Torturing Characters

Well, the house is clean, my son is sleeping, the third load of laundry is finishing up in the washer, the sun is out in full force, and the sky is a beautiful blue. 

And what am I doing? 

I'm torturing my main character in Hollow Towns. Yep. You heard correctly. 

I spoke to Riley about this yesterday in an effort to understand my compulsion and to, perhaps, lessen my guilt over the matter. But the fact of the matter is that this character must suffer immensely to further the plot. 

I've been mulling this over, trying to figure out what it is about this character that demands all this pain and grief. It's not their fault. They're just there. I mean, I put them there. Note that I'm making a conscious effort not to divulge the sex of this character. Yes, it's purposeful, in case you were wondering. 

But back to my point. While the character is loosely based on someone I used to know, there are no character quality similarities between the two of them. So I'm not attempting to inflict mental damage on someone I used to know or anything. There's no imaginary revenge at work here -- to my knowledge anyway, I'm no psychologist. 

So maybe it's just part of the story, part of how it's supposed to play out. I'm not sure, but while I have inspiration, I'm going to return to my work. I just wondered if anyone had any opinions on this.