It has been a week since Tabitha's mother passed away.
She is her mother's only child and since her father hasn't been in the picture since she was a child, it falls to her to figure out what to do with all of her mother's belongings..
She uses the keys she received from the lawyers at the reading of her mother's will and enters her mothers home.
It isn't anything grand. Just a one bedroom, one bathroom. Something her mother had moved into after Tabitha had grown up and moved away to a bigger town for better job prospects.
Her mom didn't own the house and Tabitha has only three days to figure out what to do with all of the worldly possessions her mother left behind.
Her mom left behind clothes, jewelry, dishes, furniture, are rugs, throw pillows, a washer and a dryer, food that was still in the refrigerator, detergents, soaps, shampoos, a computer and books.
So very many books.
Her mom had loved to read.
Feeling overwhelmed by the shelves and boxes full of books, Tabitha starts small.
She goes to her mom's bedroom and begins to sort through her mom's clothes that were in the closet.
Tabitha remembers being small and thinking all of the clothes her mom owned were pretty princess dresses.
Her mom was Autistic and had Sensory Processing Disorder and just couldn't handle the inseams in most pants, but when Tabitha was small she hadn't known all of that.
All Tabitha had known at the time was that her mom's dresses were made from the silkiest and/or the softest fabrics.
She used to love playing dress up in her mom's dresses and jewelry and pretend to be a princess.
Her mom had always told her that she had "Sapphire Eyes" and so when she would pretend to be a princess she would pretend her name was "Princess Sapphire". She's twenty-eight and admits now that, that sounds silly, but in her own defense she had only been ages three through five at the time.
It wasn't until after she started going to school that her playing pretend about being a princess changed to her pretending to be an astronaut. Then there was a week long phase where she pretended to be a rock star every day. She remembers standing on the vacuum cleaner a couple of times and pretending that the handle was a microphone and that she was President of The United States. Then there were the days when she was an ice skater, a ballerina, a chef, a painter an Olympic Gymnast and a teacher.
She used to get pretty immersed in her daydreaming and her playing pretend. So immersed in fact that she could hyper visualize every minute detail and even hear and feel things that were going on in the hyper visualization, sometimes she could even smell the scents of things like bread or cake or flowers that she might see in a hyper visualization.
Tabitha remembers calling it her "Imaginary" when she was around three and she had been pretty deep in a hyper visualized world.
Her mom had taken her to a few different types of doctors and Tabitha had been diagnosed with Autism just like her mom. But Tabitha didn't really understand what Autism even was or that her mom was also Autistic and that was how she had recognized the signs until later on in her life.
Tabitha's mom would just let Tabitha be whenever Tabitha would be immersed in her "imaginary" while either playing or just sitting somewhere and spacing out.
Her mom always asked her about her "Imaginary" and write stories for Tabitha based off of Tabitha's Imaginary Worlds and later when Tabitha was a bit older and could mostly write and spell her mom would have Tabitha write down the things from her "Imaginary" and draw her own pictures to add to the stories.
Tabitha's mom eventually wrote a couple of kid's books and even made a couple of comic books all based off of Tabitha's Imaginary Worlds. But Tabitha's mom never had them published, she just collected them and kept them and kept the Author and Illustrator spaces blank for Tabitha to fill in with her own name if Tabitha ever wanted to publish them herself.
As she is going through all of her mother's clothes, Tabitha comes across a stack of the books and comic books her mom made for her.
Tabitha smiles despite having tears in her eyes as she recalls the fond memories and mourns the loss of her mother.
She cracks open one of the books.
Inside is a fantastical yet nonsensical world. Tabitha laughs to herself as she closes the book, it had probably made a lot more sense to her when she was younger.
Distracted by the discovery of the books she and her mom had made together throughout her childhood, Tabitha grew curious to see what all kinds of books her mom had on the shelves and in the boxes.
Leaving everything she had been going through in a pile on the floor she wandered into the living room and grabbed a box full of books and carried it into her mom's bedroom and sat it on the bed and then sat on the bed beside it and picked one of the books out.
On the cover of the book was a very large and muscular man with no shirt on and a pale beautiful woman whose clothes looked torn and like they were seconds from falling off.
"A Bodice Ripper?... Seriously mom?" Tabitha asked the empty air with a laugh as she cracked open the book.
"Oh my gosh..." Tabitha said with a giggle as she flipped through and read a couple of random pages "This is so corny!".
Tabitha reached into the box and grabbed another book. It looked to be another Bodice Ripper type of book.
