Kayla's Lungs, Part 10
30 April 2015
Kayla's Lungs, Part 10
by Vesperae
SMOKE SIGNALS MAGAZINE - May - June 2015
First, an announcement about my forum:
Boardhost shut down my forum and multimedia archive near the end of March because they recently implemented a ban on smoking and fetish content. Way back in 2000 when I opened the first incarnation of "Sublime," I asked the then owner of Boardhost (who was pretty much a one man band at the time) if he had any problems with SF content. He told me flatly that he absolutely did not.
Oh how times change…
I will definitely have another SF web project at some point, although I'm not quite sure what yet, and I'm not quite sure when, but you'll definitely hear about it here when I have news to share.
In the meantime, I'll still be here, my YT Channel is still up (at least as I type this…lol), and you're always welcome to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Kayla's Lungs, Part 10
January 12, late afternoon
I kept having this little mental video running over and over in the back of my head as I drove to the salon. I kept picturing an intricate network of gears and pulleys and belts and cams and rods all working and whirring together with incredible precision and efficiency. I imagined myself standing over the intricate machine, looking down at it and studying it carefully, and then deliberately and carefully dropping little clods of dirt into it. Each one would shatter and spray as it hit a moving part, causing the whole mechanism to momentarily shudder and vibrate violently. And then the grimy matter would spread from gear tooth to gear tooth, from pulley to belt, from cam to rod, and on and on, until the unnatural vibrations would dissipate and the foreign material would be distributed throughout the entire machine.
And then I'd do it again.
The salon was just a few doors down in the same strip mall as the grocery store where Kayla buys her cartons of Virginia Slims 120's. The neon sign above the front door read: "St. Samantha's Purgatorium for Wayward Girls." The window below it to the left of the front door had a smaller neon sign advertising their services: "Hair • Makeup • Piercings • Tattoos • Nails." The window to the right of the door was lit up with another neon sign – a full pair of red lips with a long white cigarette hanging from them. The tip glowed bright red with a fixed curl of smoke rising from it.
There were no curtains or blinds on the windows, and the interior was large and open, the periphery rimmed with cabinets and counter tops and large mirrors framed in heavy ornate gold frames facing big red leather overstuffed barber chairs. The ceiling was exposed pipe and duct work, and was painted white. The walls, counter tops, and counters were all black. Pools of warm light shone down from track lighting in the ceiling above each styling station, and recessed lighting above, below, and inside the glass front cabinets suffused the space with a faint seductive glow.
I turned off my car and was about to get out when I saw a very polished looking woman stand up from behind the front counter, slip on her long fitted leather coat and leather gloves, and begin to walk out the front door with something in her hand. Moments later, she was lighting up a long white cigarette and hauling a nasty batch of carcinogens deep into her sick little rotting lungs.
She was such a slim pretty girl, with long thick straight auburn hair flowing down her back, and a black silk headband tied off to one side wrangling her tresses at the temples. Her long silver chain earrings and light eyes sparkled in the neon glow, her pale skin contrasting sharply with the dark smoky swirl of makeup with which she'd done her eyes.
I watched her breasts fall slowly as a thick concentrated current of toxins flowed on and on from the glossy sheen of her dark poisoned lips into the still, cold night air. The garish neon lights behind her made the deadly cigarette smoke that she repeatedly invited deep into her chest vivid and bright in the darkness. I watched it swirl and float around her sexy silhouette as she lazily shifted her weight from one 4" heel to the other, occasionally taking a small meditative step or gentle pivot. She devoured her cigarette with one long drag and hard snap after another, and gave her cigarette and the rancid river of cancer and emphysema with which she was flooding her lungs her complete attention.
I watched her take one last long drag, pulling the coal all the way down to the filter. She yanked the fuming butt from her lips with her slim gloved fingers and did a huge French inhale as she began to crush her spent coffin nail out in the ashtray next to the door. She carefully tamped out the scattered hot coals for several seconds as she held the vaporous seeds of Death deep inside, taunting them to take root. Then she looked up at nothing in particular and just stood there for another thirty seconds or so with her pack and lighter in her hand at her side as she very, very slowly let jets of smoke flow out of her nose over and over again. When the carcinogens eventually stopped tickling her sinuses, she turned and went back inside.
