I have this character who after committing a murder, gets up slowly and walk away. I want to say that he does the getting up and walking away part in a dream like state of mind (unwittingly or not exactly knowing what he is doing)
Can someone suggest me how to do explain this?
Sounds like you're looking for a trance or a trance-like state:
A trance is a state of mind in which someone seems to be asleep and to have no conscious control over their thoughts or actions, but in which they can see and hear things and respond to commands given by other people. Collins
"He got up and walked away in a daze":
[Merriam-Webster]
transitive verb
1 : to stupefy especially by a blow : STUN · The first punch dazed him. · were dazed by his response— daze noun
He flung his bat in a daze and made a slow trot around the bases … —Steve Wulf
He sometimes finds himself so focused on cyberspace that he falls into a kind of computer daze, losing all track of time. —Leslie Miller
the fall dazed him for a moment, causing him to become disoriented
Drowsy, Cambridge Dictionary gives to definitions:
being in a state between sleeping and being awake
feeling sleepy esp. when it is not the usual time to sleep
Attribution for the first definition: (Definition of “drowsy” from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)
Attribution second definition: (Definition of “drowsy” from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)
Walked away in a fugue state? Implies that this was very traumatic for him, perhaps to the extent that he has a problem remembering the murder.
