Pawn Takes Queen

Beth Harmon sipped the latte as she walked down the street in New York, trying not to rubberneck as she looked around. She had traveled all over the place for chess… she was, by almost any definition, quite worldly for a nineteen year old girl. Never in all of her travels, however, had she been somewhere like New York City. The buildings here seemed to tower over her as she walked down the street, tall enough that it was easy to imagine that it wasn’t actually night and they were just blocking out the sun.

She was here to train with Benny, that impossible man-child. It was nice of him to bring her here, to train with her, to give her so much time even after she’s trounced him so badly back in Ohio at the US Championship, but he was the only person she had ever met who was as stubborn as she was and it was completely impossible to spend more than four hours around him without wanting to strangle him. Usually when they happened she just went to sleep, or took some pills. This time, however, the Remy-Vallon invitational was soon… she didn’t have time to stop preparing, so she had just excused herself to step outside, to walk down the street, to get some coffee.

The beautiful redhead couldn’t help but shake her head as she turned into the alley. Leave it to Benny to live in an absolute dump. She had grown up in a god-forsaken orphanage, and even so her standards were well higher than this. He lived in ‘the bad part of town,’ and to get to his basement apartment she had to go through some of the alleys. Beth, however, wasn’t worried. She had gone this way dozens of times and nothing bad ever happened. She tried to walk quickly through the dark alleyways and hidden streets, sure, but she also laughed at herself afterward for being so paranoid.

She was about halfway there when the hair on the back of her neck started to rise.

It wasn’t until she turned the corner that Beth heard footsteps behind her, and began to get an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Beth tried to tell herself she was being paranoid, to sip her drink, to just keep walking, but she kept feeling more and more nervous for some reason. Trying to calm her racing heart, she risked a glance behind her.

A dirty man in a sweatshirt was following her.

He wasn’t following her very closely… he was back toward the end of the alley. He was getting closer, though. Trying to tell herself she was just being paranoid, Beth picked up her pace. After a few seconds, she glanced behind her again. To her horror, she realized that the man was even closer now. She whipped her head back around, breaking out into a cold sweat as she tried to walk even faster. To her distress, she could hear the footsteps behind her getting closer together. She turned a corner, then another, but she could still hear him following her.

At the end of the alley, instead of finding Benny’s door, she found herself facing another narrow passage. This wasn't the route Benny had shown her. She had taken a wrong turn somewhere, misremembered his directions. She should have turned left after she had looked back, not continued straight. What had she been thinking?

The footsteps behind her grew closer, more distinct. Beth turned left into the new alley, moving faster now, her calm calculation giving way to a more primal urge to increase the distance between herself and whoever followed. The sound of her heels clicking against the pavement echoed between the brick walls, betraying her position.

She glanced over her shoulder again.

The man was closer this time. His clothing was ragged… one of the homeless men she had seen around the city. He paused, seeming to assess her as she looked at him. Then he resumed his approach with renewed purpose.

She had played enough chess to recognize a trap when she saw one, but unlike on the board, she wasn’t equipped to think her way out of this kind of danger. Beth abandoned all pretense of casual walking and moved as quickly as she could in heels… her heart hammering against her ribs. The alley opened into a small courtyard, surrounded by the back entrances of several buildings. None looked welcoming or accessible. She scanned frantically for an exit, spotting another passage on the far side. The footsteps behind her had quickened to match her pace.

Beth’s heels came up as she darted across the courtyard, the liquid in her cup sloshing over the rim and spattering her hand. The pain barely registered as she reached the next alley, only to find it narrower, darker, and seemingly endless. Wrong move. She had chosen the wrong move.

The footsteps behind her were running now — the heavy slap of boots against concrete, closing the distance. Beth's lungs burned as she sprinted, her body unfamiliar with this kind of exertion. Chess training had prepared her mind for strategy, but none of that strategy helped her, and it had left her muscles unprepared for flight. It was hard to focus with her growing panic, but she could hear those footsteps getting closer and closer and clo-

Beth’s ears rang and her head span as a blow from behind slammed her hard in the back of the head. Her coffee cup went flying, spilling on the floor as she was staggered by a strong, masculine hand. Beth opened her mouth to scream but she found a broad, calloused hand clapped over her mouth, the scent of cigarettes and oil filling her nostrils, eyes stinging with tears from the blow a moment ago.

Even more alarming, Beth was suddenly aware of a cold, metal blade being pushed against her throat.

Beth had experienced hardship in her life. Dead parents. Abandonment. Life in an orphanage. She had had problems… And she had thought they had made her ready for anything, able to handle anything. Beth, however, had never really understood just how privileged she really was in some ways, how safe from the potential violence of the world she had truly been kept. Only now, with a knife to her throat, did she abruptly realize how unprepared she was for what the world could offer her. She froze save for the sudden trembling of her body, not daring to move but her body shook so much she was afraid she would be cut anyway.

Suddenly, she understood why Benny carried a knife. “For protection,” he had said. Tomorrow, once she had gotten out of here, she was going to buy one and never go anywhere without it again.

The man behind her smelled foul… like he hadn’t taken a bath in his life, and his breath stank like he had eaten a decaying rat. One of the homeless people she had seen about, maybe? “If you make any noise when I move my hand,” a voice hissed in her ear. “I’ll fucking kill you, bitch. Nod if you understand me.”

Beth whimpered, swallowing and nodding, her eyes filling with tears as the reality of what was happening hit her. Her heart raced faster than she’d ever thought possible as the man pulled his palm off of her face, shoving her forcefully to the side and down a smaller nearby alley. Her thoughts tripped over each other as she looked around helplessly, hoping to see somebody, anybody and catch their eye. But nobody was around - Beth was alone, a young woman in an unfamiliar city. She knew no one here but a model who was probably already back in France and a stubborn, spacey nerd who would probably think nothing of Beth going missing until he woke up the next morning and she still wasn’t back. There was nobody but this violent, threatening stranger around.

"Walk," the man commanded, turning her away from the wall and shoving her forward, the knife still pressed against her skin.

Beth stumbled, her legs wooden with fear. The man's hand remained clamped over her mouth, his body pressed against her back as he forced her down the alley. His unwashed smell engulfed her, a nauseating mixture of body odor, stale tobacco, and something fetid that made her stomach clench. His face appeared in her peripheral vision as he maneuvered her around a corner; gaunt and angular, with hollow cheeks and eyes that reminded her of a rat's. Those frightening eyes were alert, calculating, and utterly without mercy.

As they reached the end of the alley, the man shoved her left. The alley ended in a dead end between the backs of several buildings, hidden from the street and any potential witnesses. Three other homeless men lounged against the dumpsters, and they straightened as Beth and Rat-Face came into sight. One of them was a young black man who looked like the youngest one here, like he might have been a collage student. He was rail-thin with watchful eyes as he sipped from a mostly-empty bottle of beer. The second man wore a dirty military jacket with a sergeant's rank patch on it. The third man had slightly tan skin and he was so filthy she could smell him from all the way over here, even over the dirt of the man holding her.

"Look what I found," the rat-faced man announced, releasing her mouth but keeping the knife at her throat.

“What’chu got there?” the man in the coat said, looking Beth over. “We thought you’d decided to sleep somewhere else tonight. Not with someone else.”

“Fuck you, man,” the man who was holding Beth said. “Bitch was walking down the alley and just asking for some attention.”

“No one saw her, did they?” the most slender man - more of a boy, really, Beth would have guessed he was her age or a little younger - asked, concerned.

“Of course no one did, what you think I’m stupid?” Rat-face stepped enough around Beth that she could see him, keeping his hand on the redhead’s shoulder. His skin was tannish-brown, with rough, calloused hands that made Beth shudder at how they felt on her bare skin.

“Hey kid, go back to the end of the alley an’ keep watch,” the fourth man, the last one to speak, said. He threw his finished cigarette to the floor, crushing it under his shoe. He was by far the dirtiest of the four.

“Why I gotta go?” the skinny one said.

“Because you’re the new kid. Means you go last,” the man Beth was starting to think of as Sarge.

‘New Kid’ followed his instructions, leaving Beth alone in the alley with the other three men.

Beth felt like she was in some kind of horrible dream. The whole world felt numb and far away, the way it did while she was on her tranquilizers, and for a moment she wondered if that was what this was… if she was laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and imagining this because the stubborn ass Benny wouldn’t just take her to bed. Once again, she swore she would stop taking them… but unfortunately, as dreamlike as this felt, she was pretty sure it was real. She found herself looking from man to man, swallowing, shaking, worrying what they were going to do to her.

She’d never felt so unhappy to have the attention of three cute guys at once, but as their eyes roamed up and down her nubile body she was aware with horrible clarity that these weren’t handsome fans flirting with her at a tournament, or interviewing her for the Herald. These were unaccountable, violent men who’d drag a girl into a back alley off the street. Beth continued to cry silently, not speaking, feeling completely frozen and helpless.

“What’s your name, cutie?” the man with dark skin asked, finally.

Beth swallowed, looking down at the floor, shaking harder just from being addressed. His almost-conversational tone made this feel like it wasn’t real, like this wasn’t actually happening. She felt caught between fierce resistance and an urge to find the nearest mind-obliterating substance and drown herself in it.

“Answer him, unless you want a broken arm,” Rat-face snarled, squeezing Beth’s shoulder harder.

That brought her back to reality, and she managed to meet Sarge’s eyes. “It’s Beth,” she spat. “Let me go!”

“Beth. That’s a pretty name,” the dirty man said with a smirk.

“How old are you?” Sarge asked.

“I’m- I’m 19,” Beth said, her voice shaking, her immediate flash of defiance feeling beaten down by their calm, malicious regarding of her. “Please, wh-what are you going to do with me?”

The men shared a glance, and then chuckled. “You that stupid, girl? We’re going to fuck you,” the Rat-face replied casually.

