece of great proportion. The canvas is still blank but she smiles and reaches for her palette.
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