The Dark Moment

**Hi all, welcome to another Writing Prompt Wednesday. Won't you play along? The guidelines are simple, and I'd love to read what you come up with.**


We zoom in from above, the camera whizzing down, going from a view of the world, to the outlines of a country, county, neighborhood, until finally we're in a living room, face to lens with the protagonist. A man in his mid-thirties with a receeding hairline and a knife in his hand stands over a body with a pool of blood spreading beneath it.

This is the moment he surrenders to despair, certain that there is no way out. He's standing over the body of a man he killed and there is no way the police will believe it was self defense. He could try to explain that the dead man was going to kill him tomorrow, that he saw the scene in a vision and came here to turn fate, that the only reason he broke into the house and stabbed this man was to save himself. No, the police won't buy a story of pre-emptive self defense.

The protagonist drops the bloody knife. His hand is shaking, but his knees refuse to bend and even now he can hear, far off in the distance, the sound of sirens. The dead man's wife must have escaped. She can identify him, too. The sirens grow louder and the protagonist's legs hold him firm to the spot with his prints on the knife and his hands covered in blood.