Beth’s face flushed at the casual profanity, and then her mind caught up with what he’d said. Before she could think about it, though, Rat-face’s hand slid around to her blouse, undoing buttons carefully. Without even thinking she lifted her hand to stop him, trying to hold her shirt closed. Her hand was yanked away suddenly by Sarge, who’d sidled up to her. “Don’t,” he said, simply, glaring at her.

"Please," Beth whispered, her voice a brittle thing that cracked against the alley walls. "What do you want? Money? I have money." Her fingers trembled as she reached for her purse, the gesture as futile as moving a pawn against a coordinated attack. The rat-faced man snatched the bag from her hand and tossed it to the dirty man who stank like an open gutter.

"Money?" the homeless man said as he emptied her purse onto the filthy ground, bills and coins scattering like disturbed insects. A container of little green pills fell, bursting open, and her pack of cigarettes hit the ground right next to them. "Sure, we'll take that, too. But that's not all we want, is it, boys?"

A low chuckle rippled through the group, the sound devoid of humor but laden with anticipation. Beth felt it like a physical touch, crawling across her skin and settling in the pit of her stomach. Beth gasped for air, her mind racing for a solution, an escape, a defense: anything from her repertoire of strategies and combinations. But this wasn't a game with established rules and limitations. This was four against one, with no arbiters to intervene, no spectators to witness, and no clock to save her when time ran out. For the first time in her life, Beth Harmon found herself in a position with no winning moves, no draw offers, and no honorable resignation. Just the cold certainty that she was utterly, completely alone.

"Please," she tried again, her strategic mind searching desperately for the right words, the correct combination that would defuse this situation. "I won't tell anyone. Just take the money and let me go."

The man in the military jacket stepped forward, his movements precise and measured. "You hear that? She won't tell anyone." He ran a finger down her cheek, smudging dirt across her face.

"I just want to go," she said, striving to keep her voice steady, to project confidence she no longer felt. "People are expecting me. They'll come looking."

"No one's coming," said the filthiest of the men, his voice phlegmy and wet. "No one even knows you're here."

The truth of his words hit her with physical force. Benny thought she was at her hotel. The hotel staff wouldn't miss her until checkout time tomorrow. She had walked into this trap with the same blind confidence that had sometimes cost her crucial tournament games.

"Let's see what we're working with," Rat-face said, his fingers digging painfully into her arm as he spun her around. His free hand caught the collar of her blouse and yanked, the sound of tearing fabric unnaturally loud in the enclosed space.

"No!" Beth pulled away, her initial shock giving way to desperate resistance. She twisted and struck out, her nails raking across Ratface's hollow cheek.

His response was immediate and brutal, a backhand that snapped her head to the side, pain blooming across her cheekbone and vision momentarily graying at the edges. "Fucking slut," he spat, blood from the scratches welling up on his cheek. "Hold the bitch," he ordered, and suddenly there were hands everywhere: on her arms, in her hair, clamping around her waist. Beth kicked and thrashed, but her resistance was as ineffective as a beginner's defense against a grandmaster's attack.

"Look at her, fighting like she's got a chance," the filthy man said, his sour breath washing over her face as he leaned in close. "Just a skinny slut who thinks she's better than us."

"Rich bitch," mocked the military man, his fingers tangling painfully in her red hair. "Let's see how smart and special you are now."

Beth's blouse hung in tatters, exposing her bra to their hungry stares. Shame burned through her, hot and suffocating, as the military man — the one she'd mentally labeled as Sarge — reached out and casually cupped her breast through the thin fabric.

"Not much to work with," he commented, his calm tone more frightening than overt lust would have been. "But it'll do."

Beth tried to jerk away, but the hands holding her were implacable. "Stop," she demanded, summoning defiance from some last reserve of dignity. "You don't have to do this."

The filthy man — Gutterstink, her mind supplied, desperately trying to categorize and analyze even now — laughed, a wet, bubbling sound. "We don't have to. We want to." His grimy fingers joined Sarge's, squeezing her other breast hard enough to make her gasp with pain.

The remaining scraps of her blouse were torn away completely, followed by her bra. The October air raised goosebumps on her exposed skin, but it was fear rather than cold that sent violent tremors through her body.

"Nice tits after all," Ratface said, his rat-like features twisting into something that might have been appreciation on a human face. "Small, but perky." His calloused hand squeezed her breast roughly, fingers pinching her nipple until she cried out.

The sound seemed to excite them. The dirty man stepped closer. "Let's hear more of that," he said, twisting her other nipple with cruel precision.

Beth bit her lip to deny them the satisfaction, tasting blood as her teeth broke the skin. Her mind began frantically searching for escape. Not physical, which she now recognized as impossible, but mental. Chess had always been her refuge, the sixty-four squares a world where she had control, where violence followed rules and patterns she understood. She tried to summon the Sicilian Defense, to visualize the board in her mind, but Ratface's hand slid down her stomach and between her legs, pressing against her through her skirt, and the chess pieces scattered from her mental board like pigeons from a sudden noise.

"Look at that," he sneered. "Little slut's all dry. We'll have to fix that."

“No, no, please, no,” she pleaded under her breath. She didn’t believe in God - as far as she was concerned, growing up in a religious orphanage had done more to prove to her that God didn’t exist than it had inspired faith in him - but Beth prayed anyway… praying that God, or Benny, or maybe some stranger passing by, or anybody at all, would save her.

“Ever had sex before?” the taller man asked.

“Don’t… don’t touch me,” Beth choked out. Oddly, her promise to her mother that she wouldn’t get pregnant flashed through her mind. “I don’t want this!”

Rat-face’s lips were suddenly pressed hard, violently against hers. The kiss was dry and passionless and his mouth tasted even worse than his breath smelled. Beth felt a little piece of dry skin peel away from her lips as the man pulled away, his stubble scratching her face and leaving grime behind. “What makes you think we care what you want?” he said. “So fucking hot when they’re stubborn.”

He shoved her backward, the pressure of his hand sudden and overwhelming. Beth stumbled, losing her footing on the uneven ground, and fell hard. The impact drove the air from her lungs, leaving her gasping on the filthy concrete as the men circled her like predators around wounded prey.

Ratface unbuckled his belt, the metal clasp jingling with obscene cheerfulness in the dimness. “Look at me, bitch,” the tanned man snarled, grabbing her face with one muscular hand. In alarm, her eyes flew open, and she obeyed him, hazel eyes meeting his dark ones. He spun his knife between his fingers in a threatening gesture. Then, as she stared, the man in front of her unzipped his fly, shoving his underwear aside - and then, suddenly, there it was. Beth had seen a few penises before in her life but none of them had looked like this. The hard, veiny cock before her pointed her right in the face, like a loaded gun. It stank of sweat and dirt and it was easily the biggest she had ever seen Beth stared at it open-mouthed for a few seconds.

"No," she managed, the word barely audible as she tried to scramble backward. "Please, no."

"Time to show you your place, bitch," he said, fisting his erection. The sight of that cock, all dirty, veined, and fully erect, brought home the reality of how much danger she was in. Rat-face knelt, straddling her chest, his weight pinning her arms to her sides. The stench of his unwashed skin, and stale sweat filled her nostrils, making her gag. His dick slapped against her cheek, leaving a wet smear. "Open your mouth, cunt," he ordered, one hand gripping her jaw with bruising force. “Suck my cock.”

Suck my cock. The word “Cocksucker” kept echoing through her head. Jolene’s simple explanation to a young Beth no longer seemed so distant. She knew, vaguely, that this was something men and women did, but it was a dirty thing… and an insult. Beth kept her lips pressed tightly together, a last stand of defiance. Ratface's response was to pinch her nose shut, cutting off her air… his knife still pressing against the side of her face. The primitive need for oxygen soon overrode her resistance. When she finally gasped for breath, he thrust forward, forcing himself into her mouth.

Beth immediately and violently gagged. The taste was even worse than the smell. She choked as he pushed deeper, the head of his penis, his cock, hitting the back of her throat.

"That's it, take it all," he grunted, his hips working in a steady rhythm. His hands tangled in her red hair, using it as leverage to force her head to move in counterpoint to his thrusts.

She tried to push it out with her tongue, frantically, but all that did was push her tongue over and over against the man’s sensitive cockhead.

“Mmm, damn little rich girl, your mouth feels good,” the man groaned, feeling her lips stretching around his cock.

Beth closed her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks. She wanted to dissociate herself from this as much as possible to pretend she wasn’t really there, make this a totally mechanical act. She didn’t want to hear her mouth ‘felt good’, she didn’t want there to be a ‘her’ at all right now.

Rat-face’s fingers dug into her scalp as he pulled her back and forth by her hair, forcing her to bob backwards and forwards on the end of his shaft. It was thick, an incompressible tube of invading meat, musky and with a sour taste that made Beth’s eyes water. “This bitch must be sucking men off every day,” the man growled, breathlessly. “She sucks cock like she was born to do it.”

Letting out a sob, Beth tried to shake her head, rejecting that. The air was filled with the sounds of sloppy oral sex and muffled sobs, the poor girl forced to her knees in the alley, the biggest cock she’d ever seen being forced into her mouth, raping it, violating it. She tried to go numb, allowing the slimy, veiny thing to slide in and out over her tongue without any protest, hoping it would be over soon.

Behind him, the others continued their assault on the rest of her body. Someone—she couldn't see who—pushed her skirt up around her waist, exposing her underwear. Rough hands pawed at her breasts, squeezing and pinching without regard for her muffled cries of pain. “That’s cuz she was,” Sarge said with a chuckle. “Her body is just made for fucking. She was born to be used like this.”

"Bet she thinks she's too good for guys like us," said Gutterstink, his voice coming from somewhere near her feet. "Chess champion, thinking she's so smart." He ran a filthy hand up her inner thigh, leaving a grimy streak on her pale skin.

Ratface increased his pace, his thrusts becoming erratic. Beth gagged repeatedly as he hit the back of her throat, her body's natural defenses trying desperately to expel the intrusion. She couldn't breathe properly, couldn't think — her world had narrowed to the pain, the violation, and the desperate need for air.

