Revenge by Meli Raine

endless loop, like cloth woven from sheer pain.
    I can’t take it any more.
    I can’t take it any more.
    I can’t take it any more.
    Isn’t there a limit to how much one person can endure? I pull over the car. The pain in my stomach isn’t going away. A metal anvil has taken up resid enc e where my gut used to be. As the car tires come to a halt I jump out and run over to the passenger side, throwing up just as I get away from the car door.
    My stomach empties. All the coffee and an apple I had at Mark’s cottage pours out. My body keeps heaving, as if it’s trying to rid me of more than the contents of my stomach.
    As if I could throw up the entire world.
    If I could, I would.
    The bile burns. My eyes fill with unwanted tears. T he stabbing feeling in my gut goes away. My legs turn to rubber and I sit on the berm, a mix of gravel and grass that digs into my butt .
    And then I cry until I am so dry there are no more tears.
    Amy is gone. Dead? I don’t know. Dismem bered —I can’t think that word. No. No!
    I scrap e my palm against the sharp gravel. My skin tears, blood pooling along the scratch .
    I can’t let myself think that wa y . I can’t go there. My fear is a big ball that lives inside me.
    T he very real fear that Amy is dead.
    Or worse.
    An image of an armless, legless woman fills my mind. I’ve never seen one, so my mind has to create it.
    Imagination can be a curse.
    I have been home for six days. Six. I drove into town last Sunday, and today is Saturday. Not even a week has gone by. A stray lea f floats on a light wind. I t’s narrow and dried, and catches on the ends of my hair. My nose is full and I sniff, inhaling hot air and sorrow.
    I’m sitting on the side of the road, too tired to cry any more, too empty to care.
    Except that’s a lie, like all the other lies that have swirled around me for the past three years.
    I do care.
    I care too much.
    I mages flip through my mind like old movies, flickering frame by frame. Daddy carrying me on his shoulders at the Fourth o f July parade when I was little. Drinking out of the water hose in the backyard. Trying out for cheerleading team in middle school and failing. Graduating high school and how proud D ad was. Moving into the dorms across town and how Dad cried.
    The day Mark came to arrest Dad and cuffed him. How Amy came and got me, took me to the police station, held my hand.
    Elaine, sitting in the defense attorney’s office with me, holding my hand as the lawyer explained everything.
    The look on Dad’s face when he was declared guilty.
    How he looked at me with an expression of such horror and regret and—God help the bastards who framed him for this crime— shame .
    Daddy’s shame that he had let me down, even when he’d done nothing.
    Not one damn thing.
    All those images dissolve. I become nothing. I sit on the side of the road and an ant tickles my ankle. I see it, a black speck, traversing my skin in a lazy line. I t’s determined to find something. Food? Water? Shelter? Something I can’t give.
    I sn’t that what life is, really? Nothing more. Nothing less. We seek something we can’t define. W e explore a life we can’t pre d ict.
    The sound of tires crunching on stone makes me look up. A little compact car, the same make and model as min e but new, pulls up. I hear the engine stop. A car door opens, then shuts.
    Men’s sneakers appear, attached to legs in jeans.
    “Carrie?” says a familiar man’s voice.
    I look sideways, under my hair, and realize I’m completely alone. My phone, purse, and keys are in the car.
    The man is Eric.

Chapter Eleven
    I flinch as our eyes meet. His are filled with worry.
    And compassion.
    And something I can’t define.
    He reaches a hand down to pull me up. I don’t move. Just stare at him.
    He lets out a sad sigh. “I guess I deserve that,” he says slowly, bending to sit on the ground a few feet from me. Eric props his elbows on his knees and sits across from me. “Yesterday I was an