Damn. I just killed her.

Just like that. She forced me to do it, of course. Her actions, her tendencies, her personality. With a terrible inevitably, it all led to her death. At my hands.

I had to do it. I just had to do it. I really had no choice, none at all. As I said, inevitable. Could I have done something differently and allowed her live? I’d thought about it. I’d thought a lot about that, believe me. And I mean a lot. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it. And when I did sleep, I woke up in sweats dreaming about it.

Okay, okay, I didn’t actually push the blade deep into her body, all the way through those expensive designer dresses she loved to flaunt. Teasing the men, enticing them into her arms and then into her bed. No. And I didn’t feel the pressure on my hand as the blade was shoved with terrible force deep into her chest, severing exquisite silk before piercing her sublimely delicate flesh. The blood gushing crimson from that fatal wound, arterial blood staining the surrounding silk into a damning accusatory red.

But, my God, I felt it.

Inside.

I almost cried with the horror of the deed.

She loved those designer dresses.

The blade cutting through that exquisite material on its way to severing her major arteries would have hurt her more than the pain of actually being stabbed.

I was sure of that. And, of course, it could only be silk. It had to be silk she was wearing. Thai silk. I know that because I know her too well. So well that she had to die.

Now I feel the walls of impending solitary confinement closing around me. My new home a cell. Within which I must suffer the consequences of my terrible decision that will come home to roost.

Now what do I do?

My head in my hands, my mind empty of ideas. I hadn’t planned to kill her. But it was her actions that led to her death. I could find no logical way around it. She had to die. She had brought herself to the point at which her death was inevitable.

So now I become Jack in the Overlook hotel. Am I too, going insane?

Forced into a corner.

Staring at the flashing curser on the monitor, it’s beating pulse the visual equivalent of cackling laughter from a mocking hyena.

And now what? Where do I go from here?

Shit.

Ten thousand words in – and I’ve killed off my main protagonist.