Without warning, the cruel homeless man forced her head down, hard, his cocktip shunting against the back of her throat. Beth tried to struggle and pull away, choking as she was forced back down, panicking, feeling like she couldn’t breathe. “Nggh, fuck, yeah,” the man snarled as he yanked her back up. Beth gasped desperately around his length and then moaned in distress as she was forced back down, his member shoving hard down her gullet, making it feel achy and bruised. His hand gripped her hair tightly, painfully, as he held her head in place, his hips bucking hard, fucking her little mouth eagerly.

Beth felt like she was going to pass out from the pain, her head being yanked around like a rag doll’s with a hard, hot, veiny dick ramming home… down her throat, making her gag and choke and drool. She didn’t know how she was still breathing, feeling like she was being suffocated by the man’s thick cock, managing to gasp every few seconds as he abused her mercilessly. “Damn, l-little slut,” Rat-face moaned. “You’re gonna m-make me cum, fuck, FUCK!”

“MMPH!” Beth tried to cry out in protest as her head was forced down hard once again, the entire length of the man’s shaft filling her mouth, forcing its way down her throat, stretching it painfully. Her lips were now pressed against his groin… And then, she felt it.

The hot, pulsing shaft inside her throbbed suddenly, and warm fluid gushed out of it, spilling down her throat. It was worse than she could have imagined. Hot, bitter fluid flooded her mouth in pulses, accompanied by his guttural moans of pleasure. She tried to turn her head away, but his grip was unyielding. There was no choice about whether or not to swallow, because his cum was flooding straight down her throat, burning like acid. Faced with the choice of swallowing or choking, Beth swallowed, each convulsion of her throat feeling like a fresh surrender. Beth moaned, crying quietly around his shaft as he grunted, unloading rope after rope of spunk into her mouth.

He slid back slightly, and Beth gasped for air, having to immediately choke down another mouthful of vile ooze as it hit her tongue. She shuddered, tasting the sour foulness of the man’s issue with horrible clarity, feeling like it was burning into her skin. The man’s last few spurts were lazy ones, dribbling out into her mouth, and he suddenly released her head, dragging his cock out, leaving a trail of cum and saliva dangling between them, her mouth open and gasping for the new air she’d been deprived of for so long. The last drops of his semen splattered onto her face. "Good little slut," he said, his voice thick with satisfaction. "You learn quick."

Beth panted, looking up with unfocused eyes at the man who’d just raped her mouth as he stepped back, out of breath himself, while she gasped, foggy-minded and just wanting desperately to go home. She was going to leave New York tomorrow and head back to Kentucky for sure. How was she supposed to sit at a chess table now and act like nothing had ever happened? How was she supposed to sit there, feeling like everyone who looked at her would be able to see clear as day the way a stinking bum had forced his cock down her throat? Beth couldn’t remember the last time she had cried. She hadn’t even cried when her mother died. She wouldn’t cry now… she blinked back the tears that welled up in her eyes. “I want to go home…” she whispered.

“Bitch, what about us?”

Blearily, Beth whipped her head around to look at the other two men. Their cocks were like angry, throbbing spears, pointing up, looming over her. Beth moaned, shaking her head weakly. She couldn’t just couldn’t do any more, she was exhausted, she wanted to lay down and die in this alley, with the shameful, burning taste of a stranger’s seed on her lips and tongue.

Beth turned her head to the side and retched, bringing up nothing but bile that burned her already raw throat. The taste of him remained, coating her tongue and the inside of her cheeks like a toxic film.

"My turn," said another voice — Sarge, she thought, though it was becoming harder to distinguish between them as exhaustion and shock and the tears in her eyes took their toll.

She was vaguely aware of being repositioned, of hands arranging her limbs as though she were a doll rather than a person. Someone slapped her when she didn't respond quickly enough to a command she hadn't even understood.

"Look at her," Sarge said with a laugh. “This is what all you bitches are underneath your money and pretty makeup… just holes to fill."

The words cut through her growing dissociation, their aimed cruelty finding its mark with precision. Beth had fought all her life against being reduced to just a female in a male-dominated world, had proven herself time and again across chess boards worldwide. To be stripped of that identity, to be reduced to nothing but her gender in its most vulnerable form, was a violation beyond the physical.

She tried again to escape into her mind, to the chessboard that had always offered sanctuary. This time, she managed to hold the image for a moment; the familiar pattern of black and white squares, the pieces set up for the opening. Then Sarge’s filthy cock forced its way into her mouth and the chess pieces transformed in her mind's eye, becoming the men who surrounded her, their faces leering from atop the carved wooden bodies.

Reality and imagination blurred as the assault continued. Time lost meaning. Beth retreated further into herself, a technique she had perfected in the orphanage; watching from somewhere distant as her body was used, observing rather than experiencing. It wasn't complete protection, but it created a buffer between her consciousness and the ongoing violation. She observed her body's responses with clinical detachment, noting the way her throat constricted around the intrusion, the involuntary tears that streamed from her eyes, the broken sounds that escaped between thrusts. This wasn't her, she told herself. This was happening to someone else. Some other poor girl.

When Sarge finished, coating her throat with another flood of bitter fluid, Beth thought perhaps it was over. She lay limp on the ground, energy depleted, mind fragmented. A hollow sensation spread through her chest — not relief, but the emptiness that follows complete capitulation.

You resign now.

Hands gripped her arms, pulling her back to a sitting position. Through swollen eyelids, she saw that the men had formed a circle around her. Their expressions held none of the satiation she might have expected after release. Instead, they only showed a predatory anticipation that told her with terrible clarity that they were far from finished. Beth had no time to recover before another set of grimy hands seized her hair. The man she thought of as Gutterstink forced her face upward, his stained teeth bared in what might have been a smile on a less dirt-caked inhuman face. "My turn with the trashy rich slut," he growled, the words bubbling through phlegm. Beth's jaw ached from the previous violation, but that didn't stop him from pressing his erection against her lips, the stench of unwashed flesh making her gag before he'd even entered her mouth.

She tried to turn away, a feeble resistance that earned her a vicious slap. The impact rocked her head to the side, momentarily dimming her vision to a field of exploding stars. When clarity returned, it brought with it the realization that the other men were repositioning themselves around her, their faces alight with a hunger that had nothing to do with food.

"Get her on her hands and knees," ordered Sarge, clearly in charge even in this barbaric scenario. "Easier access that way."

Hands gripped her shoulders, her arms, her legs, too many and too strong to fight against. They manhandled her like a chess piece being forced into an unwanted position, flipping her over and hauling her up onto all fours. The concrete bit into her palms and knees, small stones embedding themselves in her skin.

"Hold her steady," Gutterstink commanded, moving to position himself in front of her face again. "Don't want her squirming away when I'm balls deep in her throat."

Two of the men knelt beside her, pinning her arms with their knees. The pressure was immense, cutting off circulation and ensuring she couldn't collapse or pull away. Beth's shoulders burned with the strain of supporting her weight at this awkward angle. Gutterstink grabbed her chin, his fingernails digging into her skin. "Open wide, rich little princess. Time to see what that pretty mouth can really do."

When she hesitated, he slapped his cock against her face, the fat, slimy organ leaving wet trails across her cheeks. The humiliation burned hotter than the physical pain, reducing her — U.S. Chess Champion, international competitor, prodigy — to nothing more than a cumdump for these disgusting men.

"I said open," Gutterstink snarled, and his fist smashed forward. Beth barely felt the pain as his fist contacted her cheekbone, snapping her head to the side. It was as if she were observing the violence from afar, impersonal and detached. When the metallic taste of blood flooded her mouth, however, that brought her sharply back to the present moment… dragging her awareness back into her battered body. She felt more than heard the crunch of her nose breaking, and her cry was a choked, gurgling scream as the warm liquid gushed down her chin. The instant her lips parted, Gutterstink forced himself into her mouth, past her teeth, stretching her already bruised lips with one rough thrust.

Blood mingled with the vile taste of his cock, and Beth nearly vomited from the combined foulness. The stench alone was unbearable, a rancid mix of piss and sweat and unwashed flesh, but now it was joined by the acrid tang of violence. The split in her lip added to the grotesque mixture of sweat, semen, and saliva already coating her skin, making her feel like she was drowning in the collective filth of her own defilement. Despite the brutality of what he had just done, the violent homeless man showed no hesitation… he was deep inside her before she even finished drawing breath to scream again, her nose gushing and swelling rapidly, making it impossible for her to breathe. She gagged, unable even to think past the immediate sensation of suffocation and humiliation.

Beth convulsed, her body spasming uncontrollably as it struggled for air and failed to expel the brutal intrusion. Her own broken flesh added to the overwhelming assault on her senses. She had never felt so shattered, so utterly dismantled, as she did now with his filthy cock ramming against the back of her throat and blood choking her as it leaked from her shattered nose.

Unlike Ratface's methodical approach, Gutterstink showed no restraint. He pushed deeper immediately, the head of his cock ramming against the back of her throat. Beth retched violently, her body convulsing as it tried to expel the intrusion. The taste of blood was everywhere, overpowering what little of her senses remained. It was impossible to escape; every desperate swallow drew the taste into her throat and the scent into her lungs along with all the disgusting filth on his dick. "That's it, choke on it," he laughed, the sound wet and bubbling. His hands locked around her head, fingers tangling in her red hair as he established a brutal rhythm. Each thrust forced his length deeper, cutting off her air and making her gag repeatedly.

Behind her, she could feel the remaining men pawing at her exposed body. Hands squeezed her breasts roughly, pinching and twisting her nipples until pain radiated across her chest in burning waves. Someone — Ratface, she thought, recognizing his bony fingers — slapped her buttocks with enough force to leave handprints on her pale skin.

"Tiny tits," one of them commented, squeezing her breast until she whimpered around Gutterstink's invading dick. "Like fucking little lemons."

Another hand clawed at her inner thighs, nails raking the sensitive skin and leaving red welts in their wake. Beth tried to scream, but the sound was muffled, transformed into vibrations that only seemed to increase Gutterstink's pleasure. "Fuck, her neck is tight," he grunted, increasing his pace. "Those little throat muscles squeeze my cock just right."

