The death collector.

The footprints are still there, albeit fading and indistinct.

What did she look like? I don't know.

The impressions of the drowned girl had been brief. Vague, too. Like smiling faces drawn with fingertips in condensation on a car window, then swiped off with the palm of your hand.

Average height, light brown hair. That's what a human being had been reduced to.

Now all that shows a girl drowned herself here is a bloated body at the bottom of the river, smudged footprints, and a polished rock in my pocket.

Funny, isn't it? Humans think they're so important. Yet they can so easily be snuffed out. Forgotten. It's as if they never existed.