Smoking Stories

This story was submitted on September 26th 2026 by Cicada33, author of The road to freedom. If you have a story to submit it’s right here !

This story is a series divided into 15 parts:

• Side effects of obedience (part 1)
• Side effects of obedience (part 2)
• Side effects of obedience (part 3)
• Side effects of obedience (part 4)
• Side effects of obedience (part 5)
• Side effects of obedience (part 6)
• Side effects of obedience (part 7)
• Side effects of obedience (part 8)
• Side effects of obedience (part 9)
• Side effects of obedience (part 11)
• Side effects of obedience (part 12)
• Side effects of obedience (part 13)
• Side effects of obedience (part 14)
• Side effects of obedience (part 15)

The smell of hairspray and hydrogen in the salon suffocated me all day, but the real chaos was in my head. As I mechanically washed my hair and wiped the counters, I was constantly haunted by images of me with a cigarette. The feeling of confidence and power I had as I held the cigarette between my lips, the sharpness of my own gaze in the mirror, Martha’s morning class on smoking, it all came full circle. The voice of reason kept telling me that it was a poison that I should stay away from, but something was not giving me peace.

And then Mrs. Lily re-entered the drawing room. She was sitting in a chair with fresh paint on her head and foils hanging around her face.

“Ena, honey, save me again,” she smiled, pointing her eyes at her bag. “You know the procedure, my hands are a disaster.”

I walked over, pulled out that black, luxurious pack of Sobranie cigarettes and took out a brown tube with a gold filter. But this time, something inside me snapped. Instead of putting it to her lips, my hand moved on its own, completely unconsciously. I put a cigarette in my mouth.

I lit the lighter. The flame flared up, and I drew in the air exactly as Martha had shown me this morning, in that slow-motion tutorial. First into the mouth, to feel the warmth, and only then down into the lungs. I did that slowly, with surgical precision, unaware of where I was. It was a pure, automatic reaction. I pulled a lit cigarette from my lips and handed it to a relaxed Lily.

Only then did I realize what the hell I had done. I remained frozen in place, my heart beating fast. Lilly accepted the cigarette in the most normal way, took a smoke and continued to flip through the magazine as if nothing had happened, but when I turned my head to the large salon mirror, I saw Aunt Lisa. She was standing in the corner, leaning against the wall, with a cheerful, victorious smile on her face.

Half an hour later, the customers left and the two of us were completely alone. The salon fell into silence. We sat down on leather armchairs, and Lisa, as usual, immediately lit a long slim cigarette. She took a drag, then held out an elegant, white pack toward me.

“No thank you,” I snapped furiously, clutching my fingers in my lap. My voice trembled with a rush of shame and panic. “I don’t smoke. I don’t know why I did that a moment ago. It was pure coincidence.”

Lisa gave a low, hoarse laugh, twirling the pack between her fingers. “Relax sweetie. Why are you so upset? It’s all normal. Both your mother and I started smoking much earlier than you are now.”

“My mother?” I looked at her in complete disbelief, my eyes widening behind the glasses. “That’s a lie. She’s organically intolerant to cigarettes.”

“You really don’t know anything about her, do you?” Lisa blew a thin wisp of smoke toward the ceiling, a cynical glint in her eyes. “Of course, how would you know when she’s been playing a saint all her life and trying to keep everything under control. Listen to me carefully. When we were in high school, your dear mommy had a crazy date with a dangerous character.”

“My mother had a boyfriend before my dad?” I barely spoke.

“Oh, yes. And quite a few,” Lisa laughed, shaking off the ashes. “That first one smoked a lot, so she started with him. At your age, your mom was the first one in town when it came to skipping class or going to rock and roll parties,” Lisa said with a wicked smile, taking a long drag on the smoke. “While you’re sitting at home studying, at your age she was regularly hanging out in bars, hanging out with guys on motorbikes and smoking cigarette after cigarette. I remember when she ran away for the weekend with some guy to the seaside, and her people around town thought she was in college prep classes. She was cheeky, defiant and did whatever she wanted.”