No hesitation. No distractions. Just one woman. One urge. One release.
The windows were starting to fog, and of course I was getting very turned on, and of course I really wanted to smoke. And of course the fact that I really wanted to smoke got me even more hot and wet in the pants.
I thought about just starting the car back up and going home. But then I remembered why I came, and how excited I was to be doing what I was about to be doing. So instead, I took a few minutes to compose myself, and eventually screwed up the nerve to get out, go in, and meet the woman that I was just accidentally lusting over.
When I opened the door, I heard the writhing, twisted, perverse wails and instrumental grinding of The Dead Weather at a slightly higher than "background" level reverberating throughout the space. As I approached the front counter, I saw the auburn haired smoker sitting at her desk, looking up at me from behind a tall counter between two large vases of red roses. She was now wearing purple Ray-Ban Clubmaster eyeglasses, and as our eyes met, she smiled broadly at me with teeth the color of butter.
"Welcome to St. Samantha's! How can we help you tonight?"
She smelled of sweet, musky, floral perfume…and leather…and rich, toxic tar. I glanced down and saw her open pack of Virginia Slims Full Flavor 100's and fancy slim black and gold lighter sitting out in the middle of her desk. Not hidden in a drawer, or in her coat pocket, or in her purse, but just out in plain sight, where anyone could see them.
I must have "glanced" a little too long, because she noticed me looking at her cigarettes and lighter. Her expression was momentarily confused as she looked down at her Virginia Slims, but then she quickly looked back up at me and smiled playfully. "Do you want one?"
As the words slowly registered in my swimming little head like I was hearing them from someplace outside of my body, I actually thought I also heard her say "Oh yeah, I smoke. I love to smoke. I really enjoy smoking. I'm a girly girl who smokes girly cigarettes. I reek of tar. I taste like toxic waste. I'm destroying my lungs. I'm ruining my body. I'm killing myself. I couldn't possibly care less what you think. Deal with it."
"Oh…no thank you…it's just that my friend smokes something similar, and seeing your cigarettes there made me think of her."
"Oh…what does your friend smoke?"
"She smokes the 120's."
"I smoke those too sometimes! They're really fun and cool and feminine…and they last a really long time. Yummy! But I like to smoke these when I'm here, because even though they're shorter, they're stronger, so I get the same hit in less time…which means that I can actually take more smoke breaks!" She laughed and flashed the ominous patina of tar on her teeth again. "So, do you smoke?"
I felt myself drifting outside of my body again and heard myself say "Yes." I couldn't believe it; the answer had always been "No"…
"What kind of cigarettes do you smoke?"
"Uh…actually I haven't been smoking that long, and I've only tried one kind so far…Virginia Slims 120's…like my friend smokes."
"Oh, that's a great brand to start with! Either those or the Gold Pack 100's! But a big part of the fun of starting to smoke is getting to try different kinds of cigarettes. But there's no rush…" Another broad corrupted smile.
Once again on auto-pilot, I heard myself ask: "So how long have you been smoking?"
"Hmmm…let's see…WOW…about nine years now!"
Still completely in awe of the fact that I was having this particular conversation with another human being, I again heard myself ask: "And how much do you smoke?"
"About a pack-a-day I guess…" My Inner Geek shot up a quick calculation of a likely minimum of at least seven pack-years of lung damage lurking beneath the plunging neckline of her black dress. She tilted her head and shrugged. "I just really enjoy smoking…it feels really good and it makes me feel really sexy." A slight blush passed over her face and throat and chest and she cleared her throat. "Anyway…how can we help you tonight?"
"I'd like to get some piercings, and I was thinking about maybe doing something with my hair color…and I'd love some makeup advice…and I'd also really like to do something fun with my nails."
"Oh sure! What did you have in mind for piercings?"
"Both my ears…and my nose."
"Cool! No problem." Another carcinogenic grin.
"Why don't we have you meet with a hair stylist first, then a nail stylist, then a makeup artist, and finish up with the piercings?"
