Creator's Commentary
The Things We Never Knew
Have you ever wondered how much of your life you don't know about?
Now, that sounds like a ridiculous question. After all, you were there. You lived it. Every moment of it.
Or did you? Did you really get to see EVERYTHING that was going on in your life?
In Part 3, Nikki finds herself in a place she never expected to be. She's watching the doctors frantically trying to save her life. She's looking down at her own body and then she meets Ariel.
A man she has never seen before. A man who knows her name. A man who seems to know everything about her. But he isn't a man at all. He is her guardian angel.
He wants to show her something. No, WORDS MATTER. In Part 3, Ariel said, “Come, there are things you MUST see!”. He said MUST.
Let me ask you, dear reader: Have you ever considered that?
Every one of us will one day face death, just as Nikki has. One day, we may meet our guardian angel in that “just beyond” world, to guide us to that other place. One day, your entire life may be shown to you in an instant. All of it.
In Part 3, Nikki began to see that story. The part that remained hidden.
You and I have that same story. Now imagine what your story will be.
Something That Changes Everything
In Part 3, Nikki finally gets to see something very different. A different perspective. All of a sudden, the story she believed about her life is rewritten. Now there is a different narrative. She was under attack. It stemmed from an old grudge. Her pain, her suffering was a byproduct of the struggle between good and evil.
Everything she believed about her own worth begins to change, as she watches the darkest moment of her life from a perspective she never knew existed.
Someone cared. Someone fought for her. Someone stood in the gap and took the pain and suffering OVER and OVER and OVER for her sake.
She is dead, yet she is still Nikki. The same Nikki with all the past, all the baggage, all the self-loathing. She watches her life like a movie and all of a sudden she begins to see, "The Rest of the Story".
We see Ariel through Nikki's eyes.
She sees him fighting. Alone. Outnumbered. Overpowered.
She sees the Liars attacking him relentlessly.
She sees him wounded. She sees him suffering.
And she discovers something that she had never imagined.
Someone had been fighting for her, her entire life. HE cared. HE sacrificed. HE endured so much. FOR HER.
All along he was fighting for her, and she never knew it.
Now, here's the interesting part.
All of a sudden, Ariel is a hero. Her hero. She never knew anyone had fought for her before. But this man, this angel did.
In that one scene, Nikki’s internal self narrative begins to change.
The Wounds We Carry
There is something about Ariel that I find particularly interesting.
He's an angel. An immortal being. A guardian appointed by God.
Yet he carries wounds.
Have you ever considered this? Angels having a story, a past, choices, emotions, baggage, and wounds.
Not just the wounds inflicted by the Liars, but something much deeper.
He carries guilt. He carries regret. He carries the belief that he has never been good enough.
And those wounds have been with him for thousands of years.
Now think about Nikki.
She carries wounds too.
Wounds from things that happened to her. Wounds from things other people did. And wounds from choices she made along the way.
She has spent much of her life believing things about herself that may not be true.
And so has Ariel.
Isn't that interesting?
An immortal angel and a forty-year-old woman. Two beings who couldn't be more different.
Yet perhaps they have more in common than either one realizes.
The Rest of the Story about the Story
I guess, like any writer, there are bits and pieces of my past, my experiences that become part of the characters I create.
I heard Billy Bob Thornton give an interview where he described how he came up with Karl Childers, the Sling Blade character.
Billy Bob said that, in a moment of self-loathing, he created Karl from three sources. There was a man named Ed, whom he knew during childhood, who had an intellectual disability and was made to live in a little shanty behind his family home. Then there was a man he knew while working as a janitor in a mental hospital. That man became the voice of Karl.
And finally, there was Frankenstein's monster. The misunderstood monster.
Likewise, Nikki is a character whose roots reach back to people from my past.
One of the phrases I wrote in the story is, “There was nothing left to save.” I remember having those exact words spoken to me many many years ago. And the darkness that went with it.
I tried my best to leave what happened to Nikki to the imagination.
We all have wounds, but Nikki has a wound that damaged part of her soul. And I know people with that burden. So I tried to be as sensitive and gentle as possible. Nikki deserves that.
The Story Isn’t Over
One of the things I enjoy about discovery writing is that sometimes a character begins to reveal something I hadn't originally considered.
Ariel started as a guardian angel with a troubled past.
Nikki started as a lonely woman driving home on a rainy afternoon.
But as I write, I'm discovering that their stories are connected in ways that go far beyond a guardian and the person he was assigned to protect. There is another backstory to the backstory. Begging to be told.
Maybe the story we think we know is only a small part of a much greater story.
And maybe, one day, we will discover the rest of it.
Will we ever hear the story of what really happened between Ariel and Asmodeus? What happened? How did it all go down? How could so many angels possibly rebel? Someone please write THAT story.
But first, we have more pressing matters. Like Ariel said to Nikki, “Come, there are things you MUST see!"
I wonder where Nikki will find herself in the next episode?
Stay tuned. Until next week.