"Oh my god mom!..." Tabitha shouted with a blush as she felt embarrassed by the very scantily clad couple on the cover in an intimate embrace "How many of these do you even have!"
Then Tabitha sobered as she realized her mother wasn't there to answer her. For just a second Tabitha could have made believe that her mom was in the kitchen and Tabitha was there just for a visit and had discovered these books that she could not believe that her mom even owned.
Tabitha took in a breath and then shakily let it out and tried not to cry again as she remembered that her mom was gone.
She pulled out another book from the box.
"Surprise!" She shouted to herself "It's another Bodice Ripper!".
Tabitha tried to laugh about it. But she just felt sad.
Everything in this house was everything her mother had. All of this. It was literally what was left of her mother's life.
Tabitha put the book aside and went to the kitchen and opened a cabinet.
Two plates, two bowls, two glasses, and two mugs. Those were the only dishes in that cabinet and Tabitha had a feeling the only reason her mom even had two of everything in there was for when Tabitha came to visit.
It felt lonely and a little pathetic and this is what her mother's life was like at the end.
Alone in a small one bedroom, one bath house that she didn't even own without anyone except her daughter to even care that she was gone.
It was sad when Tabitha thought about it and it gave her an existential crisis when she wondered if her own future would be similar, except, Tabitha didn't have anyone at all.
Sighing, Tabitha figured that she might as well see what sorts of entertainment value that her mom might have found in those books because if her mom had found anything entertaining about those books then she wanted to know what it was.
As far as Tabitha could discern after perusing and flipping through a few more of her mother's books, were that Bodice Rippers almost always followed the same kinds of formulas making them campy and predictable and not very entertaining.
Tabitha pressed a palm to her face as she read an Intimate Scene in a book that was embarrassingly written with phrases like "Throbbing Manhood".
"Why did mom even have books like this?" Tabitha whined to the empty air. "Actually, I think I should be more concerned with why she had so many."
After finding two more Bodice Ripper style books Tabitha huffed "Dang mom, were you really just that lonely?"
After another three Bodice Ripper style books found Tabitha groaned "Okay, apparently mom just really needed a man."
"Oh god, please tell me mom didn't... masturbate... to these." Tabitha whined with a wince as she read yet another intimate scene in one of the books "Because the sex scenes in these are just... bad..."
Tabitha paced around the living room while holding one book in one hand and a cup of hot cocoa in the other.
"Okay..." Tabitha said as she read "This one has some decent writing and the plot isn't horrible or predictable... I can maybe see why you liked at least one or two of these, mom."
Tabitha wandered back to her mother's bedroom and gave a frustrated groan as she saw all of the stuff she had left in a pile on the floor.
"This is going to take forever." She whined as she sat on the bed again and put the one book she was holding down beside her and fished around inside the box on the bed until she found another book that had a cover that actually looked interesting.
She knew that she had to eventually get things done, she had only three days after all, but she was also physically and emotionally exhausted and wrung out.
So she cracked open the book and began to read as she sipped on her hot cocoa and promised herself that she would only read until all of her hot cocoa was gone and that as soon as her cup was empty she would get back up and get back to work.
She drank the last sip of her hot cocoa and had a moment of felling disappointed that it was gone and feeling too tired to really get back to work but she put the book aside anyway and sat the empty cup on the nightstand.
She unenthusiastically meandered to the pile of things on the floor and sat down beside it.
One of the dressed her mom had was gold and sapphire blue and very pretty. Tabitha stood up and held the dress up to herself while looking in the mirror as she remembered playing dress up in her mom's clothes.
She shimmied out of her jeans and tee shirt and slipped the dress on over her head and then went to her mom's jewelry box and took a few of her mom's fancier hairclips with rhinestones out and pinned them in her hair to look like a crown.
She gave herself a bow as she looked in the mirror "Hello, Princess Sapphire. It's been a long time since I've seen you."
Chuckling at her own silly antics she went to get the dress off but the fabric got caught on a hair clip as she was pulling it over head. She stumbled forward as she struggled to pull herself free from the dress without damaging the dress or the hairclips and without pulling out her hair. As she stumbled forward she hit her knee on the dresser and went reeling back slightly and tripped over the pile of her mom's things behind her feet.
Then for a second everything was dark.
When she was finally able to pull her head free of the fabric and could see again she was not met with the sight of her mother's room or her mother's belongings.
"What the heck? Where am I?" Tabitha asked herself as she looked upon a sandy beach and stormy ocean waves with a small pile of rocks around her.