Lisa leaned forward slightly, shaking off the ashes. “And the funniest thing of all? She didn’t even want to look at your father at first, he was ‘too boring and nice’ to her. But as soon as she got pregnant, she changed the record overnight. She cut everything, married him and put on that mask of a ‘nice, modest woman’ who is now lecturing you about what a decent girl can and can’t do.”

“She wanted to erase her past and prevent you from following in her footsteps,” Lisa finished, shaking off the ashes with a smile that held no trace of pity.

My entire world collapsed in one second, and a dark, icy void formed in its place. All those years of darkness, discipline, her sermons about morality, health and “sluts from the bottom”, it was all one big, sick, dirty lie.

I remembered every disgusted look she gave me when I wore something shorter, every lecture about how “an honest girl from a good house doesn’t do such things”, and that cold, judgmental voice she used to suffocate me my whole life. She played god over my life, brainwashed me and made me an invalid incapable of the real world, while at my age she was worse than all of us combined. I was sick. I physically felt my stomach turn with disgust for my own mother. What a sick bitch.

All that false sanctity she had draped herself with fell away in a second, leaving only a hypocritical woman who vented her stinking, hidden shame on me.

A terrible, wild rage mixed with pure, devastating defiance exploded inside me. I looked at Lisa, then at the pack on the table.

“Okay,” I said, my voice cold as ice, laced with a new venomous determination. “Give me one.”

Lisa was smiling contentedly as I pulled a long, thin slim cigarette out of the pack with trembling fingers. The filter was soft, clinging to my dark, ripe cherry lipstick. I put it to my lips, holding it exactly as Marta had shown me, elegantly, without spasms, between my index and middle fingers. I lit the lighter. The flames flared up right in front of my eyes, the embers glowing bright orange under the salon lights.

I drew the smoke into my mouth first. I felt the sweet warmth on my tongue, held it for a second, then calmly opened my throat and took a deep breath, letting the smoke down, right into my lungs.

They were light, slim cigarettes, much nicer and softer than Martin’s. The body no longer protested; medicine and fear have definitely capitulated to sheer spite. As I exhaled a thick, bluish stream that lazily slid over my lips, I noticed a strange thing, my fingers suddenly stopped shaking. The sharp dizziness and nicotine shock were barely noticeable this time, but I felt my neck and shoulder muscles, which had been tight from weeks of stress, suddenly completely relax. In seconds, the cigarette took over the role of the perfect, guilty sedative.

Lisa sat across from me, her eyes half closed, hypnotically watching my every move. She slowly lowered her cigarette to the ashtray, an expression of pure, sincere delight on her face.

“Man, Ena…” she spoke softly, her voice filled with deep respect. “Well, you look unreal. Look in the mirror, please. That hair, that makeup, and the way you hold that cigarette… You’re a beautiful girl, you were born for this vibe, you look so powerful and sexy.”

I turned my head and looked at our reflection in the large salon mirror. There sat two women, Aunt Lisa and I, with long cigarettes between our fingers, bluish smoke swirling in the air.

My mother was in my mind, but she no longer had any power over me. Looking at me from the reflection was a girl with thin glasses, a sharp bob haircut and a lit cigarette smoldering right next to her lips. For the first time in my life, I felt incredibly mature. Ready for life. Free.

That day, I smoked one more cigarette with Lisa by the end of my shift. I was constantly looking at myself in the large salon mirror, that sight was incredibly pleasing to me. I changed the position of my fingers, looked at how my thin slim cigarette stood next to my dark lipstick and sharp hairstyle. Marta was right, the cigarette fit me perfectly.

The sweet, light taste of nicotine remained in my mouth, a beautiful reminder that sin can be liberating. The old Ena definitely disappeared in that smoke, and the new one knew that many more sins awaited her in the future.

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