Programmed for Peril

Apartment 724. Its unmarred surface was as featureless and unrevealing as the future.
    She raised her right hand and knocked. “It’s... me, Carson.” She spoke that too-familiar name in a voice dry as straw.
    From inside: “Mom! Mom!” Melody. Trish’s heart wrenched. Control yourself! The girl sounded all right.
    “It’s open.” Carson’s new voice.
    She raised a shaky hand. She turned the knob and opened the door. She stepped forward.
    To face Carson again.
    Her eyes found him first but slid away toward Melody, who sat in the second small room on the bed’s filthy spread. Her schoolbooks and recorder lay beside her. She jumped up. From her lap tumbled an open package of Sno-Balls, one of which she had undoubtedly gulped down. Trish had planned to pull the pistol and fire at Carson. Now Melody was on her in a tangle of hug. “Are you all right, sweet?” she asked the girl.
    “I’m scared!” Melody said.
    As Trish stooped and hugged she glanced around at the two rooms heaped with electronic equipment. The scanty furniture was cheap, save for a massive oak chair hung with tom Velcro straps. The place stank. The smell of sweat, fouled food, and semen slammed at her nose like a hammer. Rising with them was an unfamiliar sweet, sickening scent.
    “Welcome, Queen of My Heart!” Carson stepped toward her. She was wrong; his face hadn’t been altered.
    Trish untangled Melody. “Go back and sit on the bed, Mel.”
    “I don’t want to be with Daddy. He’s not nice like I remembered!”
    “I’m a sweetheart, a prince,” Carson said.
    “No, you’re not!” Melody said.
    “It doesn’t matter now how you feel about me, child.”
    Carson was very close now, too close for Trish to be able to pull out the pistol and raise it. Her eyes found his face under the familiar thatch of red hair. There was something wrong....
    He seemed too tall and broad to be the Carson she remembered. His proportions were Carson’s, but... Or had her memory failed her? No, it hadn’t!
    “You’re not Carson!” she shouted.
    “Of course I am.”
    “No! Who are you?”
    “His servant.”
    “I don’t understand you!” This unknown terror was more frightening than the known devil she had expected. She found herself recoiling, stumbling back across the littered floor.
    The man was wearing a mask! She had been right. Carson’s features had been altered. The mask was his former face.
    Her fright triggered recent thoughts about Carson no longer knowing who he was. The structure of his genius had been undermined when the foundation of his sanity was swept away. Was this Carson or not? Now she wasn’t sure!
    He flew at her with startling quickness. His big hands found her shoulders. His face loomed like a full moon.
    He wanted to kiss her!
    “Queen of My Heart!”
    “Don’t touch me!” She forgot her weapon in her fright. She flailed at his chest with impotent fists. One of her blows found his side.
    He wailed and sagged for a moment, then he flung her aside. She flew across the room. Losing her balance, she sprawled to the floor. Her purse flew out of reach. Her cheek burned from the rasp of gritty boards. Her eyes faced the bed legs. Between them she saw...
    She screamed.
    Nicholas Smith-Patton’s once-thin frame was bloated with the gases of decomposition. It was their odor that hung in the air like Death’s perfume. His bugging eyes stared at her, no more than three feet away. In her wildness of mind they looked accusing.
    She rolled over, unable to face that poor, dead thing.
    She scrambled up too late to avoid the masked figure. He lunged, and one of his hands found her upper arm in an iron grip. He shoved her against the wall, pinned her with thighs thick as columns.
    “Don’t hurt my mother!” Melody shouted through her tears. She twisted with anxiety on the filthy bed.
    She expected him to try to press another kiss on her. She turned her face away. She was chilled when, instead, his fingers found her throat.
    Trish tried to bat aside the big hands. He caressed her skin. “Soft... as an angel’s wing...”
    “I’m not an angel yet!” She punched his side. As before he grunted and sagged. This time his fingers didn’t loosen. Instead they tightened. For a long moment she felt the crushing drag of his bulk against her throat’s tender tissues. She choked and tugged feebly at his horrid hands.
    He righted himself, drew a heavy breath. His fingers relaxed and centered on her throat. His face was less