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 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)

The morning started in pure chaos. I didn’t hear the alarm on my phone, and when I finally woke up and realized what time it was, I got out of bed in a panic. I’m late for work. I flew through the room, pulled on my pants, and nervously ran my fingers through my new, short hair that had become wildly disheveled overnight.

I ran into the bathroom, the faint taste of smoke was still in my mouth. While I was brushing my teeth, I looked at my reflection in the mirror while the water was bubbling from the faucet. With a new hairstyle, lipstick, tight clothes and glasses, I looked beautiful. This is not the old me anymore, the old Ena would probably hate this new one. Old Ena would never even think of trying a cigarette, drinking alcohol, coffee, hanging out with “bad girls”. The person in the mirror looked like someone who was not afraid of anything, a mask I couldn’t wait to show the world

With my bag on my shoulder, I grabbed that dark, ripe cherry lipstick and applied it to my lips in a quick, practiced motion. I looked dangerous.

I burst into the hall and headed for the kitchen to grab the keys from the counter. Through the open window came the fresh morning air, mixed with the pale sun and the heavy, recognizable smell of coffee and cigarettes. Martha was already sitting there. She was completely relaxed, leaning back in her chair, slowly sipping her coffee and smoking her first cigarette of the morning. The smoke drifted lazily through the sunlight towards the window.

I paused for a second, rummaging through my bag for my wallet. Marta looked up, examined me from head to toe, and her eyes sparkled.

“That new makeup is nice on you, Ena. That lipstick looks really good on you,” she said, her voice deep, laced with morning hoarseness.

“Thank you,” I blurted out hastily, not looking at her, as my fingers finally felt the keys.

“I’m in a hurry, Lisa is waiting for me, she’ll kill me if I’m late for the first customer…”

“It’s just a shame it leaves marks,” Martha added with complete calmness, changing her tone.

Mechanically I turned towards her. Marta gently pushed the crystal ashtray towards the center of the table with her index finger. Inside her, among several of her clean, gray butts, lay a different one. Half a cigarette, wildly and clumsily crushed into the bottom of the pixel. On the white paper near the filter, a perfect, clear impression of lipstick in the color of a ripe cherry was clearly outlined. The same one that I turned off in a panic last night, thinking no one would notice.

My secret was exposed. I was caught in a lie before I could even leave the apartment. In a second, all the blood rushed to my face, I blushed so hard that my ears were burning under my new hair. I clutched the bag in my hands, aware that I had nowhere to run. Two Enas clashed wildly inside me, the scared geek who wanted to collapse into the ground in shame, and this new one standing there with expensive makeup and a sharp hairdo.

“I admit it,” I drawled, looking away from the pixel. “I took one last night. But I just wanted to try it, Martha! And it was disgusting. Terrible. I coughed like an idiot, felt like I was going to choke, and immediately started to feel dizzy. Terrible habit.”

Marta burst into a short, warm and melodious laugh. Her laugh wasn’t evil, it was the relaxed laugh of someone watching a beginner make their first, completely natural mistakes.

“Ena, well, it’s always like that with the first one,” she said, completely calmly extinguishing her cigarette in the ashtray and immediately, without pause, pulling out a new cigarette from the pack. “No one enjoys the first smoke. Your body is in shock because you have no idea what you’re doing. Smoking is an art, it’s learned.”

She leaned closer to the table, holding an unlit cigarette between her fingers, ignoring my haste. That moment, despite my panic at the delay, turned into a visual lesson that mesmerized my senses.

“Look at me,” she commanded softly and somehow seductively.

First she showed me the hand motion. Her two fingers, the index and middle fingers, cupped the filter with perfect elegance. The movement was light, relaxed, without any spasm. Then she pressed the filter to her lips. She didn’t clench it with her teeth, or roughly cup the paper, her lips just rested softly on the edge, making a perfect, airtight ring.

The lighter flicked on. The flames danced, and she drew in air. But this time, she was showing me the process in slow motion.

“The first mistake you all make is pushing the smoke straight into your lungs. That’s not how you do it,” she whispered, holding the smoke in just her mouth for a second, her cheeks puffing out slightly. “First you pull it into your mouth. You taste it, you feel the heat. Only then, in a second, short and separate step, do you open your throat and breathe clean air along with that smoke down into your lungs.”

She pointed. I saw her chest rise slightly as that bluish wave slid down her throat. She held it in for a second, a second where everything stopped for me, and then she slowly opened her lips.

The smoke didn’t fly out in panic. It curled out of her mouth in a thick, heavy and perfectly shaped stream, traveling lazily towards the ceiling. She looked unreal. Every movement of her fingers, the way she held her hand with the burning tobacco close to her face, and the smell of tobacco that once again filled the kitchen, felt hypnotic, powerful and damn attractive.

Marta lowered her hand, shook off the ash with a small, elegant flick of her index finger on the edge of the pixel, then looked at me with absolute certainty.

“You’ll get used to it in time. You just need to learn to control the smoke, and not it control you. I honestly knew even that night on the terrace when in anger you accidentally took the cigarette I offered you that you would light one at that time, it simply suits you, it goes with you. It’s especially evident now that you’ve changed your appearance.”

I blushed at these words, felt ashamed. My mother’s old, built-in defense mechanism, mixed with my own fear of losing control, immediately exploded inside me. That word habituation sounded like surrender before vice. I straightened up suddenly, clutching the bag even tighter.

“ME?” I said, my voice cracking slightly from the inner tension. “Should I get used to it?! I will never smoke, Marta! It’s poisoning, it’s disgusting and I have no intention of destroying myself because of stupid aesthetics!”

Marta just watched me silently, completely calm and relaxed, with a cigarette smoldering lightly between her fingers, not at all shaken by my outburst of anger. She knew, just as I knew, that my anger was not directed at her. It was the fear of how much that image actually stuck in my mind and how much I liked it.

“I’m in a hurry,” I added more quietly, turning on my heel and literally storming out of the apartment, slamming the front door behind me.

My heart was pounding wildly as I descended the stairs and out into the street, rushing toward the salon. The morning air was hitting my face, but in my head… in my head, like a movie, that slow movement of her lips, the warm bluish smoke and the way her fingers held the filter with that absolute freedom were still going round and round in my head.

Marta’s smoking instructions and the smell of smoke followed in my footsteps. Like her words “it looks good on you. It goes with you”. Even her colleagues from the academy were delighted with my appearance. I wanted to try a cigarette again, but now the way Marta showed me, but I was ashamed to admit it to myself.

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