E

I finished this the other day and I'd love some feedback on it. Let me know if the middle works because I'm unsure if it does. Thanks so much!

Ecstatic.

Frowning, Lynn scratched the word out.

Elated.

Nope. Still not right.

Euphoric.

Sounds better, but just not the best it could be.

Excited.

Boring. She would have rather used one of the other words.

Eager- no. Energized- no. Enthusiastic- no, no, no.

Frustrated, Lynn leaned back in her chair and rubbed her temples. Not right, none of these words were right. Lynn sighed before getting up and walking to the window. Crossing her arms across her chest, she gazed out of the window and straight at the Eiffel Tower. It was better than she knew it would be. All 986 feet of it was magnificent. When she was a little girl hiding under her bed with a flashlight and an encyclopedia, pretending not to hear her parents fight, Lynn knew that one day she would finally make it to The City of Lights. And now here she was. Staring up at one of the most beautiful and breathtaking architectural wonders in the world. A single tear trickled from her deep blue eyes and more followed- slowly, falling solemnly down her cheeks.

She blinked hard, pressing her heels of her hands to her eyes. God, this was her moment. What she’d waited for. What she worked for. Sniffing back snot, she went back to the desk and sat in front of her notebook. 365 pages, one each day, for 18 years. Simplistic. One word on each page describing how she felt that day. She tried to go through the alphabet and found it ironic that today’s final letter was E.

E like the Eiffel Tower. E like her mother’s name, Elizabeth. E like El Paso County jail where her father went when he killed her mother. E like eighteen, how old she was when she took control of her life. E like eternity, the time she was paying for the crime her father committed.

Lynn grabbed for her ballpoint pen and placed it on the page. She was going to come up with a word. She had to. Suddenly floods of memories came back, fierce and untamed like a wild animal. Her father. Her mother. Blood. Court appearances. Institutions. Suicide watch. She tried not to think about the past. That was the point of the notebook, that was the point of what she had been working for. But tonight, it was allowed. Tonight it was allowed because tonight it was finally over.

She finally knew what word she was going to write. It came to her, like the notebook came to her. Like an epiphany. Like a dream or maybe a nightmare. She wrote the word, cautiously as if she was being watched. Dead in the middle of the page, the word looked up at her. The finality of it scared her. It shouldn’t but it did. Staring at her, dead-pan, silently judging but understanding at the same time. The word knew Lynn’s struggles. The word knew that this was it.

Lynn grasped the gun and placed it to her temple. It gleamed silver and the metal was cold. She had placed the gun there so many times, she was numb to the feeling. Tonight, as it all came crashing down, she felt it. She felt that cold. She hid that cold and hid those feelings and those memories for so long.

The shot was deafening and Lynn’s body shook violently from the blow. Her head fell straight on the desk, crimson plasma tainting her open notebook page red. Mixing with the blue ink, making the word END bleed purple. The Eiffel Tower stood watching, winking through Lynn’s open hotel window, blinking as Lynn’s life faded away.