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 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 10)
• 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)

That sharp sound of my mother’s call broke my life in half. I remember how the phone vibrated in my palm while her voice, cold, came from the receiver, Marta coughed in the background. There were no questions about how I was or if I needed anything. She informed me of the decision. Since I failed a class and “chose to slack off,” she took control. Through her longtime colleague, she found me a job.

The next few weeks turned into a gray, monotonous hallway from a nightmare. I worked in the basement archives of a state institution, a place where the air smelled of dampness, mold and old, decaying paper. My task was to manually count, classify and transport heavy binders from the last century. The head of the archives, my mother’s poltroon and eternal debtor, looked at me as a kind of prisoner at forced labor. My every move was under scrutiny.

“Your mother insisted on discipline, Ena,” he would say, “She said not to spare you. She says you need occupational therapy to get you in order.”

Colleagues in that gray den, mostly embittered women nearing retirement, to them I was the spoiled daughter of a successful woman who was incapable of life. They burdened me with the worst physical jobs, leaving me to drag dusty boxes in the dark for hours while they drank coffee and gossiped.

And the mother? Mother called every day, exactly at five in the afternoon, right after the end of her shift. “Are you done?” she would ask without introduction. “It’s hard, isn’t it? Well, you see, Ena, it’s because you didn’t study. Now look carefully at how those at the bottom pass by. If you don’t have school, you’ll work in the dust all your life. That’s your lesson.”

Those words were etched under my skin like tiny needles every day. They destroyed my dignity, layer by layer.

The only bright spot in that complete emotional deluge, became my apartment. My initial barrier to Marta slowly began to soften. There was no longer that tense, hostile silence when we met in the corridor. When I came back from work late in the afternoon, soft music, the smell of cooked food or just Martha’s casual warm greeting would wait for me in the apartment. I stubbornly refused to open up to her completely, afraid that by doing so I would admit my own weakness and admit to myself how much I actually liked her free, relaxed temperament that was the complete opposite of my cage. All I allowed her to draw her drawings in the living room and on the terrace.

And then came that fateful, terrible day. The basement where I worked seemed more stuffy than usual, the stuffiness bothered me more than Marta’s occasional smoking in the apartment. During the morning, an old shelf buckled and dozens of binders spilled onto the floor. The boss came running and started yelling at me in front of everyone, accusing me of negligence, while the other female colleagues just watched silently with a sly smile. For hours I knelt on the cold concrete, collecting papers, breathing in dust as tears of anger welled up in my eyes.

At five in the afternoon came my mother’s call. When I tried to tell her what happened, she just coldly interrupted: “The boss already informed me. You are clumsy and irresponsible, Ena. That man is just trying to make a worker out of you, and you are whining. You are not for studies, you are not for work, what do you want?”

I ran into the apartment like a bomb. I was breathing rapidly, and a terrible, uncontrollable rage mixed with humiliation boiled in my chest. I threw the bag furiously on the floor. I couldn’t stand being indoors, I was suffocating. I automatically continued through the living room and ran out onto the terrace.

Martha was there. She stood casually, her back against the fence, one hand in the pocket of her baggy pants. She held a lit cigarette between the index and middle fingers of her left hand. Bluish, heavy smoke curled slowly around her head, blown by gusts of wind. She looked so calm, so untouchable, as if the whole outside world with its problems was just a pale, unimportant shadow.

“They’re all just plain, complex idiots!” I shouted in one breath, not waiting for him to ask me anything. The dam gave way. In the next five minutes, I told her everything about the boss, and collecting papers on my knees, and colleagues who hate me, and my mother’s poisonous comment over the phone. I shouted, waving my arms, my voice shaking from the tears I refused to shed. I shook out all the anger, all the injustice and all the powerlessness that I had accumulated for weeks.

Marta never interrupted me. She listened to me in complete, mesmerizing calmness. Occasionally, she would just slowly bring the filter to her lips, draw in the smoke, hold it for a second, then casually blow it out to the side, creating a perfect fog shield between us and the outside world. That stability of hers, that peace while she was holding a cigarette, had an effect on me like a sedative. My scream began to lose strength in the face of her silence. When I finally fell silent, gasping for air, Marta slowly shook the ash off her cigarette with a small, elegant flick of her index finger. She looked me straight in the eye, without an ounce of pity, but with some sharp, direct gravity.

“You need to quit that fucking job,” she said softly, her voice deep and steady. “Right away tomorrow.”

“But my mother…” I started, but she cut me off by raising her hand.

“I don’t give a fuck, Ena. Find something of your own. Anything. Go wash dishes, work in a cafe, work in a salon, do anything that has nothing to do with her. Show that woman that you can survive without her supervision and her sick lessons. Don’t let her own you. Your life is spent in the basement because she convinced you that you belong there.”

Her words hit me right in the gut. It was the harsh truth that no one was ever allowed to tell me. As Marta spoke, she slowly brought the cigarette to her lips again.

I watched her with a strange, new fascination. I watched that perfectly relaxed movement of her fingers holding the filter, the absolute, unwavering calm in her large eyes and the embers on the tip of the thin white cigarette that burned slowly, shortening with each new breath. The air around me no longer contained the smell of dampness and rot from my basement, there was only the sharp, refined smell of tobacco that seemed almost therapeutic.

My heart slowly slowed and the anger began to melt away, leaving behind a strange, dull emptiness. Looking at her and at that perfect circle of smoke that slowly traveled towards the sky, a single, deep and inner question arose in my head.

Are damn cigarettes really that calming?

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