Death by Chess

Death by Chess

©2004 by C. Smith

Chapter 1

Werner Richter was a bitter man. He had done his duty: he had presided over the slaughter of the woman he had loved dearly for eighteen years. He had watched them hang her up by the ankles and cut her throat. He had held her hand and kissed her as her blood drained past their lips, just as he had promised he would all those years earlier when they had first become lovers. They had known that the terrible day was coming and he thought he was prepared for it. But he wasn't. It had twisted something in his soul.

Ironically, that was the very year he was named C.E.O. of Musgrave, Inc., but his elevation came three months too late to save his lovely Aprille. She had produced nineteen healthy baby girls for the Company's livestock inventory, all of them Prime Grade beauties, two of them already productive Breeders themselves. But when her reproductive system faltered, Company policy and the law made her fate automatic. Her status was changed from Breeder to Meat and she was slaughtered. Werner had kept his purchase option on her active during all those wonderful years so he was able to buy her and see to it that she died blissfully stoned on O-drugs and riding a huge orgasm. But that did little to salve the pain in his own heart.

It also bothered him that he had refused her last request, even though it was for her own benefit. She had wanted to be live-roasted on a spit. She was way past the age limit for spit roasting but knew that he could afford to have it done privately to bypass the Company's quality assurance rules. That was certainly true, but he could not bear to think of her being cooked live over a roasting pit. She could not convince him that O-drugs made the orgasms grow in direct proportion to the intensity of pain, and that the immensity of the pleasure would overwhelm the underlying agony of her roasting flesh. He had studied the eyes of countless live meat girls as they turned on their spits over the fire, but it was impossible to tell if they were reacting to the pain or the ecstasy. She had sighed and dropped the subject, and they had made spectacular love that one last time. But his denial of her final request left him with an unshakable sense of guilt.

He did follow through on one important promise. He established a weekly ritual in which he cooked a portion of her meat, taken from its shrine in his freezer, and shared it with a Prime Grade girl from the Musgrave livestock in an elegant setting replete with candles, fine wine, his best dinnerware and a profusion of flowers. Aprille's silver and gold urn was lovingly placed as the centerpiece of the table. In accordance with her desire that she be remembered not with sorrow but with sex, love and joy, the evening always ended with an exuberant indulgence of fleshly pleasures.

Once a month the ritual was expanded to a full scale spit roast feast and orgy with several male guests and a matching number of Prime Grade girls. For these occasions, because he did not want to use up his precious supply of Aprille's meat too quickly, he purchased "consecrated" girls. These were Primes who had previously attended one of his weekly dinners and partaken of Aprille's flesh. Aprille herself had suggested it, her logic being that once her own meat was digested by another girl, she became part of that girl's body. The meat from that girl was thus "consecrated" and became the same as her own.

The orgy feasts began at Saturday noon with the ceremonial slaughter of the sacrificial girl. It consisted of a re-enactment of Werner's last moments with Aprille, including hanging her by the ankles, cutting her throat and kissing her while her blood poured past their joined lips. That ritual was followed by the normal evisceration, stuffing and spitting of the carcass. Roasting time for the average size girl was at least six hours, which left plenty of opportunity for high-spirited afternoon play as she cooked, followed by even wilder play after the feast.

Yet none of this effusion of sexual extravagance and playful debauchery relieved his heartache. Indulging his libido in Aprille's honor, even at her behest, did not ease his grief at her loss. His bitterness grew with each passing month, with each new sacrifice to her memory, with each new taste of consecrated blood. His pain was a bomb awaiting a fuse.

It arrived in the form of an M1-P named Kimberlee. From the moment she received an order to report to the C.E.O. as a guest for one of his weekly Aprille Memorial Dinners, Kim had known she was in peril. Meat girls were always vulnerable to activation, of course, but her added status as a Pleasure Girl had given her some protection, or so she had been assured. She certainly had worked hard enough to earn it. Many of her Prime Grade friends who had not managed to add the "P" to their status designation by the age of seventeen had not made it to age eighteen. She had waited on many a table and signed up many a client at banquets where former classmates were roasting on their spits.

But this invitation was a scary turn of events. Everyone knew that Werner Richter chose the prettiest of his weekly dinner dates to be sacrificed at the grand end-of-the-month orgy, and all her friends told her she was unquestionably the most beautiful of this month's choices. Her long dark hair, brilliant green eyes, lush bosom and lithe figure made a sensational combination.

It was only a slight acne problem on her chin that had kept her from being classified as a Breeder, and that condition had nearly cleared up. With makeup it was undetectable. It was too late now, of course, to make Breeder. She had already been sterilized and prepped for live spitting. It was only her ability to turn a profit for Musgrave, Inc. as a Pleasure Girl that kept her out of a roasting pit.)

