Bleakest story I ever read

[AmyAmy]

Some years ago, I read a story (not on the Plaza, but I can't recall where it was) about some poor middle-aged woman who is an extremely submissive pain-addict who craves extreme pain and humiliation. It's really nasty torture.

The story begins at the point where after years of part-time pain and abuse, she finally puts herself in the full-time care of her abusers.

There is a scene that I remember distinctly, where they inject her breasts with large quantities of bee venom, which stuck in my mind as a metaphor for the worst pain imaginable.

The whole thing is suffused with the weird internal conflict in the protagonist's mind as to whether she in any sense enjoys what is being done to her. You keep wanting her to stop wanting it. The author teases that perhaps she will finally hit bottom and have hope again, but she never does.

The story, overall, was so unrelentingly bleak and awful that there was never a moment I thought it was erotic, and I'm not sure anyone else would too. I really don't know what it was... Art? Horror? Sick torture porn? It was powerful in its extremity, and extremely affecting. At least, that's how I remember it.

I recall it as the darkest story I've ever encountered, anywhere, in any genre, but after all this time I'm beginning to wonder if I imagined it.

At the time I read it, I was so shaken by it's bleak and hopeless tone, and the extremity of the events, that I somehow managed to erase its name and location from my mind; possibly swore off the internet for several years out of shock.

Does anyone know this story, what it's called, and where it lived? Is it even a real story? Or was it a nightmare I had when I fell asleep at my computer?

[A Pensive Pen]

Afraid I don't. The bee-venom part of your description reminds me of a (different) story I read years ago on the Kristin Archives, and helped convince me that I should never ever go there again.

[AmyAmy]

Never heard of that place until now, so it probably wasn't there.

I took a look, and I see I've lead a sheltered existence.

But one thing that's good there, is the story summaries.

Every story has a summary, and you can tell just by looking that you're dealing with a lovingly curated cess-pit of awfulness, where the worst aspects of humanity are celebrated with abandon.