Behind her, she felt hands grabbing the waistband of her underwear. In a swift, brutal motion, the fabric was torn away, leaving her completely exposed. Cool air touched the most intimate parts of her body, followed immediately by rough fingers exploring her vulnerability.

"Look at that," said Ratface, his voice thick with anticipation. "Pretty little pussy, all fresh and pink." The dirty man positioned himself behind her, and Beth felt his hardness pressing against her entrance, probing and insistent. "Bet you never thought you'd have to sob your way through taking what you normally just tease when you woke up this morning, did you rich girl?"

He spit, the warm wetness landing between her legs, his only concession to lubrication. Then he positioned his rock-hard cock at her entrance and pushed forward in a single, brutal thrust.

The pain was unlike anything Beth had experienced, a white-hot tearing that radiated outward from her core. She screamed around Gutterstink's shaft, the sound emerging as a muffled wail that seemed to echo in the enclosed alley space. "Tight little bitch," Ratface grunted, gripping her hips with bruising force as he established a punishing rhythm. "Bleeding too. Maybe never been fucked before."

The thought that he could tell she was bleeding sent a new wave of horror through Beth. She could feel the warm trickle down her inner thigh, the slickness that was not arousal but injury. Her body, unprepared and unwilling, was being fucked raw by his dirty prick.

Ratface seemed to take her involuntary tightness as encouragement, driving deeper with each thrust. His wrist-thick fuck-rod stretched her painfully, tearing at delicate tissues and sending waves of agony through her lower body. "Take it all," he demanded, slapping her ass hard enough to leave another handprint. "Take every fucking inch."

In front of her, Gutterstink increased his pace, his thrusts becoming erratic as he neared his climax. Beth's throat was raw, her jaw aching from being forced open for so long. He pulled back slightly, the head of his penis resting on her tongue. "French kiss it," he ordered, forcing her to run her tongue over the swollen head. She was barely even able to taste the salty pre-cum that leaked from the tip over the grime caked on his cock. "Show me how much you love it!"

Beth complied mechanically, her mind retreating further from the reality of what was happening to her body. From somewhere distant, she observed herself performing the demanded act, noted the way her tongue moved over the unfamiliar flesh, and processed the bitter taste that filled her mouth. It wasn't happening to Beth Harmon, chess prodigy. It was happening to someone else, someone who merely looked like her.

Gutterstink's climax, when it came, was as violent as everything else about him. Hot, viscous fluid erupted from his dick, some of it shooting down her throat while the rest sprayed across her face as he pulled out. Ropes of semen landed in her hair, across her nose, coating her eyelashes and sealing one eye shut with its sticky consistency. "Fuck yeah," he crowed, using his softening cock to smear his ejaculate across her cheeks. "Look at that… rich slut with a face full of cum."

The others laughed and jeered, their voices mingling into an echoing chorus that seemed to come from very far away. They were mocking her, she knew, but Beth could barely hear it over the white noise of her own dissociation. She had to retreat deep into herself, away from the agony being inflicted on her body. She could hardly even register the hands that continued to grope and claw at her bare skin. Ratface's merciless invasion of her cunt overwhelmed all other sensations, each thrust sending fresh waves of pain through her as he continued raping her. The brutal rhythm was unrelenting, further tearing her apart inside, and she felt herself splintering under the intensity of it all. How could anyone survive this?

She struggled to maintain any level of distance from her humiliating violation as Ratface continued his brutal assault, but he seemed insatiable, fucking her with an animalistic frenzy that defied belief. Each thrust felt like it might be the last, but then he would drive himself deeper still, pounding against her bruised cervix and making her scream into the darkness. His stamina was horrifying, and she nearly passed out from holding her breath trying to avoid it. It was as though he intended to fuck her to death. The pain was so vivid, so consuming, that it seemed to rip her center apart.

"My turn to paint her insides white," Ratface announced, the words a taunting echo that pierced through the fog. His pace became frenzied, each thrust more violent than the last. Then Beth's world contracted into a singularity of pain as his movements faltered, and Ratface let out a final groan as with a final, brutal push, he buried himself completely, his body jerking as he emptied himself inside her.

Ratface groaned as he released inside her, the obscene warmth of his cum spreading through her like poison. His cock pulsed, each spasm flooding her with more of his seed. She could feel the sticky mess filling her up, filling her until it seeped obscenely down her thighs. Her revulsion was complete. She couldn't even tell anymore how much of the slickness between her legs was cum and how much was blood. She could feel it trickling out of her, a constant reminder of her powerlessness. She wanted to collapse and disappear altogether, but she could not.

A new horror dawned through Beth's haze of pain and dissociation. Pregnancy. These animals were ejaculating inside her, potentially creating a permanent reminder of this violation. The thought sent a fresh wave of nausea surging through her.

I’m sorry, Mother.

Gutterstink's cum dripped down her face onto her lips, and she tried to spit out the vile mixture as she gagged on it. She felt like she might choke all over again. It all mingled together into an unbearable filth: sweat, blood, semen.

Her mind drifted further, seeking any escape from the possibility of being impregnated by one of these filthy bastards. She retreated into herself, away from the terrible intimacy of what was happening. Chess moves flickered through her mind: Bishop to E4. Queen to D8. Knight to C6. Beth Harmon, chess prodigy, would have sacrificed even more than her body to make this stop.

Ratface withdrew, leaving her feeling raw and torn. Before she could collapse, however, new hands gripped her, holding her in position. Behind her a man settled into position, his hard rod pressing against her sex while Ratface circled to her face, his own organ glistening with a mixture of blood and semen. "Like it clean," he ordered, pressing the filthy length against her lips. "You made a mess, bitch. Clean it up."

Beth's mind recoiled even as her body, now operating on survival instinct alone, obeyed. The metallic tang of her own blood mixed with the bitter residue of his semen on top of the filthy that still coated his cock even now created a taste so vile she nearly passed out, and a small part of her couldn’t stop thinking about how he had been wiping it off inside of her pussy. Behind her, a cock thrust into her already torn cunt, eliciting a fresh cry of pain that was muffled by Ratface's renewed invasion of her mouth.

"Grab her hands," a new voice - New Kid? - instructed from behind her. He had come back? Switched out? "Make her work for all of us at once."

Someone — Sarge, she thought, but it was hard to tell — grabbed her wrist and placed her hand on his exposed erection. On her other side, another set of fingers wrapped around her free hand, forcing it to encircle yet another hardness. "Stroke it," Sarge commanded, moving her hand up and down his shaft. "Show us what those pretty manicured fingers can do."

Beth found herself servicing all four men at once: Ratface in her mouth, the thin black man violating her from behind, and both her hands were wrapped around the remaining two. Her body bounced violently with each of the New Kid’s thrusts, making it difficult to maintain the rhythm they demanded with her hands. "Listen to her slutty screams," Sarge commented as Beth's muffled cries continued around Ratface's dick. "Bet she never makes those noises at the hairdresser or her fancy clubs."

New Kid grabbed her hair with his free hand. His grip was iron tight, yanking her head back at a terrible angle and making it even harder for her to breathe. Beth choked around the wretched length that filled her mouth, her silent plea for mercy an unspoken scream lost to the brutality of his unrelenting assault. He raped her from behind with total disregard, each thrust pounding her forward until she thought her neck would snap. Her body was nothing to him, not even the shell she had tried to convince herself it was. Her face twisted in agony with every vicious slam, tears streaming from her eyes and mixing with the cum that dripped down her cheeks.

"Make her gag," Ratface laughed, his voice thick with the thrill of her helplessness. "Make her fucking choke."

Beth sobbed, but her agony only seemed to excite them more. Every time she wanted the pain to stop, they only drove her deeper into it. "Give her enough of that," Gutterstink croaked, "she might really learn to love it."

New Kid’s cock thrust forward, finding new depths of abuse. Her bones felt like they would shatter. “No… she won’t. Too stupid to ever understand what she’s good for.” New Kid's movements were becoming more erratic, his breathing harsh and labored like an animal about to rip into his meal. With a final, grunting thrust, he buried himself deep inside her, adding his own filthy seed to Ratface's as though claiming ownership. Beth's consciousness reeled from the sensation of being filled with yet another man's ejaculate. The thought that he had cum inside her, like the others, sent a fresh shudder of revulsion through her body, as violent as another rape. She could feel it mixing with what was already there, a loathsome cocktail of semen and blood. They were breeding her like an animal, she thought, and the humiliation was complete. She couldn't even hold onto the hope that this would be over soon.

As New Kid withdrew, Sarge and Gutterstink moved closer, their erections now inches from her face. Ratface pulled out of her mouth, grabbing her hair to position her between the two newcomers. "Make it good," he ordered, "or we'll find nastier ways to entertain ourselves."

Beth's arms trembled, barely supporting her weight after the prolonged strain. Her lips were cracked and swollen, her jaw aching from being forced open for so long. Still, survival instinct drove her to comply, turning her head to take Gutterstink into her mouth while continuing to stroke Sarge with her hand.

The two men knelt on either side of her, their breathing growing heavier as she worked. New Kid grabbed her head, forcing her to take him deeper than her raw throat could comfortably accommodate. When she gagged, he only thrust harder, seemingly enjoying her distress.

"Look at the rich bitch now," Sarge taunted, his hand covering hers to increase the pressure of her strokes. "Taking dick like a pro.”

Gutterstink pulled out suddenly, his cock slapping wetly against her cheek. "I’m about to paint a fucking masterpiece on this bitch,” he snarled, his hand working furiously at his own shaft. The first rope of semen caught Beth across the forehead, the second across her already-coated cheek. On her other side, Sarge reached his own climax, his ejaculate landing in her hair and across her shoulder. Gutterstink pushed back into her mouth for the final seconds of his orgasm, releasing the last shots of cum directly onto her tongue… the salty, bitter taste competing with the rancid flavor of his cock as she swallowed mechanically to dispose of the unwanted, disgusting fluid.

