Message-ID: <40505asstr$1042938602@assm.asstr-mirror.org> From: Desdmona22@aol.com X-Original-Message-ID: <107.1e33f4dc.2b5b2ae1@aol.com> X-ASSTR-Original-Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 17:10:41 EST Subject: {ASSM} Deep Breath by Desdmona (MF) Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 20:10:02 -0500 Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail Approved: Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Archived-At: X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation X-Story-Submission: X-Moderator-ID: hecate, newsman The following story contains subject matter that is intended for people over the age of 18. If you're not supposed to be reading this, then don't! Warning: Some people may find certain parts of this story hard to read. Namely, graphic description of the effects of smoking. And also a sex scene that some might want to label as nonconsensual. This story was first published on Mat Twassel's site: http://calendar.ateros.com ***************************************************** Deep Breath By Desdmona Copyright 2003 I closed the door to Eli's Grand Am. I could still see his face through the frost on the window. He grinned and blew me a kiss. I watched as his car exited the lot and sped down the street. He never saw me put my gloved fingers to my lips. Sometimes I wondered why he stuck with me. I stood on the sidewalk and stared at the entrance. The revolving door circled as a couple exited. The woman immediately hunkered her shoulders against the brisk winter air and dug her hands into her pockets; the man put his arm around her as a makeshift blanket. As they hurried off to the parking lot, their breath circled above them in smoky puffs. Who had they visited-a debilitated grandmother, a failing father, or maybe a close family friend? It didn't matter, not really. It was just easier to think of someone else's visit rather than my own. A man in a black overcoat walked from across the street and stopped at the entrance to Quiet Village. He met my eyes and gave me a quick nod. I half smiled in return. It wasn't recognition, only an act of cordiality-two people acknowledging a shared sense of pain even if the specifics were unknown. Very few patrons of Quiet Village left by any means other than hearse. As he entered, he held the door for me. I smiled again and shook my head. I wasn't quite ready to go inside. Ma was inside. She'd been here at the extended care facility for two weeks. Before that she'd been in the hospital across the street, hanging on to life. She was still hanging, just not as critically. But she was dying. Before she was transferred, Dr. Ross had led Eli and I into a small room, with pale green walls and flowered chairs. He offered us a cup of coffee. We declined. He cleared his throat and fidgeted his hands before finally speaking. "Your mother's lifetime of smoking has destroyed her lungs. They're barely functioning." He paused, gathering his resolve before saying the worst of it. "She probably won't live more than six months." It was expected, but knowing it didn't soften the blow when the words were spoken aloud. As I listened, I wished I'd taken the cup of coffee so I could have felt scalding liquid going down my throat instead of bile threatening to come up. Dr. Ross went on to explain there was nothing more they could do for her at the hospital. They would be transferring her. I nodded while silent tears slipped down my cheeks. Eli covered my cold, clammy hands with his solid, warm ones. Dr. Ross glanced at Eli's measure of comfort and began stumbling over words of consolation and uttering how inadequate technology still could be. It wasn't the doctor's fault. His sincere, yet meaningless words banged against my head until I finally asked if Eli and I could be alone. Relief washed over the Dr. Ross's face. I imagined he was thankful I hadn't gotten hysterical. Another whisk of cold air slapped my face and reminded me where I was--still standing outside, facing the entrance to Quiet Village, and wanting a reason not to go in, but it was no use. I had to go in. Suffering in frigid temperatures wasn't going to make the visit any easier. On the ride up in the elevator I thought how things might have been different if my father hadn't skipped town with a girl half his age--an aerobics instructor with firm abs, perky breasts and a tanned body. Maybe if he'd chosen someone closer to his own generation, my mother could have recovered. Maybe I would have seen Ma smile. But probably not. At first, I was angry--angry that his leaving for a younger woman was such a cliché. Later, I was just disappointed his relationship goals hadn't included a