Until now. Now she was "consecrated." Unless she could think of something, she wouldn't live past the weekend. How could she possibly convince Werner Richter to choose someone else to be his pre-orgy sacrifice? She cried herself to sleep three nights in a row over the irony of being not quite beautiful enough to have made the cut for breeding, but was plenty beautiful enough to have her throat cut in honor of fucking Saint Aprille.

Then an idea came to her. Maybe Richter wouldn't go for it, but what did she have to lose? Her Notice of Activation would arrive Friday evening, giving her time to say goodbye to close friends before reporting Saturday morning for her flush-out enemas. She went to Richter's office Friday morning. Normally, an M class girl, even one with Pleasure Girl status, would not be granted an interview with the C.E.O.; but if he had, in fact, chosen her to be slaughtered for his big weekend orgy, he might well be curious as to why his featured entrée had come to see him.

And she was right. She was ushered into his office by an extremely pregnant B1. She was an older woman, probably in her early thirties, and her body was beginning to show the effects of her many pregnancies, but she was still gorgeous. It was easy to see why she would have been designated a Prime Grade Breeder. At seventeen she must have been a knockout. And no acne.

"Kimberlee! How lovely to see you!" Werner Richter said, rising to welcome her and guide her to a plushly upholstered leather chair in front of a desk as spacious as a bed. "What can I do for you?"

"I have an idea I thought you might be interested in," she said with as much assurance as she could muster, considering her heart was in her throat.

Werner Richter smiled back at her, admiring her exceptional beauty, amused at her ineffective effort to appear nonchalant. She would make a worthy sacrifice to the memory of Aprille.

"Remember," she said, "how you were saying at that Memorial Dinner last week how frustrating it is that the pro leagues and colleges have blocked us from showing our intermural sports on global TV?"

"I do. They don't like the idea of competing against an all-nude female league. They're afraid of losing audience share to us."

"Well, I've thought of a way we can get around that."

"Oh?" Richter smiled encouragement, but his eyes said, I know what you're up to. "Go on."

"What we need is a whole new game, one that will be exciting to watch, but one that the pros and college athletes aren't allowed to play."

Richter had not missed the fact that she'd used the "we" pronoun twice. The little minx was definitely trying to land a deal that would keep her pretty neck unslit for a while longer. He couldn't decide what intrigued him more: watching a lovely girl he would be eating tomorrow try to talk her way out of her destiny, or hearing what kind of cockamamie scheme she had in mind to outwit the pros.

"And what game would that be?" he asked.

"Promise you won't laugh. It doesn't sound like much, but I've got some really good ideas about it."

But he did laugh! It was an absurd conversation. He knew she was only trying to wiggle off her hook and she knew he knew. He could easily read the desperation behind her plucky bravado. He had to admit, though, he really admired this girl. What was her name? Kimberlee? It was too bad, in a way, that he'd never get to know her better. "I make no promises," he said. He bestowed on her what he thought was his warmest smile.

What she saw was a wolfish grin. Her heart was pounding. Her life was hanging on her words. "What I had in mind, Sir, was a chess game."

His smile widened.

She hurried on. "Not just a dull two-person game. This one would have somewhat different rules and have a lot of action with naked girls."

Richter raised both eyebrows. Was he more interested or just laughing silently? Kim clenched her fists so he wouldn't see them tremble.

"Do you play chess, Sir?"

"I do."

"Great! Then picture this. We'd have a field marked off like a chessboard. Both teams would consist of mostly naked young females with just enough costume to identify which team they're on and which piece they are. They'd all be armed with weapons from the middle ages — swords, daggers, maces, axes, spears — like that. We wouldn't have to use the Prime meat stock, either. With makeup and conditioning, the Standards and even the Oven and Chuck grades could be used."

"This game is going to involve bloodshed, then?"

"Absolutely, Sir. That's our edge! Free people can't kill each other legally, but we're livestock."

"I'm listening."

"Two players have to call the moves. You could call them generals or commanders or something. They would be up on a raised platform or tower where they can see the action. We could even bring in real military brass, or celebrities, or we could use our own girls. Using our own would probably be more exciting."

"Why?"

"Because . . . Well, let me explain some of the rules. In ordinary chess when you capture an opponent's piece, you just jump one of yours into its space and take it off the board. But in this game the two pieces would have to actually fight it out. If the attacker kills the defender it would be like a regular chess move, and the dead or wounded girl would be dragged off the field. But if the defending piece kills the attacker, that puts the attacking general into a whole new quandary. She has to plan for both possibilities. And she'd have to do it, make her next move, within a given amount of time or lose her turn. And that time could be as short as half a minute, or even fifteen seconds. So not only do the generals have to play good fast chess, they have to contend with the possibility that their moves will backfire."

"And why would using our own girl generals be better?"