"Good slut," Sarge approved, using his softening shaft to smear his own release across her cheek. "Look at her. Fer face covered in cum, that pussy leaking jizz. Proper little whore now, isn't she?"

As the final man finished using her, Beth's arms gave out. She collapsed onto the filthy ground, her body a mass of pain and violated tissue. Her face was a mess of drying semen, her thighs sticky with blood and the ejaculate that leaked from her abused vagina. And worse of all, even through the dissociative fog that was doing its best to enveloped her consciousness, a single, terrible thought emerged with crystal clarity: they weren't finished. The way Sarge stood over her, looking at her, still hungry, still angry, told her that what she had endured so far was merely the beginning.

Through swollen eyes, she watched Sarge step forward. He knelt behind her, his calloused hands gripping her buttocks with violence more than lust. As Beth lay curled on the filthy ground, he lifted her ass up and off the dirty concrete. Those hands — they'd killed before, she was certain — spread her cheeks apart, exposing the one part of her they hadn't yet violated.

"No!" Beth whispered, the word barely audible through her ravaged throat. "Please, don’t… not there! I can't!"

Sarge's response was a sound that might have been a laugh in another life. In the world Beth lived in, though, it was only a dry, humorless exhalation that carried no warmth or humor. "Soldiers don’t get to choose their war,” he said. “And cunts don’t get to choose anything at all, far as I’m concerned.”

Beth tried to crawl away, but her movements were feeble and uncoordinated. Her body felt disconnected from her commands, responding sluggishly and awkwardly. She didn’t make any real progress at all before Sarge's hand clamped around her ankle, dragging her back with effortless strength. "Hold her down," he ordered, and the others moved with alarming eagerness to comply. Ratface grabbed her left arm, wrenching it out to the side until her shoulder joint screamed in protest. New Kid took her right, mimicking the position so that she was spread like a specimen being prepared for dissection. Gutterstink knelt by her head, his filthy hands tangling in her hair to hold her face flat against the rough concrete.

"Please!" Beth cried out again, her voice stronger now as her terror grew. "You'll tear me apart! I'll die!"

"You won't die," Sarge assured her, though there was no comfort in his cold certainty. He positioned himself more precisely, his knees forcing her legs wider apart. Beth felt the blunt pressure of his erection against her most private opening; A part of her that had never been touched, let alone violated in this way. Her entire body clenched in anticipation of the pain to come. "You’ll wish you would. But you won’t.”

"Please don’t do this!" she begged, hysteria rising in her voice. "At least use something! Spit, something—"

Sarge ignored her, pressing forward with inexorable force. The pressure built to an unbearable point, and then there was a tearing sensation that sent lightning bolts of agony up her spine. Beth screamed, the sound raw and primal, stripped of any pretense of dignity or restraint. "Tight," Sarge commented dispassionately, his voice cold as though making a tactical observation. He paused, allowing her body a moment to register the invasion before pushing again… and then something gave, and he sank in.

The pain was beyond anything Beth had experienced, worse than the earlier violations, worse than any injury she'd ever suffered. It was as though her body were being split in two from the inside. Her vision narrowed to a pinpoint of light surrounded by encroaching darkness. "Look at her face," Gutterstink laughed, yanking her hair to turn her face toward New Kid. "Crying like a bitch."

Sarge continued his relentless advance, each inch of penetration sending fresh waves of agony through Beth's body. She could feel something tearing inside her, a sensation of wetness that could only be blood. "She's bleeding," Ratface noted, sounding almost impressed. "Your monster cock is breaking her open, Sarge." The veteran showed no reaction to either the observation or the sight of blood now trickling down Beth's thighs. He just kept pounding her, slamming his ravaging rape rod in again and again. His rhythm never faltered, and he wasn’t even breathing hard… He might have been field-stripping a weapon rather than violating a woman's body.

Beth's screams had devolved into broken sobs, her throat too raw to produce more sound. Her consciousness fluctuated, the pain so intense that her mind kept trying to shut down, only to be jolted back by fresh waves of agony when Sarge pushed deeper or changed his angle slightly. "Take it all," Gutterstink encouraged, his foul breath washing over Beth's face as he leaned closer. "Every inch of that military-grade cock like a silver spoon up your tight little rich ass."

Sarge's hands had moved to her hips, using them as leverage to pull her back onto his invading length. The position forced her back to arch unnaturally, adding muscular strain to the internal tearing she was experiencing.

Through the haze of pain, Beth became aware that her mouth was being forced open again. Someone — Ratface, she thought, recognizing the shape of him through her tears — was pushing his renewed erection between her lips.

"Gotta keep this mouth busy," he explained, pressing forward until she gagged. "Don't want the whole neighborhood hearing those screams."

Beth's world contracted to these twin points of violation: Front and back, her body nothing more than a vessel for their brutality. She tried again to retreat into her mind, to the chess board that had always offered solace, but the pain kept shattering the image before it could fully form. Sarge had established a rhythm now, each thrust driving his full length into her torn and bleeding rectum. The pain had reached a plateau of sorts. It didn’t fade, but at least it was no longer increasing with each movement. She just kept flailing, desperate to escape the grip they had on her… and in her frantic efforts, the arm New Kid held slipped free. Beth blindly slashed backward, crawling with everything she had.

Her nails raked across Sarge's forearm, and he snarled in fury. The scratch couldn't have caused much damage, but the unexpectedness of it seemed to break through his focus… For the first time, his rhythm faltered, and he came to stop impaled to the hilt in her spasming guts.

"The bitch scratched me," he said, his voice carrying a dangerous edge that hadn't been there before. The cold calculation in his tone was replaced by something worse: Focused anger.

"Hold her down," he ordered again, but with a new intensity. "Someone teach this whore a lesson and break her fucking fingers!"

Beth's sluggish mind took a moment to process the words, but when their meaning penetrated, a fresh wave of terror crashed through her. "No!" she pleaded, dragging her face free of the cock in her mouth. A string of saliva stretching between her lips and his erection before breaking. "Please, no! I'm sorry!"

Ratface abandoned even trying to push into her mouth. He moved to her side, grabbing her right wrist in a grip that felt like iron shackles. “You care where I start?”" he asked, forcing her hand open and examining her fingers with exaggerated interest.

Sarge started thrusting into her again. "I couldn’t give less of a shit,” he said, smashing his hips against her ass like he wanted to hammer her down into the ground. “Just do them one at a time.”

"No!" Beth cried, trying to curl her fingers into a protective fist. "Please, I need my hands! I'm a chess player, please!"

Her profession, which had once been a source of pride and identity, now felt like a pathetic plea. In this alley, with these men, her accomplishments meant nothing. Less than nothing. They actually seemed to fuel the men's desire to destroy the parts of her that made her special.

"What the fuck is chess?" Ratface sneered, forcing her little finger straight out despite her best efforts. "Whatever it is, I hope they let you ‘play’ it without a hand…”

The homeless man began to bend her pinky backward, slowly at first… then with a sudden, vicious twist, it snapped. The sound of the bone breaking was audible even over Beth's scream, a wet crack that seemed to echo off the alley walls. Pain shot up her arm, bright and searing, temporarily eclipsing even the agony of Sarge's continued violation of her rectum.

"One down," Ratface announced, releasing the now-crippled finger and moving to the next. "Four to go."

Beth sobbed, her body shaking with the force of her terror and pain. "Please!" she begged, the word almost unintelligible through her sobbing and the nasal tone from her broken nose. "I'll do anything! Please stop!"

"You'll do anything anyway," New Kid pointed out with his terrible precision. "Nothing we want from you we can’t take.”

Ratface gripped her ring finger, positioning it as he had the first. Beth tried to prepare herself for the pain, but when the next deliberate, measured snap came it was no less shocking, no less agonizing.

Behind her, Sarge maintained his methodical pace, his cock driving deep into her abused body with each thrust. He seemed to be taking pleasure not in the act itself but in the control it gave him, in the power to reduce another human being to nothing more than a collection of pain responses. "Keep going," he instructed Ratface. "Make it hurt. She gets so tight when you do that!”

A fresh wave of tears blurred Beth's vision as Ratface took hold of her middle finger, straightening it with exaggerated care. This finger — the one that moved the queen across the board in countless winning combinations — now trembled in his grip, awaiting its destruction. "Please," she whispered one last time, though she knew it was futile. "Don’t do this… Not like this."

The break, when it came, was more brutal than the previous two. Ratface twisted as he bent, adding a rotational force that produced a more complex fracture. The pain was transcendent, carrying Beth briefly into a state beyond consciousness before the relentless assault on her body dragged her back.

"Pay attention," Gutterstink hissed, slapping her face to bring her focus back. "You don't get to check out until we're done with you."

Ratface moved to her index finger, the one Beth used to capture her opponents' pieces, to advance her pawns on their journey across the board. He bent it back slowly, deliberately, watching her face as the tendons stretched to their limit. "Wonder if they'll let you play with a cast," he mused, then applied the final pressure that sent the bone snapping through skin. Blood welled from where the compound fracture broke the surface, adding a new dimension to the already excruciating pain.

Beth's screams had given way to a continuous, high-pitched keening that didn't sound human even to her own ears. Her mind kept trying to retreat, to escape into unconsciousness, but the men wouldn't allow it, keeping her anchored in the present through deliberate modulation of pain.

"Last one," Ratface announced, taking her thumb in his grip.

Behind her, Sarge's rhythm had changed, becoming more erratic. "Wait," he ordered, his voice tight with the effort of control. "Hold it there. I want to feel her reaction."

Ratface obediently held Beth's thumb at the breaking point, the pressure exquisite in its focused agony. Sarge increased his pace, driving into her with renewed force. Beth felt his body tensing, the prelude to climax.

"Now!" he commanded, and Ratface snapped her thumb with a twist that sent bone fragments grinding against each other. Beth screamed like she was being murdered, and her entire body clenched on him in agony that coincided with Sarge's release. He drove himself to the hilt as his semen flooded her torn rectum, her squirming, hurting body milking him and making the hot fluid spill into her like from a hose. His hands gripped her hips with bruising force, holding her immobile as he emptied himself completely.

