I had never hit the period button so hard in my life. At the same time, it had never been so difficult to press it. It felt like every fan, naysayer and Internet troll had joined together underneath the period button in effort to prevent fate. Unfortunately, being the writer of the series, the God of the world of "Time Travelling Salesgirl," I felt that the future could wait no longer. It waited for one and a half decades, from the end of my last year in grad school, through my first years working freelance in the comic book industry, a two-seasoned animated series--one that watered down the comic series to fit a younger audience--all the way to the end of my brief marriage with Coretta. A result that served as the last nail in the coffin for "Time Travelling Salesgirl." I made the ending a direct reflection of my experience and aimed to make someone, everyone, feel as I bitter as I felt.
When I first started out, I told myself I would never be the writer that is a slave to the fans or a slave to myself. I wanted to tell a story. A real story. I pretended that a story was something divine and not of this world. It flew around the universe looking for a way to enter our realm from the fictional one. Once finding the appropriate storyteller--one who was focused and passionate enough to tell it--it would enter his or her brain and host them until the story was conveyed in the perfect manner. It was a writer's job to be inspired by emotion, not dictated by them. Yet, I broke my own rule and didn't care. My life was in shambles at the time. I just hit the period button, clicked the 'Send' button and went to bed in a bitter happiness. The kind of happiness a boxer gets after he steals an illegal jab from the victor. Only the victor was the universe around me. I smiled all night. A smile with tears for comrades. I didn't think once of the future that night. I basked in the bowels of depression, self-pity, misanthropy and single-mindedness. All was enemy.
That night, I dreamed every issue I had written of "The Time Travelling Salesgirl." My favorite, and most controversial issue, was when Diana, the salesgirl, Time Traveled back to Nazi Germany, early March in 1945--close to the date the last pages of Anne Frank's diary were written--and sold Anne Frank an M-16, hours before being discovered by the Germans. The only cost Diane charged was the pen she used for her diary. Not a day after that issue had hit the stands, I was invited for an interview at CNN. I went and was grilled alive and praised high at the same time by two political commentators. Sure, I knew there would be some that were offended by the content of the issue, but I was young and radical as college students are. I dreamed about my least favorite issue that night too. It was during the early 2000s when our sales were dropping to a low we hadn't reached in years. My Editor in Chief suggested we give Diana an anti-hero love interest. It resulted in making Diana a stupid romantic. I swear we made her cry in like every other issue. My wife complained to me just about every morning about change, calling my editor a "sexist cunt" and cited the change as a reason why he was single. Eventually when we sold more comics again, I killed that bastard off in the most absurd way imaginable and make a point to rarely reference him in the issues after his death. "Fuck 'em" my wife would sarcastically say whenever he was even loosely mentioned.
In a lot of ways, Coretta was my biggest fan and harshest critic of the series. Sometimes, I would get paranoid that she was the one sending me hatemail when I did something to a character that was unfavorable. If you were to read any issues I put out before I met Coretta and afterwards, you'd notice subtle changes in Diana's behavior. When I met and feel in love with Coretta, I begin basing Diana--the love of the first love of my life--off Coretta. Interestingly enough, that marked to significant influx in comic sales. It marked the era in which Diana's presence had left the pages of a comic and landed on the back of every backpack, laptop carrying case and college hipster T-shirt in the US. Some called it selling out, I called it a proclamation of my love for my wife.
It wasn't until the dead of that night I realized how important the series was to me and what I had just done to my wife's legacy and the message I sent to my fans. I had just murdered Diana out of spite for my wife's loss in her war with breast cancer. Diana's death was premature. Even as I walked away from the computer that night after sending that script to the editor, I thought of dozens of plots. Great plots. A story was contacting me from the realm of fiction. It chose me to host and I said "No. You will not enter this world because I am a bitter, bitter man." Coretta was still alive in that realm, breathing into me more ways to keep her relevant but I was so blinded my emotion to see it. This is a world the fans flee to to avoid the harsher realities of death and disease. Who was I to punish them for what they were already experiencing? I bet thousands of them were going through similar things and there I was slapping them in the face saying "you won't escape it. You have to feel what I feel." Then, the greatest epiphany hit me: The series was no longer mine. It was everyone's. And I would no longer stand in the way of it. That morning, at 5:00 am, I panicked. I immediately sent an apology to my editor-in-chief for the negative piece of shit I just sent a few hours prior. After I typed the e-mail, I sat up for the remainder of the morning, drinking coffee and watching "The Time-Traveling Salesgirl" cartoon series, sobbing softly. It was the first time I had attacked reality head one. Coretta was gone, I'm alive. Diana was on life support until I got a reply telling me to rewrite the script.
When I had awoken from dozing off, it was mid-day. I had 11 missed calls. Each from the editor, Sam.He was one of my greatest friends in the industry and was the person that got me my job as a writer under his editorship. I didn't bother checking the messages and immediately called him back. He answered after the first ring. Before I could even speak, he told me that he had cried all morning over, what he called, "the greatest script in the industry." Before I could protest about not publishing that script, he told me repeatedly that he was sorry for my recent loss and understood its influence on the ending. Then, went into detail about what "made the script work." He told me the idea that Diana the Time Travelling Salesgirl dying of cancer would appeal to readers who grew up with the comic, since it had run for more than 15 years. He said that readers that began reading it in their teens are now well into adulthood and most likely faced such a serious issue or had cancer to. He paused and talked about how genius it was that the time travelling had caused cancerous cells. But what touched him the most is how Diana chose to deal with it. He called it "perfectly human." At first, he cited how he initially hated how emotional Diana the Salesgirl gets when she realizes she is dying and breaks the rules of set for the series by travelling past the time she exist in hopes of finding the cure in the future. He said that it made her seem too human which then he realized that its a reasonable reaction because she is a human and should be fairly held to those standards. Next, he stated that he loved that instead of trying to fight back against her fate after finding no cure, she vows to travel through time until it is her time to pass. He told me that the script has been already sent to be penciled and colored.
After hearing all of this, I cried aloud. A big, universe shaking cry. A sight that J. Alfred Prufrock would envy. I heard Sam trying yelling over my sobbing. He asked what was wrong, he said he'd fly over if he had to. He warned me not to do anything stupid. He promised to call back the script. He threatened to call the police if I didn't calm down. He started crying too out of fear I was about to hurt myself. Finally, once I had started to calm down I told him that I can't end the series because it meant to much to me, to Coretta, to the world. I reintroduced my philosophy of realms of fiction which he had heard numerous times but was such a good friend he pretended it was brand new. The whole ordeal was the emotional release I needed to push me to the next step of moving on with my life.
A few months later, the issue had been released and I was back on CNN for the first time since grad school. It was a lot more pleasant and sympathetic since most of the world that followed the series knew what I had been going through. Of course, I received the usual death threats and hatemail but I just told myself it was Coretta, mocking and loving me from beyond the grave. Since the series had ended, I have been contacted by stories from the other realms begging to be written. I promise them life by writing scripts and sending them to the television series which has gone its own way from the comic's storyline as a way to pay my respects. I will never forget Coretta and I will always keep her alive. Long live Diana.
