Programmed for Peril

increasing hours he spent mesmerized by Queen of My Heart’s charms? To the sweet cake of her dominated flesh he added the Bavarian frosting of recent footage of her spread and pinned by the Loathed One. Already that tape was a rarity; Nicholas the meddler had tom out the cameras. See her fingernails set in Foster’s shoulders like Dracula’s teeth! Feel the whiz-bangs charge Champ’s blood like an electrolytic! He spasmed on and on and on....
    Though stewing and brooding, he was unable to survey fully the shifting plain of his mind. Analysis failed. Never in earlier times had he failed to understand himself. He was the most logical and straightforward of men. His role: obey Carson. His focus had been as sharp as an electron microscope’s. Now he sensed... dilution of his commitment. Of course, he could never diverge from Carson’s goals. Yet he sensed a fault line along shifting inner plates mapped by his growing confusion. No matter that. He still had to carry on!
    He shook his bearish shoulders. Ta-ta-taaah-ta-ta-taaaaah! blasted the hunting hom in his mind. Au chasse! To the hunt! To the chase! To duty!
    He carried the necessary equipment to his Blandmobile. Behind the wheel he knew it was a twenty-minute trip through the night to paradise—her home. Her next-door neighbors were on vacation, their drive screened by overgrown pines. In their thick shadows he left the car. Carson’s directives had been precise, as always. His destination: Queen of My Heart’s garage.
    As his steps carried him closer to that structure they faltered. He turned and raised his head. Wolf under the sliver of moon! He looked toward the Victorian sprawl of her home. To his surprise, he began to walk toward it, keeping to the deepest shadows. He left his equipment on the grass. His heart rate rose. Oh! A dew of sweat fell upon his wide brow. His eyes found the windows. Within glowed the dim nightlights of women alone. Lower power bills: sleep with a man. He should be resisting this temptation. Yet his feet set themselves on their own way. Before he knew it he stood before a basement hatchway. Avast! Seaman Champ reporting for duty.
    He heaved on the welded handle. Oooh! Open. He descended woody stairs, lowered the hatch above him. His never-die flashlight disclosed an oak door. An impressive lock was set under a knob. How perfect! A tumbler lock. From his pocket he pulled Carson’s wonder, the Tumbler Tickler. In eight seconds he was closing the door behind him.
    Why was he here? He couldn’t or wouldn’t answer that question. At the heart of it lay Queen of My Heart. Yet in what connection he sought to bring himself to her presence he couldn’t imagine. The flashlight led him through mildew and along whitewashed stone walls to the stairs. Up he went, silent as a bat. Mr. Slyboots! He eased open the door and found himself in a pantry. Wheatsworth crackers and Dinty Moore beef stew, Hi-C juice, Cain’s mayo—on these she feasts!
    Onward! He entered the kitchen, chose a door. He remembered the house’s layout from his earlier visits. Feet close to banister to quiet creaking, he ascended to heights where his angel dwelled. On the second floor he stopped.
    He could smell her!
    Eau de la Reine. Compounded of shampoo and soap scents, the unseen effusions of her pores, the balm of her breath drawn shallow in sleep. Follow your nose! And hear your heart! It thumped now like a stripper’s drummer, as though he had climbed a skyscraper of stairs instead of one modest flight.
    His camera had shown him where and how she lay in slumber. But it hadn’t blessed him with curtains stirred by a light July breeze, the ratty slippers mating under the overhang of bedsprings—or his own lumpish form in the closet door’s full-length mirror.
    He should not be there.
    He took four long, silent strides. He stood at her bedside. His bowels shook as though seized with fatal fever. Behold, behold! More that the camera hadn’t caught. The tone of her skin, the topography of sheet folds in loose right-hand grip, the glistening track of moisture from the comer of a mouth parted in sleep.
    He had feasted first his sense of smell, now sight. What remained but to touch and taste? He leaned forward.
    No, no! She was Carson’s.
    He should not be there!
    His heart slammed his ribs like John Henry’s hammer. A drop of sweat ran down his nose, fell free and struck bedspread, became an ephemeral smudge in the paisley. No, he should not be there.
    His arm