When he finally withdrew, Beth collapsed completely, her body limp and unresponsive. She lay on the filthy ground, her right hand a twisted, bloody mess, her lower body leaking blood and semen. Consciousness flickered at the edges of her awareness, darkness encroaching in blessed waves.

The men's voices seemed to come from very far away, their words indistinct and meaningless. Beth welcomed the approaching unconsciousness, hoping that perhaps she wouldn't wake up, that this liminal space between awareness and oblivion might extend into permanent escape.

Her last coherent thought, before darkness claimed her completely, was to wonder if she would ever get to play chess again, or if this squalid alley filled with filth would be the only board she knew for the rest of her life.

——————————

Beth lay where they had left her, a broken marionette with cut strings, her naked body curled into itself as if trying to disappear into the concrete. Her rape-ravaged vagina leaked rivulets of semen and blood that pooled beneath her hips, marking the ground with evidence of what they had taken from her. Beth's consciousness drifted in and out, her mind unable to maintain a continuous grasp on the horror of her situation. The pain from her broken fingers pulsed in waves that synchronized with her heartbeat, while the tearing sensations in her vagina and rectum created a background of constant agony. Her thoughts felt like a board, picked up in mid game and hurled by a furious loser until pieces were scattered everywhere. She softly sobbed while the four homeless men lounged around the alley like victors at a feast, their bodies arranged in casual disarray in their tiny corner of the city as they leaned against the dumpster and crumbling brick walls. At one point, one of them had left with her money and come back with beer… she didn’t remember watching him leave or return. Ratface swigged his beer from a bottle, his rotten teeth exposed as his lips peeled back.

Gutterstink belched, the sound echoing off the alley walls like some grotesque announcement. He nudged Beth with his filthy boot, prodding her ribs until she whimpered. "Still with us, bitch? Wouldn't want you missing the after-party."

Ratface rummaged through the other effects from her discarded purse. His ugly, mean face lit up with cruel delight as he picked up her pack of cigarettes and a lighter. "Well, well," he sneered, flipping open the pack and removing one. "Fancy smokes for a fancy bitch." He produced a lighter, the flame illuminating his hollow cheeks as he inhaled deeply.

He moved closer to Beth, crouching beside her head. His fingers tangled in her hair, wrenching her face upward to meet his gaze. She blinked through swollen eyelids, trying to focus on the burning cigarette he held inches from her face.

"Rich cunt gotta taste her own cancer sticks now, huh?" he asked, blowing a stream of smoke directly into her eyes. The acrid cloud made her cough, the spasms sending fresh waves of pain through her violated body. Beth tried to turn away, but his grip on her hair was unyielding. The tiny cruelty of them making her inhale smoke seemed absurdly trivial compared to what had already been done to her body, yet it was one two many… just one more defilement of the already powerless woman, and she started once again to sob in earnest.

New Kid had been staring across the alley for some time, ignoring everyone while he drank. Finally, he walked over and picked up a discarded newspaper laying urban detritus collected against a chain-link fence that blocked off the back of the alley, revealing what he’s been staring at. He held up the crumpled page, his thin face animated with malicious excitement. "Well would you look at this!" he announced, smoothing the wrinkled newsprint against his thigh. The others gathered around, momentarily releasing Beth from their attention. She remained motionless, afraid that any movement might draw them back to her.

"CHESS PRODIGY ARRIVES FOR EXHIBITION MATCHES," New Kid read aloud, his voice carrying a sense of amusement. "Beth Harmon, U.S. Champion, will display her remarkable talent against local masters in Washington Square Park this weekend."

The headline was accompanied by a photograph — Beth at her last tournament, her expression intense and focused across a chessboard. The contrast between that image and her current state was so vast that it seemed to belong to a different lifetime, a different universe.

New Kid knelt beside her, slapping her cheek with the newspaper. The impact was light compared to their earlier violence, but it carried a different kind of pain: The destruction of who she had been, who she had worked so hard to become. "Lookit this!" he crowed. "Famous fuckhole thinks she's Einstein or somethin? Bet that cum-dumb cunt can't even count to six now that you broke half her fingers." He shoved the newspaper against her mouth, forcing the cheap newsprint between her lips. The dirty, crumpled paper mixed with the lingering flavors of their violations, creating a nauseating combination that made her gag. New Kid pressed harder, using the paper to stifle her reflexive sobs.

"Maybe she can count using all the loads we dumped in her," Sarge suggested, his methodical nature extending even to his cruelty. He sat on an overturned crate, his posture military-straight despite their squalid surroundings. "Two in the cunt, one in the ass, and… what, five or six across her face or down her throat?"

"Lost count," Gutterstink admitted with another belch. "Chess bitch should know. Aint she supposed to be smart and good with numbers and shit."

"Not this slut. She's just another hole," Ratface said, tapping ash from his cigarette onto Beth's bare shoulder. The hot cinders made her flinch. "All that stupid game crap don't mean shit when you're face-down in an alley with your ass in the air."

The men laughed, passing around the remaining cigarettes from Beth's pack. They discussed her as though she weren't present, or as though she were an object incapable of understanding human speech. She was "the bitch," "that cunt," "this slut." They debated which of her orifices had been the tightest, which had yielded the most satisfying resistance.

Beth lay still, trying to make herself smaller, less noticeable. She prayed they would grow bored, would finish their cigarettes and beers and leave her broken body to whatever fate awaited it. But their attention, having briefly shifted to conversation, soon returned to her with renewed cruelty.

Gutterstink finished his beer with a final gulp, then examined the empty bottle with speculative interest. "Quit yer bawlin', slut," he growled, moving toward Beth's prone form.

She hadn't realized she was still crying. Silent tears tracked through the filth on her face, mixing with drying semen and blood. She tried to stop, to deny him the satisfaction of her visible suffering, but her body no longer responded to her commands. Gutterstink knelt between her legs, forcing them apart with his knees. The movement sent fresh pain through her torn tissues. "Got a present for you," he announced, positioning the empty beer bottle at the entrance to her abused vagina.

"No…" Beth managed, the word barely audible through her damaged throat. "Please, no more…"

He ignored her plea, pressing the base of the bottle against her opening. The glass was cold against her inflamed tissues, the hard edge already causing discomfort to her raw, inflamed flesh before he even began to push. "Newspaper said you like getting trophies. We got a trophy for ya," he sneered, shoving the bottle forward until the wider portion stretched her painfully. "Bottle-fucked like a trashcan whore."

Beth's back arched involuntarily as the widest part of the bottle breached her, sending fresh waves of agony through her already damaged vaginal canal. The rigid glass had none of the minimal give of human flesh, its unyielding surface scraping against her torn tissues with vicious cruelty.

Ratface watched with detached interest, drawing on his cigarette as though observing some mundane street performance. His gaze shifted between the bottle's invasion and Beth's face, cataloging her responses with predatory attention. When he finished his cigarette, he leaned forward, pressing the lit end against her left nipple. The pain was immediate and intense — a focused point of agony that sent electric currents racing through her chest. Beth's body convulsed, her back arching as a scream tore from her ravaged throat, but trying to move away from the fire only jerked her body harder against the bottle, compounding her suffering.

"Burn marks suit a dumb cunt," Ratface observed, grinding the cigarette butt into her skin until it was fully extinguished. He reached for another from the pack, lighting it with casual, dismissive disdain. "Let's make sure your little tits match."

Before Beth could prepare herself, he repeated the torture on her right breast, holding the burning ember against her nipple until her flesh sizzled. She screamed again, less a human being and more a trapped animal trying to squirm away from too many sources of pain. Through tear-blurred vision, Beth watched him draw on the cigarette again, the ember glowing brighter as he inhaled. He blew the smoke into her face, then lowered the cigarette toward her navel.

"Stop it!!!" she pleaded, the word emerging as a rasp rather than a coherent sound. She held up both hands in a warding gesture towards him which only made her broken fingers hurt even worse.

She was so distracted worrying about the cigarette, she had stopped paying attention to Gutterstink and his bottle. It was stuck about 2/3rds of the way into her body and he was frowning at it, irritated that it wouldn't penetrate further as it got wider. "Fucking cheap beer," he muttered. "Can't even get a decent bottle to fuck a slut with these days." Then without hesitation he raised one dirty boot and stomped on the protruding end of the bottle.

The force drove the glass brutally forward, the bottle's neck disappearing inside Beth as the unyielding nose smashed against her cervix like a knife. Beth's world exploded into white-hot agony. The scream that tore from her lips didn't sound human even to her own ears — a primal, hellish wail of pure suffering, the kind that Mrs Deardorff used to claim the damned would make as they burned. Her body bucked and thrashed, but the bottle remained lodged in place, the pressure against her cervix creating a new dimension of pain.

"There we go," Gutterstink approved, giving the base of the bottle a final tap with his boot toe. "Now it fits."

New Kid laughed. “Not as pretty as her picture in the paper anymore,” he said with a smirk. "Chess genius? More like a garbage can trash whore." He kicked her limp thigh to emphasize his point.

The men reclined back against the wall after that, passing around the remaining cigarettes and beer, drinking and smoking with casual disregard for the broken body at their feet. Beth lay in a haze of pain, her consciousness flickering, and as the men talked Beth didn’t dare make a sound, or even move. The bottle inside her created constant pressure, while the burns on her breasts throbbed in counterpoint to her broken fingers. She could no longer distinguish individual pains: her entire body had become a symphony of suffering, with no part of her untouched by their brutality. Her tears fell silently as they discussed her as though she were a shared experience rather than a person, critiquing her performance, comparing her to other victims, debating whether she was worth fucking again or not once they'd rested.

Through the fog of agony, a single thought emerged with terrible clarity: this was her reality now. The Beth Harmon who had moved chess pieces with confidence and precision, who had traveled the world competing against grandmasters, who had crafted beautiful combinations across sixty-four squares. That person no longer existed. She had been systematically dismantled, reduced to nothing more than damaged flesh and broken bones in a forgotten alley.