Four more of St. Samantha's minions. All glamorous fashionistas. All heavy-smoking, damaged, narcissistic Poster Girls for Self-Inflicted Lung Disease. And just like the auburn haired hostess, all kept their packs of cigarettes and lighters on proud display in their work areas, all of them smelled beautiful and expensive and toxic, and all of them loved to talk about how much they loved to smoke their cigarettes.
My hair stylist was a voluptuous Latina with 13 pack-years of Benson and Hedges Menthol 100's lung damage. My nail stylist was a lovely Russian woman with huge innocent eyes and 9 pack-years of Capri 120's lung damage. My makeup artist was a petite, gorgeous, hilarious Asian woman with 11 pack-years of More 120's lung damage. My piercing specialist was a tall, slim, husky-voiced blonde with very long legs in knee-high stripper boots and 17 pack-years of Virginia Slims Menthol 100's lung damage.
As each of them worked on me, I discretely let my eyes focus on their chests, which were frequently close to my face. They all loved to smoke their girly fashion cigarettes. They're all brown inside with girly tar. They're all sick inside with fashionable diseases. Just inches away. Just below the surface.
I breathed in deliberately and deeply through my nose every time one of them moved closer, or spoke or laughed towards my face. They were priceless human tar sponges all, and I filled myself again and again with the heady stench of their accumulated virulent chemical sins as it flowed from their filthy precancerous cores.
As I was sitting at the piercing station getting my third, and the second to my left earlobe about an inch above the first, I looked up to see the auburn haired hostess slipping back into her long fitted leather coat and gloves. There she was, heading outside again to deposit another 20 milligrams or so of brown mutagenic sludge throughout her bronchial tract. She looked back inside and began watching me through the window, and she kept her eyes on mine as she lit up.
She smiled and took her second drag, and just as she parted her shiny poisoned lips and snapped it deep down into her chest, the stripper boots blonde who was piercing me pulled the trigger on her piercing gun and sent the stud slamming through my ear. The dull ache began to radiate through the side of my head as the auburn haired hostess exhaled her load of concentrated air pollution out into the neon glow of the space between us.
"Which side of your nose did you want pierced again?" asked the 17 pack-years of menthol tar blonde as she prepped the gun with a fresh stud.
I pictured Exam Table Me from my dream. "The right side please."
The auburn haired hostess winked at me as she took another hungry jaded drag, and another thick heavy lungful of doom. The piercing gun sent the stud slamming through my nose. The Virginia Slims girl watching me from outside pantomimed pointing and firing a gun at the left side of her nose in a reflected exaggeration of what was happening to me. And as I began to tear up and my nose began to burn and throb, I watched her push filthy thick long jets of cancer gas out of her nostrils.
By the time I'd composed myself, touched up my makeup, and gathered all of the assorted hair care products, nail care products, and makeup I'd selected, the hostess was back at her desk, in her purple glasses, and freshly soiled and very stinky with Virginia Slims sludge. When she saw me, she jumped up and grabbed me by the shoulders. "WOW! You look FAN-TAST-IC!!!"
The smell of the hot wet toxic waste dump forming her words washed over my face and made me drip. "Gee…thanks."
She cheerfully rang up all of my purchases, and applied a generous multi-service discount. "That'll be $283.69 please, Hot Stuff."
I blushed and handed her my debit card. I couldn't wait to get back to the privacy of my apartment. I took my bags of self-indulgent narcissism and my new nails, hair, and face out into the cold dark night.
I decided to make one more stop before heading home. The grocery store where Kayla buys her cartons of Virginia Slims 120's.
There was a young guy working at the customer service counter when I walked up to it. He was helping an older lady with some kind of paperwork, but immediately looked up at me when he saw me coming and seemed very startled. At first I didn't know what was wrong…but then it dawned on me that he might be into me and maybe I made him nervous. That'd never really happened before.
As soon as he was free, he walked sheepishly over to where I was standing and stammered "C-c-can I help you?"
"I'd like a pack of Virginia Slims 100's – the ones with the red panel on the end."
