I killed a child today.

Perhaps he wasn't a child. That's what the man in the gray suit told me. But he looked like a child. He looked like a little boy. He looked to be around eight years old. And I killed him.

I was so cold. It was supposed to be getting warmer, but I was getting colder. My house was an icebox, my bed was a freezer. When I woke up, I could barely open my eyes, they had nearly frozen over in my sleep. I woke up in a winter wonderland. I woke up in a cold hell.

I remember what he told me in my dream. I brought the gun down from the closet and picked it up. There was that weight again, that heaviness. I took the cold bullet I had made in my dreams and I loaded it. I thought perhaps there would a click and the gun would glow blue or something, but that didn't happen. Nothing happened. The gun was just a gun.

I hurriedly put on warmer clothes, bundling up in snow pants and a thick jacket, wrapping my neck in a woolen scarf my mother gave me before she passed away. I thought that I would just wander around my house until I found the monster I needed to kill and I would kill it.

He never told me it was a child. When I saw him, I stopped. He was in the kitchen, coloring on a piece of butcher paper. He was making broad motions with his hands and I could see a childlike smile on his face, with a gap between the front two of his teeth.

He started to sing:

"Poor Liz a-weeping,
A-weeping, a-weeping,
Poor Liz a-weeping,
On a bright winter day.

Why are you weeping?
Weeping, weeping,
Why are you weeping
On a bright winter day?

I'm weeping for a loved one,
A loved one, a loved one,
I'm weeping for a loved one,
On a bright winter day."

The song filled my ears and a pain grew in my head. An ache swelled up inside my mind and I felt like when it burst it was going to kill me. I was in so much pain, I wept and my tears froze.

Instinctively, I raised the gun. The child stopped singing. The pain started to go down, but my finger was still on the trigger.

He looked at me and said, "Poor Liz."

Then I shot him.

The bullet twisted in midair. I could see it moving, I don't know how. Perhaps it was the adrenaline. It didn't move like a regular bullet. It twisted like a corkscrew. And then it disappeared.

The boy started to laugh and then stopped abruptly. He put his hand to his chest. There was a hole in his chest. "My heart," he said. The edges of the hole began to crack like ice. The boy looked up at me. He looked like his entire body was shaking.

He said something. I think it was either "Who will come for the cold now?" or "Who will comfort the cold now?" I couldn't tell.

He broke apart in front of me. His body was made of icy flesh or fleshy ice and as it broke apart, I could see the watery veins inside of him. I couldn't look any longer, so I turned and ran.

I stayed away for as long as I could. When I came back, there was only a watery residue on the floor as a reminder.

I don't feel cold anymore. I just feel...empty.

What do I do now?