Work Text:
The smell of cigarettes I freaking love it. Here I am sitting in a dinghy-wear house. with beautiful women and a thin fog of smoke.
Sometimes, the smell of cigarettes reminds me of hanging out with friends and living my best life with no care in the world. Other times, it reminds me of hands roaming my body while my head is too fuzzy to care. My life is hanging on by a $6.65 box. Either way, I’m going to make the best of it. I’m too deep to get out anyway.
I was a kid. Around 5-6, I got bullied a lot and came home with bruises and scars. I was running away from a group. I could hear them scream, telling me how I was going to get worse if I kept running. Like hell, I’m going to stop and get beaten up again. I was so tired that I had no idea where I was even going. I found a sketchy alleyway and decided to hide there. I sat between two dumpsters, trying not to gag from the rotting stench. I heard them run by and call my name. Thank God I lost them. I was about to get up when this man spotted me. He was probably in his late teens, but maybe a college student couldn’t tell. He asked what I was doing. He seemed like he wasn’t going to hurt me, so I told him. He asked if I wanted to numb the pain for a second. I said yes with no hesitation. He smiled and gave me a white stick with 1/4 of it being brown. He asked if I knew what this was. I just stared. I had a vague idea of what it was. I’d seen my "friends" parents using it before and had some idea of what it was, but I just stayed quiet. He got the hint and motioned for me to come closer, so I did. He gripped my thin waist with his callused hand and put the stick between my lips and told me to breath in. He lit the stick and I breathed. I felt like I was dying. I coughed for a straight 5 minutes and he just chuckled and said that’s how it is the first time. He brought me closer and sat me on his lap. I was straddling his waist. His big hands held me possessively, yet so softly. He took a drag on his cigarette and told me he had a better idea. He said to breathe in when I felt like I should. He took one last drag and put his soft lips on mine. I breathed in. The pain was still there, but there was a new kind too. I can’t tell if the smoke got to my head or if he just made it special, but when he pulled away, I chased his lips like a puppy following its owner. I kept asking for him to do it again. He just laughed, and we kept at it. It felt nice to feel a different kind of pain; this type felt nice. After the stick went out, he gave me a box and said to keep it.
I was lonely, so the first chance of having someone’s attention on me, I took it. He was an unknown face. My mom would say that unknown faces are dangerous, but he didn’t seem dangerous. I was probably too sad to even care who gave me a second of their day. So he was nice and taught me how to relax for a second, so I never told anyone. Not like it mattered. I barely knew anything about him. I didn’t even know his name.
I got hurt a lot. All I knew about how to stop hurting was to light a stick. I got addicted quickly. The burn in my lungs and the pain going away Fuck, that was the best 10 minutes of my goddamn life. I wanted my life to feel like those 10 minutes. So I kept lighting them. If I could make my life feel that good just from a $6.65 box, why wouldn’t I stop?