Elyse Alcott was looking for fun, something she had been missing over the past couple of years of her life. Over two years ago, her husband had passed away in a car crash and her life in Montana had become nothing more than work and home for the two years since.
The money from the life insurance and other motorist insurance had paid the bills easily enough, and what was left over had helped her keep the house; but without children to occupy her time, she didn't have any company besides her friends. Even those seemed to disappear after Mark passed away, though. They were all friends of his and had seemed cold to her since she married him fifteen years earlier. Some had even tried to say it was her fault that he was unable to stop before hitting the oncoming drunk tractor-trailer drivers rig, coming in the wrong direction.
Elyse had spent two years in the small town she and her husband called home, living her life to nothing, and having nothing to show for it. That was the only excuse she could come up with taking on this wild adventure that she was doing. There could be no other reason that she was where she was at this moment.
It all began when she decided her thirty-ninth birthday would be her turn to enjoy her life and made plans to visit Las Vegas. She figured that if she couldn't have fun in the so-called Sin City, then she was destined to end up an old spinster in a tiny town in Nowhereville, Montana. Upon arriving to the city, she did all she could with the money she had brought with her.
Her first night, she had lost over $500 at the tables before giving up and returning to her room. The next day, she watched a couple of stage shows and enjoyed the entertainment, occasionally throwing a coin in a slot machine here and there. By the time she was returning to her room the second night of her seven-day vacation, Elyse was noticing more and more couples around the tables and bars.
Going up to her room, alone, she felt like the world was crashing in around her, closing her off to that one sense of feeling of love that she had been missing since Mark passed away. That night, as she lie in her bed, her tears of solitude drying on the pillow that she clung to, Elyse dreamed that Mark came to her hotel room. He looked just as he did the first time she met him.
In her dream, his short brown hair, lightened from hours of working out in the sun on his fathers ranch, wafted in the breeze of the hotel room door as he closed it. His smell came struck her senses as the breeze from the moving air brought back her urges of wanting to hold him again. She got up from the edge of the bed and ran into his arms, the mixture of his cologne, fresh air he worked in, and his sweat surrounded her as his arms engulfed her in a tight embrace.
Elyse began to cry again, as her head rested in the nape of his neck, where her lips kissed him several times.
"Why? Why did you leave me?" she cried into his neck. "I need you Mark. I can't live without you anymore."
His hands caressed her back, and then stroked her long auburn tresses, straightening her curls before they would bounce back into place.
"Shh. Hush now, honey," he told her in his deep voice. "I'm here now to show you how you can live without me. Just let me hold you for awhile, first."
Elyse pressed herself into him and pulled herself tighter against him. His arms tightened around her and welcomed her trembling form and let her wracking sobs of despair rush through her. When she was finally able to control her tears, Elyse loosened her grip on Mark and felt his grip take release its bear hug on her. Leaning back, she looked into his eyes and saw that he had been crying as well.
"Oh, baby, don't cry," she raised her hands to his cheeks and started to wipe the tears off of them. "You know it'll just make me cry again."
"It's okay, Lyse," Mark leaned into one of her hands, kissing its palm while using his pet name for her. "I'm just glad to get to see you again before I have to return."
"No. NO!" she gripped his head between both of her hands. "You're not leaving me again! You're here with me now; and you're not going away again!"
Taking her hands in his, he pulled them away from his face, kissing each one before sliding them down onto his chest. "Lyse, feel and know that I can't stay," he said, putting them both over his heart.
Elyse could feel his hard chest muscle underneath the thin black t-shirt he was wearing. She thought it was nice at first feeling him like this, and then she noticed that was all she felt. There was only his hard chest, but nothing else. Mark didn't have a heart beat underneath his flesh.
Elyse pulled her hands away and placed them over her mouth, shaking her head and whispering "no" into them. Mark quickly took her into his arms again, and held her as the realization grabbed her heart and crushed it under the truth of his passing.
When she was able to get her breath again, she asked him, "Why are you here?"
"Like I said, I'm here to show you how you can live without me. You need to find someone else in your life that will give you the love that I once did, someone that can please you as I did, maybe even better."
"No one can make me as happy as you did, Mark. You were always my love and always will be."
Mark pulled her away from him, looked into her brown eyes, and spoke as if he were reading her mind.