Dorothy is dead.

She died early this morning. Her lifeless body is lying at the bottom of a pool. I know. Because I drowned her.

Some may say I killed her. Maybe I did. Maybe not. But that's not the point here. The point is she no longer exists. No longer will she speak. Make me angry. Or sad. Or even laugh at will.

It was all her fault, I must say. She could have lived. Like she was meant to. Like I wanted her to. But, no. She was obstinate – blinded by passion. Her age didn't help her much either. At seventeen, reason can your enemy. You act to prove your point to a supposedly hostile world when you should be acting for your benefit. We all learn it. Sooner rather than later. But poor Dorothy, she will never learn it now. How I wish she had listened to me.

You know, she would laugh to hear of her death. That's Dorothy. A radiant being, brimming with life that it was impossible to even imagine lifelessness around her. She was like a river, constantly flowing towards something greater than her. A seeker, in the true sense. Her body, mind and soul were always in motion, gentle and contained. Even when she slept one could feel that strange sense of movement in her body. Not anymore.

She is absolutely still now. Lying at the bottom of a pond. Forever staring, her face to the surface, eyes wide open eyes and unblinking even when the sun beams strike them violently and scatter into a million little grains of sparkling diamonds under water. She would stare lifelessly. Till time takes away those blind, yet beautiful eyes too. Sad.

She was my desire to live - Dorothy. A virgin dream untouched by the phantoms of my past or defeats, she was my life energy. In her company, my failing frail body always found the strength of a wild west wind. I could do anything. The Sun God would shine upon the two of us and everything else would turn pale in comparison.

Dorothy - she was my everything.

I gave her my days and nights. I gave her my energy and life. I gave her all that I could till there was nothing more left in me to give. Yet I couldn't stop. My besotted heart craved to do more. I have sat through weeks trying to find new things to gift her. To make her more happy. More beautiful. More of everything she was.

But one morning, it happened. Dorothy left. Without warning. Without saying anything. Not even a goodbye.

Dorothy had done the one thing I didn't expect her to do. She had fallen in love. With a ludicrously shy and poor young man, who called himself an artist. I don't care. She had proved herself to be like everybody else. She was just another girl. Just a girl. Not my Dorothy anymore.

I cannot sit and watch their love story unfold. I cannot sanction it with my soul. I just cannot. I am helpless.

Locked inside my room, I lay motionless in my bed, watching the ceiling all day. It hung over me like a grey sky, lifeless and still. At some point in time, I had the overpowering thought that any moment it would come down and crush my being slowly. I could feel life leaving me. Blood trickled down the corner of my mouth, through my nostrils, my ears. The pillow was getting wet and sticky. I stopped seeing things.

That night when I woke up I knew what I had to do. I had no choice. Dorothy had to die. I had to kill her. Before her innocence is corrupted, before her virgin body learns desire, before her soul discovers pain on earth, I had to let her find eternal peace. Let her find blissful sleep forever.

Dorothy was meant to be the joy of life. The child-woman worshipped at the altar of divinity. She is not to live as an atonement for human fallacies. I cannot let a goddess live and die in humiliation that comes from being incomplete.

I loved Dorothy. So I killed her.

No. I did not use my two hands. That would be insulting Dorothy. I just let her destiny take over and end the story. Albeit tragically, I admit.

Dorothy drowned because she didn't know how to swim. The coroner found too much wine in her blood. And also that she was pregnant. That's funny. I never knew she drank.

People wonder what she was doing by the pool when she didn't know how to swim. I guess she was waiting for her lover. Maybe that was their secret rendezvous point. Water, moon-light, a little alcohol in the body... the theory sounds plausible. Or maybe she committed suicide. The artist refuses to own up his child, and a heart-broken Dorothy jumps into the pool drunk, killing herself and the life form in her womb slowly. That sounds possible too. Now, if you really think about it, the artist could have murdered her and thrown her in the pool fearing for his reputation.

Whatever it is, you should know that I didn't kill Dorothy. No. I didn't. But I could have saved her. I was there. By the pool. I saw her head bob up and down like a rag doll in the middle of the pool. I guess she saw me too. She must have been fighting for too long cause she could hardly raise her voice. Her open mouth produced no sound, except let more water rush in to her wind pipe, choking her further. There were a few seconds of life left in her, I could see. I stood there and watched silently as the last burst of energy subsided and she started to sink to the bottom. Tiny air bubbles rose up to the surface, as the last drops of life desperately escaped into the heavens from her body. I turned around and disappeared from the scene, becoming one with the darkness around me. The watery tomb was Dorothy's destiny.

This morning I got a call from my publisher. I heard him laugh loudly at the other end of the phone, “It is easy to kill at will when you are a writer, I see. All you have to do is write long enough, isn't it?”

I disconnect the line, and concentrate on the screen in front of me. A new story is waiting to happen before me. I start punching the keys furiously.