Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28477544-20160517015830

"Smokers"

Looking for feedback / review

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My mom was a smoker. She used to tell me about it. "Never start" she would say. "It is rather difficult to quit."

Watching movies and reading books didn't help me. Neither did going out with friends. Cigarettes were glorified in the media. Friends always had a smoke if you were needing to bum one. I'll admit I tried them. The horrid flavor of nicotine turned me away from them. I didn't get why people smoked so much. But my friends kept up the habit. When I was a teenager I had some sort of understanding of the effect the cigs caused on your body. In reality, I had no clue.

On a Winter break from school, me and some of the kids from my neighborhood were hanging out around an outlet mall. Of course, there was plenty smoking going on.

One of the kids, who wasn't particularly my friend, produced a pack of smokes. They had a plastic seal and the pack itself had multicolored swirls all over it. The one thing that had caught my attention was the dark imprint on the pack. It was clearly a set of lungs. I pointed out the glossy set of lungs. The kids disregarded it. They started taking smokes.

"It's 'prob one of them warnin' labels, you know, Surgeon's General and all that."

The others murmured in agreement. I wasn't smoking them myself, so I figured it was no big deal. The sound of lighters flicking and quick bursts of light filled up the space around me.

The night continued pretty normally. We played truth or dare, we tagged buildings, we stole from the mall. We were young and figured this was the most fun to have in life.

After getting home late, I collapsed in bed. I instantly was asleep, and was flung into a dream. It was like earlier that night. All the kids were passing around the box. They lit their cigarettes, and after a couple of puffs, each one had started to melt. It was almost as if they were human-size candles. They didn't make a sound, but as I watched my friends dissolve, I screamed.

And I woke up with the same scream in my throat. Sweating I glanced around. Of course, my room was empty, save for the Jimi Hendrix posters on the wall staring back at me. I checked the clock. It was already 6 AM, so I figured I'd get up. I took a shower; it made me feel better after the strange dream.

My afternoon plans were to have lunch with my two friends, Alyssa and Paris. I met them at some cheap pizza place. We went inside.

They had both been there the night before. They had both smoked the cigarettes. And it seemed to me both of them had a nasty cough. I questioned them on it.

Paris replied "Don't worry, probably just catching cold." Alyssa nodded her head in agreement while taking a sip of her soda. Then, she broke out in a terrible coughing fit.

She dropped her soda, spilling it all over the floor. Doubled over, she gagged and coughed. I wasn't sure what to do. Paris was standing there with a blank expression. Obviously he was shocked. I gave her a pat on the back. She exploded with a vile cough, spraying liquid everywhere. It was some sort of black, viscous fluid. She looked up at me, and I could see the blackness dripping of her lips, and more of it was coming out of her mouth. She coughed more and it ran down her chin. She then fell to the floor.

I can't be sure of what happened. I don't know if I could ever explain it. But I do know she was pronounced dead at the scene when the paramedics arrived. Paris was scared - but then the cigarettes must have got to him too, because I haven't heard from him since last week, when Alyssa died.

In fact, all my friends must be on vacation or something, because I haven't heard from most of them recently. 