daughter or extended past a "Barbie" fixation. Nowadays I hardly ever thought of him, except when Ma ranted about his deceit and how it was him that had sucked the life out of her. But even her daily tantrums had begun to peter out. I heard from someone--a second cousin, I think--that his aerobics instructor had ballooned up to a scale-tipping two hundred pounds. I loved the irony. Ma had maintained her weight at exactly one hundred fifteen, until her illness. As I walked down the hallway to Ma's room, the familiar odor burned my nostrils. It was like sulfur or skunk--you recognized the smell, and the thick feeling in the back of your throat--but it was difficult to describe it. I decided it was what "old" mixed with "dying" must smell like. I wished I could wear a mask. I paused outside Ma's door. The pastel wallpaper reminded me of Easter. Pastels and death--Christ's death, Ma's death, I decided I liked the bold colors of Christmas better. I peeked around the doorway, half praying Ma might be sleeping so I'd have my excuse to postpone this visit, but she was sitting straight up, pillows at each bony shoulder and elbows propped on her bedside table. Her hair was mashed to one side. Her make-up was garish--bright pink lipstick was lined well beyond her lip line and her rouged cheeks looked like twin stop signs. She saw me immediately. "Oh, Gigi, I'm glad you're here." I stepped to the side of her bed. She gurgled. "Hiya, Ma. How ya feeling?" I finger combed her hair and bent to kiss her. She quickly turned her face so my lips landed on her ear. I kissed the top of her head instead. As far as I knew, Ma hadn't willingly kissed anyone in several years. She wasn't going to change now. "This damn oxygen tubing," she wheezed. "I have to take it off any time I want to smoke. The nurse said it could explode." She yanked the tubing off her face and tossed it aside. "Ma, you need the oxygen." "What I need is..." she stopped. The coughing began. She jerked forward, grabbing a tissue and filling it with blood flecked sputum. I waited. She'd been doing this for weeks now. "What_ I_ need_ is_ a_ smoke." I turned off the flow of oxygen and walked over to the window, wishing I were outside again, where the air was clear, where pristine snowflakes melted on outstretched tongues, and lungs only burned from the cold. I turned to look at her. "Ma, I..." She couldn't hear me. She was struggling with the butane lighter. I could have helped, but I didn't. Instead I leaned back and waited. Her fingers were tightly gripping the base of the lighter. Her knuckles were pallid. A flame flickered, and she greedily stuck the end of her cigarette in the blue heat. Her face intimated an addict as she took her first drag. The lines around her eyes and mouth smoothed. She nearly smiled. When she settled back against the bed, almost calm, I knew she'd listen. "Eli asked me to marry him, Ma" "God! What did you say?" she asked as she rolled the lighter over and over in her palm. "I didn't say anything, yet." She stared at me, glassy-eyed without expression, the smoldering and unfiltered cigarette quivering between her fingers. Any hope of congratulations I may have had spiraled away in the rising smoke. After years of lectures regarding the malevolence of love and marriage, I prepared myself for another. I didn't have to wait long. "Marriage is a hoax. And love? Shit, love is just like this cigarette, it eats you alive slowly, over a period of time." She slid the cigarette between her dry, cracked lips, where the lipstick had worn thin. Her eyes drifted shut. She inhaled, letting the nicotine float along its familiar path to fill her lungs, before she spoke again. She held the cigarette in the air, balancing the ashes like a servant carrying fine china. Tiny lines of pink lipstick dotted its thin paper, as if the cigarette she would kiss. She continued, "When love first lights, it sizzles. It gives you a high you can't live without as it creeps its way inside you until you're obsessed." Her eyes opened, but remained as hazy as the swelling fume in front of her, staring beyond me. "You get comfortable. You ignore how it's consumed you, and then one day you wake up without it and your need turns into something vile." Her voice rattled as tar-coated phlegm curdled in the back of her throat. "By the time you realize your mistake, the damage is done. Like an ugly cancer, it's eaten away at you." She patted the butt against the glass ashtray and pushed the bedside table away. Her yellow stained fingers reached for the oxygen tube that she'd tossed over the bed rail. She shakily fit the prongs inside her nose, fumbled with the oxygen control, turning it on, and then