"They could be the Kings. In normal chess you win just by putting the King in a capture situation he can't escape. Checkmate. In our game the King has to be actually killed. We could put each team's King on her own tower on the chessboard. It would be on wheels and motorized so she could move around like the other pieces. She'll have to fight any piece that puts her in checkmate position. If she's killed, the other team wins."

"Sounds promising, but how do you keep the field from turning into chaos with girls chasing each other around with swords? And at the same time keep the action flowing?"

"I'm developing some good ideas on how to do that! I just need a few more days to put it together. May I come back Monday? I'll be able to lay it out in more detail then."

This was the critical moment. Either he would go along with it and she would live through the weekend, or he would reject it and by this time tomorrow she'd be having her guts flushed out. He could even steal the idea and develop it himself after feasting on her at the orgy. She was so tense she was afraid she might pass out.

"Scheherazade," he said.

"What?"

"Have you ever heard of Scheherazade?"

"No."

"She was a beautiful Arabian girl who married a king named Shahryar who was in the habit of marrying virgins and having them beheaded the next day. She kept herself alive by telling him an exciting story, then tease him with a preview of another equally exciting story the next night. So the king would let her live one more day. She did that for one thousand and one nights. By then the king had become so enamored of her that he decided to make an exception in her case and let her go on living."

He let several seconds of awkward silence build up as he smiled knowingly at her. Kim's hopes plummeted and she let her gaze slip to the floor. He'd seen through her and wasn't buying it. Then anger began to boil through her despair. What right did he have to mock her pathetic attempt to save herself by rubbing her nose in her ignorance? How the hell would she know who this Scheherazade was? The only things they taught her here was a thousand and one ways to get a man to cum so you could make yourself useful while waiting to be slaughtered for meat. She looked up at him defiantly.

"All right! I admit it! I don't want to die tomorrow. I think I'll be much more valuable to you if you let me live long enough to work this idea through. I think it can be a big hit and a serious money-maker for Musgrave if you'll just give me a chance. You can always cook me later if my ideas don't work out. All I ask is a chance. Please."

"What makes you think I've chosen you for the Monthly Memorial? Haven't your sources informed you that I choose only the most beautiful consecrated meat for those occasions?"

"Yes they have, Sir," she said, and stared back at him with her chin up.

By God, Richter thought, this girl is something else. She knows she's an incredible beauty. She undoubtedly feels cheated that she didn't make Breeder because of adolescent skin problems. Definitely smarter than your average meat, and not willing to give up her life without a fight. She might even have a decent idea going with this chess thing. He decided to push her a little further, just to see how she'd handle herself.

"And you figure you're the most beautiful of this month's crop?"

"I've only been with you that once, Sir, but you didn't strike me as a cruel man. You knew before I walked into your office that I knew you'd chosen me. And you knew why I was here. If I weren't the one you'd chosen, you would have told me right away. You wouldn't have left me in torment just so I could make a fool of myself."

He snorted. "Not cruel? Inviting girls for dinner and sex only to reward one of them with death: that's not cruel?"

"You obviously loved Aprille a great deal, Sir, and this is your way of honoring her. We're meat, Sir. If you don't kill us and eat us, someone else will. I don't expect to be spared that fate, I just want to postpone it for a while. I love life, like Aprille did. She was lucky because she could have babies, which kept her alive so you and her could have a lot of years together. I'm more like your Scherere . . . whoever it was. I have only my wits. And I think I've come up with an exciting idea. Please, Sir! You won't regret giving me a chance to prove it! And you can always activate me if it doesn't work out. Or for any reason at all, for that matter."

"True, but it will cost me. I'll have to buy an option on you to keep someone else from buying you in the meantime. Why shouldn't I just take your idea and run with it myself?"

"Because you're a honest man and it was my idea. You spend a lot of money to honor Aprille the way you do, buying a girl every week, all of them Prime Grade. I can't believe you'll steal my idea just to save the price of a month's option. Besides, as CEO you get a discount."

He laughed. "Okay. I'll give you extra points for tact. You're right, of course. You are my choice. You are far and away the most beautiful girl I've met since Aprille. And the most interesting."

He paused, pursing his lips and tenting his fingers. He could see Kim's heart thudding under her thin dress. Yet, terrified as she was, she held her head high. "All right, Scheherazade, I'll grant you your stay. The original Scheherazade got a one day reprieve. You have a month to show me that your chess game has real potential. In the meantime, you will be coming to my orgy tomorrow, but only to enjoy the roast and be available for play. And to tell me more about your game."

Kim jumped up and threw her arms around him. "You won't regret it, Sir!" She kissed him vigorously, telling him between gentle bites, "And I'll make it worthwhile for you in other ways, too!"

"I bet you will," he laughed. "I remember your first visit!"

"So do I," she said, and began nibbling her way down his neck as she opened his shirt.