More than anything else, though, the glass bottle inside her had become the center of her universe. Beth suspected that it had cracked when he kicked it, because it felt like it was achingly painful against her insides with even the slight movement of a breath. Blood and semen leaked around its base, creating a sticky pool beneath her hips.

Beth’s first realization that the men had turned their predatory attention back to her came as a sharp, sickening jolt, a fistful of her greasy, tangled hair yanked so hard her scalp screamed in protest. Gutterstink’s grimy fingers twisted the strands, pulling her head back until her neck arched uncomfortably, her throat exposed and vulnerable. She whimpered, a pathetic little sound that only seemed to amuse him as he dragged her across the filthy ground, her knees scraping against broken glass and discarded trash wrappers.

He slumped against the grimy brick wall, his lumpy, misshapen body spreading out like a vile throne. With a cruel grin, he yanked her head forward, forcing her face into his lap. This close and with nothing else to distract her, the stench of his unwashed body hit her like a wall — a nauseating blend of sour sweat, stale beer, and something rancid that made her stomach churn. The rough fabric of his stained jeans scratched her cheek, but it was the heat of his half-hard cock pressing insistently against her face that made her breath hitch. He reeked of filth and decay, his dick a thick, ugly thing that even half-mast was already too much. She could feel the pulse of it against her bruised lips, the faint throb of his arousal as he adjusted himself, shoving the swollen head of his cock against her mouth.

“Open wide, you lazy cunt,” he growled, his voice thick with malice and beer. His free hand fumbled with his belt, yanking his jeans down just enough to let his cock spring free. It slapped wetly against her cheek, the tip already glistening with pre-cum and God knows what else was dirtying the unbathed shaft. He twisted his grip on her hair, yanking her head back until her soft lips hung open, slack and trembling. She didn’t fight as he stuffed his mostly-limp cock past her bruised lips and into her mouth. Not that she could: Her body was a broken thing, all fight drained out of her long ago. The weight of his disgusting shaft pressed down on her tongue, thick and unyielding, the salty tang of his skin making her gag reflex kick in. Her body flinched, but she couldn’t pull back as his grip on her hair tightened, fingers digging into her scalp as he forced her deeper. She choked, tears springing to her eyes as she struggled to breathe.

“Give it a tongue bath, bitch,” he sneered, his voice dripping with disgust and entitlement. His hips bucked forward, forcing her down until he was flattening her broken nose again in the wiry tangle of his pubic hair. The stench was overwhelming; sour and musky, like something long forgotten in a damp, dark corner. She gagged again, saliva pooling in her mouth as she struggled to accommodate his disgusting girth. But Gutterstink wasn’t satisfied. He laughed, a deep, cruel sound that made her skin crawl.

“Thanks for the beer, slut,” he taunted, his voice thick with mockery. His fingers twisted tighter in her hair, making her whimper around the intrusion in her mouth. “That shit just goes right through me.”

Before she could even think about what was happening, she felt the sharp, unmistakable warmth of liquid hitting the back of her throat. It took her a moment for the realization of what it was to penetrate her shell-shocked mind… he was pissing in her. Beth choked, her body convulsing as the bitter liquid flooded her mouth. The hot and acrid fluid forced its way down her throat, choking her. She moaned, trying to pull away, but Gutterstink held her firm with his cock shoved deep into her mouth as he emptied his bladder into her. The taste was unbearable, a sharp, sour tang that made her stomach heave, but she couldn’t spit it out, couldn’t cough, couldn’t breathe. Beth couldn’t do anything except swallow, her throat working frantically to keep from drowning in his filth.

Gutterstink laughed again, the sound harsh and guttural, his hips jerking as he finished pissing down her throat. “That’s it, you filthy gutter slut,” he spat, his voice thick with contempt. “Drink it all up. That’s all you’re good for.”

Beth swallowed the last of it, her stomach churning with nausea. The taste coated her tongue, her teeth, every surface of her mouth. When he finally pulled his cock out of her mouth, it was with a wet, obscene pop. Beth coughed violently, bile rising in her throat as she tried to spit out the lingering taste of him. But there was no escape from the humiliation, no escape from the sticky wetness that clung to her chin and dripped down onto her already ruined clothes. Gutterstink leaned back against the wall, smirking as he tucked his still half-hard cock back into his jeans.

“Pathetic,” he muttered, spitting on the side of her face.

Beth’s body shook with silent sobs, her face buried in her hands as shame washed over her in waves. She could still taste him, still feel the weight of his cock in her mouth, the heat of his piss sliding down her throat. She was broken, utterly and completely, and there was no coming back from this. Not ever.

"Good girl," Gutterstink mocked, patting her head as one might praise a dog. "Now let's see about that bottle."

Hope flickered briefly in Beth's chest… a tiny flame that was immediately extinguished when he lifted her up by the hair beforte dropping her. Her face fell like a stone into the concrete, and her already aching nose connected with the unyielding surface with a crunch that sent white pain exploding behind her eyes. More blood leaked from her nostrils, adding to the fluids already coating her face.

"I think it will make you tighterl," Gutterstink announced as he climbed on top of the fallen woman. "Let’s find out, shall we?"

Before Beth could process what he was saying through the ache in her nose, she felt the blunt pressure of his erection squeezing against her anus. The tissue there was already torn and bleeding from Sarge's earlier assault, the damage making it hypersensitive to even the lightest touch. "P-puhlss…" she tried to say, the word emerging as a gurgle through the blood flowing from her nose and the piss leaking from her lips.

"Fuck you," Gutterstink replied. The man’s gnarled hands, calloused and reeking of sweat and filth, fisted her greasy, matted hair, yanking her head back with a brutal jerk. Her neck ached and she whimpered, her voice a broken, pathetic whine that only seemed to fuel his sadistic hunger. He spit again, the glob of saliva landing on his cock, making the still-dirty thing glisten like some grotesque, veined weapon. Then he pushed it against her and forced his way into her asshole with one brutal thrust, her unprepared pucker ripping around his invasion. The bottle in her cunt stretched her vaginal walls to obscene limits, making her feel like she was being split in two. Her pussy and asshole both bled as they were both forced to stretch further. The bleeding anguish of her body didn’t stop him… Gutterstink slammed into her ass like a deranged animal, his hips pistoning with a rhythm that was all violence, no mercy. Her guts churned, her stomach threatening to rebel as she felt her insides being rearranged by his monstrous cock.

"Fuck, that bottle was a good idea," he grunted, increasing his pace. "Can feel it through the wall. Like fucking two tight holes at once."

“I just wanted to play chess!” she sobbed, her voice trembling and weak. It wasn’t fair… she wasn’t even going to be here! “I just wanted to play chess…”

It was the wrong thing to say. The mention of chess ignited a fire in Gutterstink, a rage so vile it dripped from his pores like the stench of unwashed flesh. His calloused hand, smeared with dirt and God-knows-what, fisted Beth’s hair like he was reining in a feral animal. He yanked her head back hard enough some of her hair ripped out, her neck bending at a painful angle.

"Chess?" he spat, his voice a guttural growl. "I’m living on the street and you’re concerned about a stupid chess game? You think you’re fucking better than me, you little cunt? You little whore?"

He slammed her face into the ground with the force of a sledgehammer, her skull meeting the unyielding concrete with a sickening crack. Blood erupted from her nose as it broke in new places, splattering across the gray surface like some twisted abstract painting. Several of her teeth broke, fragments slicing into her tongue and the soft flesh of her cheeks and blooding her mouth with the taste of copper. She gagged, choking on her own blood, but he didn’t stop… he was relentless, his hips pistoning like a machine.

"This is your board now, bitch," he snarled, his voice thick with malice and lust. "Your sixty-four squares of shit and piss and cum. How’s that for a championship game?” Then he slammed her face into the ground again.

He didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. Each thrust of his cock into her ass was a violation so profound it felt like he was tearing her apart from the inside out. The homeless man was practically a feral beast, driven by the need to destroy her, to reduce her to nothing more than a broken, whimpering mess. His cock pistoned in and out of her asshole, the friction raw and brutal, her torn pucker clenching around him in a futile attempt to repel the invasion. Her rectum stretched obscenely around him and one hand groped at her tits, squeezing and twisting her nipples. She barely even noticed, because the other drew her dazed skull back off the ground again and slammed it down again and again with wet sounds of impact.

Her vision blurred, flickering like a dying bulb, but she couldn’t escape the pain. It was everywhere — her skull feeling like it was fracturing against the concrete, her ass splitting open around his cock, her throat raw from screaming.

He continued to slam her face into the ground with each thrust, creating a rhythmic percussion of skull against concrete. Blood sprayed from Beth's nose and mouth with each impact, painting crimson patterns across the gray surface. Her consciousness began to fragment, perception breaking into disconnected images and sensations.

The bottle inside her.

The tearing of her ass.

The metallic taste of blood.

The crunch of bone against concrete.

The grunting animal above her.

She tried to retreat into her mind, to find the chessboard that had always been her sanctuary, but it was shattered, the pieces scattered and broken like her body. The white squares turned to shards of glass, the black ones to hands that grabbed her, groped her, hurt her. Those hands reached for her across the board, clawing at her flesh, dragging her back into the nightmare… an army, stripping her and raping her across the board she had made her home on.

Gutterstink’s grunts grew louder, more frantic, his cock plunging deeper into her ass with each thrust. He slammed her face into the ground one last time, the impact so brutal it felt like her brain might explode inside her skull. "You’re nothing," he hissed, his voice trembling with pleasure and hatred. "You’re not special. You’re just some fucking whore!”

And then the hot rush of his cum was flooding her ass, thick and viscous, filling her up until she thought she might burst. He groaned, his body shuddering with release, but he didn’t stop pounding into her. No, he kept going, kept filling her with his filth until it overflowed, dripping down her thighs and pooling on the ground beneath her.