slumped against her pillows. She lay quietly at first before her body jerked again in spasmodic coughing. Her face purpled. Her eyes bulged. She wheezed and gagged and fought for breath. When she could finally inhale without coughing, she reached for the nearly empty pack of cigarettes and said, "Don't marry him, Gigi." "He's a great guy, Ma." "They're all great guys, in the beginning." "I think I love him." "For God's sake, fuck him if you have to, but don't love him. It will only kill you!" Ma's eyes batted shut and her mouth slacked open, lifeless. I tensed, fearing the worst, but then she inhaled sharply, and continued forcing air out in rapid-fire exhalations. It was only sleep. This time. I quietly turned to leave. She coughed and startled awake. Thankfully, it was only a short attack. She settled back into a fitful rest and then suddenly opened her eyes. For one brief moment, I thought she was remembering I was there. But the thought puffed quietly away when she began patting the bedside table and her lap, desperately searching, before realizing the pack of cigarettes were in her hand. I walked unnoticed out the door. That night I lay in bed, shrouded in darkness, listening to iced branches clink against the window, and wishing I'd washed the smell of Quiet Village from my hair. When Eli eased his warm, naked body in bed beside me, I could have forgotten Ma all together. But he wouldn't let me. "Are you ready to tell me what she said?" I tried to focus on my answer instead of his leg hair, tickling my skin. "What do you think she said?" "She told you not to marry me." "Yes, among other things." "Damn it, Gigi! You can't let your mother rule your life. She's old. She's bitter," he paused. "She doesn't love you like I do." "Maybe." I reached for Eli's hand and guided it to the vee of my legs. He hesitated briefly, wanting more conversation. I wanted something else. When his fingers began to search, I knew I'd won this round. I opened my legs wide, wider than they needed to be. It felt nasty to open them like a girl in a pornographic centerfold. I wanted to be nasty. I wanted to be open. When he began to dabble, I added my fingers to the mix. We played finger tag between my slit. At first, darting away from one another before finally combining our forces and choosing my clit as "it." I could have climaxed easily. But I held off, enjoying the slippery feel of our brushing fingers. My legs opened wider still, and our fingers searched the palette, finger-painting one another's digits with primer. If I had thought about nothing else but coming, it would have happened, but I didn't. I thought about Eli. Eli and me. Our future. I scumbled through my pussy and then reached for Eli's dick. It was mostly erect--its cock-head butting the sheet above us. I used my wet hand to coat its length. Up and down. Up and down--layering until it was completely erect. Thick and hard and ready. I pushed his hand away from my cunt and then moved to straddle him, still holding his cock. I started high, hunched on my feet, and then descended. My legs widened. My labia opened. I daubed his glans against my clitoris, and then directed it further. I was open. He was in. And in and in. I let my weight shift from my legs to my ass. I sat straight up, mashing my ass cheeks against his balls. Eli's dick expanded wall to wall. I breathed in deeply. My body relaxed. My mind cleared. And I slowly exhaled. "I'm going to take Ma's advice, Eli." I felt his body tense, but his cock slackened--slightly. I squeezed my cunt around him as tight as I could, and he stiffened full breadth again. He didn't want to. I knew it. I couldn't see his eyes, but I imagined they were steel. As steel as his cock. Solid. Hard. Angry. It was then that I thought of nothing else but coming. I bucked against him--squeezing and riding. But it wasn't my action that caused me to climax. It was Eli's. His semen jetted against me like calculated slaps. And I absorbed everyone to strengthen my orgasm. When we were finished, Eli shoved me off, using a little more force than was needed. But not really. "That was a nasty thing to do, Gigi!" "Was it?" "Damn straight it was!" "Does that mean you don't want your wife to be wicked?" Even in the shadows of night I could see his head snap towards me. "W-wife? You said you were taking your mother's advice." "I am, well, partially anyway." I reached for Eli's hand in the darkness and squeezed it tight. "She also told me to fuck you if I needed to." <1st attachment begin> <1st attachment end> ----- ASSM Moderation System Notice------ Notice: This post has been modified from its original format. 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