[MarvHarvey]

This story came about in the "!00" game, where it was generated by a dice roll. I rolled 5 for 500 words, but this took on a life of its own is is about twice that. I hope it is not too boring!
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Your main character is a man in his late forties, who can be quite foolish. The story begins by a river. A town is snowed in at Christmas. It's a story about the supernatural. Your character is determined to get to the truth.
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The Perfect Life

Aiden sat at the edge of the river – the familiar but unfamiliar river. Winter storms and spring floods must have washed in sand to build a sandy beach on the low gravel corner in the river. The same rocks were jumbled up on the downstream side, where he was sitting, where he had always sat. Everything was familiar, yet somehow he wondered.

The little cabin just along the bank was one he had built himself two decades earlier, before he even owned a house to live in. It had been his sanctuary from hard-luck. His parents died when he was a teen: one to illness, one to a highway accident; and then his older brother, his best friend in the world, drowned while wind surfing on a tropical vacation. How this happened to a sailing instructor and competitive swimmer was a mystery and Aiden had trouble accepting the official police accounts.

In reaction, in rebellion against a hostile world, he acted like an out-of-control teenager. With a decent salary he could indulge these whims and he became a high-rollinig adrenaline junkie. If there was a thrill sport he tried it, and usually avoided injuries. He didn't expect to live very long anyway....

But that was then – Aiden was no longer alone. He had a wonderful wife. Too wonderful, he allowed himself to think with a smile. There she was laying on the sand just there – bikini undone in the sun. Intelligent, witty, spirited, of course beautiful, and from a wealthy family that saw she had whatever she needed for herself, her husband, and her three children. And that was the story – his life went along smoothly and perfectly, so well that he couldn't remember much about the details of the last 20 years except that life was good. Life was so good that he rarely came back to his cabin – his place of refuge when the world had been cruel – he rarely wanted to. He realized, as he sat there, that it was the one point where his wife was not in perfect accordance with his wishes – she disliked the place and usually found reasons why he could not come back here. But it was a small price: she was wonderful!

And he headed down to apply sunscreen, once again, to her smooth skin, stroking along her lean muscles. This was just his favourite thing in the world, just as he had imagined when he was a geeky adolescent.

They had met at a ski resort the Christmas after his brother died. With no close family, and finding time with more distant relatives to be a purgatory of long faces and soft voices, he escaped to a mountain resort known for steep slopes and its apres-ski scene. The blizzard that blocked the pass and marooned them in the small town at the foot of two mountains was just his usual bad luck.

The hotel bar was noisy and crowded – but the power was still on and the alcohol still flowed. Mingling was easy for stranded vacationers, they could all talk about their previous storm stories. But she was different. She listened alertly, but said little. She watched Aiden from the moment he appeared.

Of course it was easy to get close to him – every man there wanted to be close to her: smashing good looks and an encompassing laugh ensured that. And so they found quiet places: first his room and then hers – it was a suite with a whirlpool and a view.

In the morning the sky was clearing and some lifts were open. Aiden wanted to ski, and refused the most tempting of carnal offers to stay back from the slopes. She looked at him with oddly transparent eyes: "I am afraid that if you go out you will never come back to me."

"I am yours forever, my love," was his reply before he turned and headed out.

An hour later he was unconscious on a toboggan, being towed away from the small avalanche that had swept down the slopes. She watched, and then followed slowly toward the small medical clinic - the road was still blocked and there would be no way to get the injured to the hospital in the big town down in the valley.

Aiden awoke some time later in a strange bed in a strange hospital in a strange city. He was groggy and confused at first, but recovered his equilibrium quickly. He seemed unhurt and he rose from the bed as soon as he saw her. "I did come back, and I am yours forever, my love," he said. She rushed into his arms.

The rest, one might say, is history. They married and had three wonderful children. They lived in a nice house and had interesting, and not overly stressful, jobs, and the children had grown up quite nicely.

And so Aiden tried to balance that wonderful life with a creeping unease. He often dreamed of having a sandy beach at his riverside cabin, but he knew from local people that it had never been before. How had the river done this – and it was as perfect as ever he had imagined it.

But all of his life had been as he had imagined it – his luck had turned completely when he met this wonderful woman. He could live like this forever.

As he slowly spread his wife's sunscreen he looked at his sandy little beach he realized that it was as perfect as he had imagined it might be. But so was the rest of his life: his children, his wife, his whole life. Yes, even the beach – but the beach was impossible, or so he thought. Yes, as he ran his hands up her legs he thought about how everyone had said that even if you put sand here it would be washed away – because of the geology of the river. How? Why? He rolled away from his wife and stood up to look around. Could this all be real? Could this all be unreal? He had a wave of feeling that it wasn't all a coincidence. He struggled to see what he was missing. There were flashes in his brain that were trying to tell him something.

“Nurse,” she called out, “His brain waves on that machine have increased sharply. Should I push the button for the emergency medical team?”

“Yes, it will bring help. But we must wait and see."

“His brain activity is too high – he must be having some kind of event. If he recovers consciousness at this point he'll die – increase the sedation – we need to slow that brain activity down just a little.”

“Look, it's dropping again. Whatever was there, he was thinking – if he can still think. It's still dropping...still dropping...still dropping.”

“His vital signs are the weakest we have seen in weeks. What is happening in there?”

“He's slipping away. Miss? You are the only one he has – there is nothing more we can do.”

“Yes,” she said. And that was all.

And so the young woman who had waited with the new friend she knew she was losing finally had to let him go. She had come down the mountain with him, stayed at the town hospital for three weeks of his profound coma, because there was no one else. She had found some relatives of his, but they were unable or unwilling to come to him. She stayed. She had to. She didn't know why but in their one wild night she had sensed that somehow they could have had a perfect life together. She could never know that she had given him his.