When he finally pulled out of her asshole with a wet, sloppy sound, his cock glistened with her blood. The pucker of her asshole had been stretched obscenely wide, gaped obscenely, and she felt cool air against her raw and torn insides as she leaked his cum. Gutterstink stood over her, panting, his disgustingly filthy body glistening with sweat. He looked down at her broken form, his lips curling into a cruel smile. "Checkmate, bitch."

You resign now.

Checkmate. Chess player. The person she had been seemed so distant now, a character in a story she'd once heard rather than someone she had been. The chessboard that had defined her existence had been replaced by this alley, the elegant dance of pieces across sixty-four squares transformed into this brutal violation of flesh and spirit.

In the hazy distance of her thoughts, Beth wondered if she would ever find her way back to that board, to that person she had been. The question hung unanswered as darkness gathered at the edges of her consciousness, promising a temporary escape from the nightmare that had become her reality.

Beth distant felt a rush of fluid leaving her body — blood, semen, and perhaps worse things that she didn't want to identify. The shattered girl lay sprawled across the filthy pavement like discarded clothing, her limbs twisted at unnatural angles. She lay face-down on the concrete, unmoving. Her once-vibrant red hair was now matted with blood, semen, urine, and alley filth. Her face was barely recognizable, swollen and misshapen from repeated impacts against the ground. Several teeth were strewn across the concrete, white and crimson spots in her vision. Spasms rippled through her muscles at irregular intervals, her brain's damaged synapses misfiring after repeated impacts against concrete. When she tried to move her arm, her leg twitched instead; when she attempted to blink, her mouth contorted in a grimace. Thoughts formed and dissolved before she could grasp them fully, fragments of chess strategies mingling with flashes of pain and degradation. Her hair, once a vibrant auburn that had caught the eye of photographers at tournaments worldwide, hung in clumps matted with bodily fluids, and was practically indistinguishable from a rat’s nest in the dim light of the alley.

The four men stood in a loose circle around her, their expressions a mixture of satiation and contemplative cruelty. They passed a fresh beer between them, the can making a soft hissing sound as it opened, the smell of cheap alcohol cutting through the miasma of sweat, semen, and blood that hung in the air. Beth's mind drifted rather than pay attention, her consciousness untethered from her brutalized body. The few neurons floating around that were paying any attention anymore saw herself as floating somewhere above the scene, observing with detached curiosity the broken thing that had once been Beth Harmon, chess prodigy and U.S. Champion.

"Anyone else want a piece of her?" New Kid asked, prodding Beth's thigh with the toe of his worn sneaker. Her body jerked in response, a reflex unconnected to conscious thought. “She ain’t as pretty as her photo anymore.”

"Used-up cunt can't even move right anymore," Ratface replied, gesturing with his beer. "Not much fun fucking a corpse."

"She ain't dead," Gutterstink countered, though his tone suggested this was merely a technical observation rather than a defense.

Sarge crouched beside Beth. He lifted one of her arms and let it drop, limply flopping back to the cement. “Probably brain damaged,” he said, stepping on her broken hand just to see if she would react. All Beth did was twitch. Her vision swam in and out of focus, the men's faces blurring into indistinct shapes against the darkening sky above. She could hear their voices but struggled to connect the sounds to meanings, as though they were speaking a language she had once known but now forgotten. “You want a goodbye fuck?”

"Nah," Ratface decided, taking another swig of beer. "Pussy's all sloppy and broken now. Blood everywhere. Ass too. No fun when they're this used up."

Beth tried to speak, to form words that might somehow reach whatever humanity these creatures might possess. Her lips moved, but only a gurgling moan emerged, a sound closer to animal than human. The message she had been trying to formulate — a plea for help, perhaps, or a final assertion of her identity — dissolved before it could take shape into a wet, sloppy choking noise.

"Still noisy, though," New Kid noted, setting down his beer and approaching Beth's prone form. "Got one more use for annoying, noisy bitches." He unzipped his filthy pants, extracting his penis with practiced ease. Without preamble, he aimed at Beth's face and released a hot, steaming stream of urine. The acrid liquid splashed across her forehead, running into her eyes, which burned with fresh pain despite their swollen state. "Drink up, rich girl," he taunted as the stream continued, forceful enough to splash back from her skin.

Some part of Beth’s struggling mind realized she should turn away but her body refused to respond to her commands. The urine flooded her nostrils, forcing her to breathe it in, its ammonia scent overwhelming her already abused senses. Some of the liquid found its way into her mouth, which hung partially open due to what was likely a break in her jaw. The bitter, salty taste joined the complex palate of violations already coating her tongue.

When the dark skinned youth’s bladder was finally empty, Beth's face glistened with urine, her hair soaked and plastered to her skull. The blood had been momentarily washed away, showing the full extent of the swelling and bruising. The liquid pooled in the hollow of her cheek, creating a small reservoir that rose and fell with each labored breath.

"My turn," said Sarge, stepping forward with the same efficiency he brought to all tasks. Rather than aiming for her face, he pointed it cock at the cleft between her legs where the beer bottle still partially protruded and let himself go. The force of his stream managed to seep through any tiny gaps in the stretched opening, seeping inside her and turning her formerly pristine pussy into a sewer. "There's yer fucking creampie, slut," he announced as his urine mixed with the blood and semen already present, creating a vile cocktail that leaked around the bottle and down her thighs.

When Sarge finished, he shook the last drops onto Beth's thigh, then stepped back to make room for Ratface.

"Always wanted to do this," Ratface admitted as he positioned himself. “Never had a whore worthless enough.” The first splash of urine against her gaping asshole sent a shock wave of pain through Beth's severe enough to make her jerk even in her devastating state as the acidic piss leaked into every single scraped, torn wound that the men had raped into her rectum, the pressure building as her interior filled with the burning liquid.

Unlike Sarge's methodical approach, Ratface seemed to take particular pleasure in directing his stream in erratic patterns, sometimes directly into her raped ass, sometimes across her buttocks, sometimes lower to mix with the fluids already leaking from her vagina. Her sphincter, damaged beyond function by the earlier assaults, offered no resistance as the mixture of urine, blood, and semen flowed out of her, creating a fetid puddle beneath her hips.

As the final indignity registered in Beth's fragmented consciousness, her stomach rebelled, expelling what little content it held — mostly the urine she had been forced to drink earlier. Bile and urine and cum splattered onto the concrete, adding another layer to the evidence of her debasement.

"Disgusting," Gutterstink commented, though his tone held more satisfaction than genuine revulsion. "Can't even keep our piss down. Worthless cunt."

"Time to take out the trash," Sarge decided.

Beth felt hands grabbing her by the arms, lifting her limp body from the ground. The movement jostled the bottle still lodged inside her, sending fresh sports of pain through her raped holes. Her head lolled back, offering a momentary glimpse of the night sky between the tall buildings. It seemed unfair that the distant stars visible through the urban glow were so indifferent to the horror below.

The men lifted her towards the rusted dumpster that squatted against the alley’s wall like a metal sentinel overseeing her gangrape. The lid creaked as New Kid lifted it, revealing a dark interior filled with the sweet-sour stench of rotting food, discarded packaging, and plentiful human waste. "One, two, three!" Sarge counted, and on three, they swung Beth's body toward the open dumpster.

Her spine connected with the metal edge as they miscalculated the toss, a crack reverberating through the alley as another vertebra fractured. Pain exploded along her back, momentarily cutting through the fog of semi-consciousness that had been her only refuge. Beth gasped, a sound halfway between a scream and a sob, as her body folded over the edge before tumbling into the darkness within.

She landed atop a pile of garbage bags, rotting food breaking her fall but coating her bleeding skin with putrid slime. The impact dislodged the bottle from her vagina at last, the glass dropping out of her onto one of the trash bags beneath. Above her, silhouetted against the narrow strip of visible sky, the men's faces appeared for a final moment before the dumpster lid crashed down, plunging her into total darkness. The metal clang reverberated through her bones, a final punctuation to the symphony of violence that had been played upon her body.

Darkness. Silence. The absence of anything but pain and the fetid air of decomposition.

Beth lay where she had fallen, her body a collection of broken parts that no longer seemed connected to her consciousness. The stench invaded her nostrils — rotting vegetables, sour milk, moldy bread, and beneath it all, the copper tang of her own blood. Something moved against her leg: Perhaps a rat, or maybe some other creature that made its home among discarded things.

In the darkness, Beth tried to gather the fragments of her thoughts, to reassemble some semblance of the person she had been. She reached for memories of chess, the clean lines of the board, the elegant geometry of pieces in motion, the intellectual clarity of calculation and strategy. But the images slipped away before she could grasp them fully, replaced by flashes of hands, violation, pain.

Queens transformed into leering faces. Pawns became broken fingers. The board itself dissolved into the concrete of the alley where her face had been repeatedly smashed. Beth clawed at these thoughts, desperate to reclaim the one thing that had defined her, that had given her life meaning and structure. "Sicilian Defense," she whispered into the darkness, her voice a broken thing that wouldn’t have made any sense even if it had carried beyond her lips. "King's Indian. Queen's Gambit."

The familiar terms felt foreign on her tongue, disconnected from any meaning they might once have held. They were just sounds now, remnants of a language she could no longer speak or understand. How did a knight move again? Which color moved first?

She couldn’t remember.

Beth's consciousness began to fade, darkness within matching the darkness without. Her last coherent thought was horror… not at her body, defiled and wasted, or of what the trash collectors would think when they found her. It was that she stared at the lid of the trash can that made her ceiling, and she couldn’t visualize the board anymore… couldn’t think of anything at all. Doctors might be able to fix her body, save the flesh that used to be called Beth Harmon.

But the genius was gone, sacrificed on the altar of a few men’s cocks who didn’t give a shit about her. Never had, and never would.

As consciousness slipped away, Beth surrendered to the realization that some games have no winning strategy, some positions allow no escape, and some defeats are so absolute that there can be no recovery. There was only the echoing silence that followed when all the pieces had been swept from the board, and the image of a King lying on its side.