“Let it go,” Amelia coaxed.

So I did, raising my hands in defeat and falling to my knees. The vermilion varnish embellishing them gleamed in the evanescent evening light, while the makeshift bowl they’d formed moments ago at my waist was no longer.

Like a pile of haphazardly stowed ribbons uncoiling from an opened closet, my entrails slithered from my lacerated abdomen in lumps, plopping into the golden wheat. The sensation was familiar, the experience not as traumatic as it once had been.

The Anomaly had prevented us from leaving, like it always did.

Behind me the trails we’d left through the prairie lead to a lavish ivory-colored house. Not far off in the opposite direction my estranged car waited by an orchard.

A flat tire on a drive through an idyllic part of the countryside had engendered my coming here. I’d sought help at the nearby estate, only to have fallen into a perpetual cycle.

I couldn’t remember how long it’d been now. Nor could Amelia. She’d been here longer than I had.

Together we’d tried everything from slipping away under the cover of night to outright bolting.

Every time, this would happen.

“Come lie with me,” Amelia breathed, and I did.

She and I lay in the field, fading.

Her eyes lingered in mine while I made her the same flimsy promises of saving her, finding a way out of the Anomaly one day.

“I’ll find you again tomorrow, okay?” was all she said.

Amelia was gone before I was. By then a wall of sombre clouds had rolled in. As rain began pattering against the ground and flecking Amelia’s milky blouse, I closed my eyes and let the earthy smell fill me, concentrated on anything but the mess sprawling out from me.

Then I waited, waited until I was empty enough.

 

I awoke at dawn somewhere in the very house I tried fleeing everyday. Only a sliver of light managed to stream through the drawn curtains and into this room.

Instinctively I gasped, my hands grasping at my belly. I felt my body loosen. I exhaled.

Breathed.

My stomach wasn’t slashed open anymore. That would come later.

I got up with a grunt, and went out into the hall, calling into the depths of the manor.

“There you are!” Amelia exclaimed as she appeared abruptly.

She ran to me and embraced me. When she spoke, it was tenderly.

“Do you still think it worthwhile, the struggle and pain? Do you really believe it’s possible to escape?”

I found it harder to meet her gaze with each passing day. What little hope I’d kept had waned. Now the dread replaced it, gnawing ever more tirelessly at my pride.

We were vermin, caught in a trap.

Perhaps my efforts would be in vain. But I had to try. If not for my own sake then for hers.

“If we die a thousand pretty deaths,” I answered, “I’ll endure every one of them knowing I get to see you again.”