Programmed for Peril

the cool, gleaming blades. That was allowed!
    He snipped away her bra. She recoiled from the chill of the metal on her soft flesh. “No!” She gasped and stiffened.
    “Stand still!”
    She shuddered but obeyed.
    He unzipped and clipped until she was standing naked, weak drafts raising more goose bumps. He stepped back to admire her, clicking the shears as though he had somehow fashioned her with them. His eyes were narrowed—with displeasure. He suddenly jabbed the points against the white swell of her left breast. She cried out at the sudden pain, though the skin wasn’t broken.
    “You weren’t obedient enough,” he said.
    “I tried.”
    “You need some assistance.” He stepped forward and picked her up, cradling her in his solid arms. He carried her to the closest sleeping bay. There he stretched her, face up. “Raise your arms. Touch your wrists together. Close your eyes.”
    She obeyed.
    She heard a rattle and felt a new metallic chill.
    “Open your eyes.”
    Carson’s face was above her, a tiny smile curling the left comer of his mouth. He pointed toward her hands. “Look.
    She was handcuffed.
    “Gotcha!” he said.
    Later she understood that exercise in standing and snipping had been both a test and an initiation. Into just what she was too naive to understand and, even much later, could not put into exact words. She had no deep understanding of psychology. Had she, possibly she could have attached some comforting euphemisms to his opening the bargaining for her soul.
    Still the days were sunny. She and Carson worked happily together. She learned from him that in effective lives, work and play were truly indistinguishable. She added much to her store of technical information, prided herself on becoming more valuable to him. In time he came to fill her life like a vast sun around which the planet of her days turned in slow orbit. Her past diminished; the future seemed beyond reach. Carson, Carson, Carson, her heart sang—even as the handcuffs gave way to silken bonds and the unexpected pain of a jabbed breast to more ingenious but no more physically damaging torture.
    She might have continued as his sole satellite until her orbit gradually shrank and she fell too close to the fiery orb of his personality—and perished. She understood later she had neither the strength nor mental toughness to fight free of his domination. She could thank Marylou for prepping her personality for the likes of Carson. Oh, yes, there was a very real danger that Patricia Morley, as previously known, might disappear. Except that...
    Carson’s personality began to disintegrate.
    The seeds of disintegration lay in the years he had spent in Vietnam. There he had been an interpreter. He learned languages effortlessly, knew at least a dozen. Through typical military misthinking he ended up carrying out dangerous covert assignments. He talked little of those days. He didn’t have to; more than once he woke up screaming. When she questioned him he said he was fine.
    Slowly, over months, he began to focus more of his time and attention on her. Already his slave, she felt he was trying to totally eliminate what remained of her independence. So many orders he gave! They fell like sleet on all her waking moments. Just as he could not separate work from play, she could no longer tell over the long sweeps of their violating intimacy when she gave physical pleasure or received it. Commands, bonds, pain smeared into a palette so wild as to make Pollock seem a paint-by-numbers cretin.
    The declining Carson’s orders became unreasonable, impossible to obey. So the periods of her punishment grew longer, their tools more outrageous. Her humiliation extended like a cancer. She pleaded her case. His pocked face turned stony. “Tell me that you don’t enjoy it, and I’ll stop.” A false promise to counter her somehow false plea. Hadn’t her shrieks of delight echoed from high piny ceiling when not transformed into beastly grunts by gags gentle and less so?
    Her outward determination, in the face of his opposition, slunk away like a jackal. Inwardly it grew. She had to get away from him! Her sense of time grew inexact. More months passed. She told herself she was going to make a break, escape. In fact, only time was getting away.
    On an errand to an electronics supply house several towns down the freeway she stopped for lunch at a plaza where a fountain ran and greenery burst from boxes. A musician entertained the crowd with violin,