Sometimes, life is not just unfair. Sometimes, it is cruel and evil. Sometimes, it presents you with news so horrible, it is hard to believe or understand.

That was my reaction when I heard that five-year-old Shaniya Davis -- who had been missing for nearly a week -- was found dead in a wooded area.

As if that wasn’t awful enough, the story is even more twisted.  Shaniya’s mother, Antoinette Davis, was arrested and accused of prostituting her own daughter.  Another person,  Mario McNeill, was arrested for kidnapping the girl.

As a writer, I like to think that I have a pretty good imagination. I certainly do when I hear creaks and bumps in my house in the middle of the night. But I’m having a hard time with this one.

I can’t imagine what type of desperation and depravity would lead anyone, much less a mother, to sell a child into sexual slavery.

I can’t imagine how Antoinette Davis could have justified her actions knowing that at best, her baby would experience horror, pain and degradation.

I can’t imagine how Shaniya’s accused kidnapper could snatch that child.  Her blanket was found thrown in a neighbor’s trashcan.  Perhaps her attackers felt that even that symbol of innocence and comfort had to be stripped from her as she entered her new profession of “sexual servitude.”

I can’t imagine how an adult could find anything the least bit stimulating about a child barely out of preschool.

I don’t want to imagine Shaniya’s terror and sense of abandonment.  I don’t want to think about the devastating grief her father and aunt and grandmother must feel.

No doubt, more details will come out on this story.  Perhaps they will explain the hows and the whys.  And while it may satisfy the curiosity of those of us who waited and prayed while the search went on, it will not make us feel any better.

Some of the readers commenting on the news articles online have said that it’s too bad North Carolina doesn’t have a death penalty, because surely that is fitting for a crime as heinous as this.

I’m not so sure that the people involved should be put to death.  That might be too simple, too quick.  Maybe, instead, 25-year-old Antoinette and 29-year-old Mario can look forward to spending at least the next 50 years in jail with no possibility of parole.  Where they fall on the bottom of even the inmate hierarchy.  Where they may one day find clarity and realize the enormity of what they’ve done.

Yes.  I can imagine that.

Pamela appears Tuesdays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Pamela on her blog Crazy is My Life.