True love or limerence [l.s]

Chapter six

This chapter contains very descriptive writing about smoking etc. if you don't feel comfortable with that, don't read. Love, Fiona

Smoking was an important part of Louis's life.

He started smoking at a very young age, about when he was 15 or 16, he couldn't quite remember. Everyone told him it was bad, that it would cause damage. It was no use though, Louis kept smoking.

As he grew older, it became a bigger addiction of his. Not feeling the heavy scent of nicotine in the back of his lungs, was like betraying himself. Every single inhale of the tobacco smoke was a bliss, something that made him numb for just a moment. But it was enough. For a finite second, he could escape the cruel reality and numb his senses with the nicotine clouding his mind, so that it becomes... empty. The emptier, the better.

People wanted to feel how it was like between hell and earth. How it was like to half live and half survive. They didn't know, how it was like to be frozen when everything around them is moving. Louis didn't, too, but he wished he would. With the years, he lived by cigarettes and the foreign scent of it's smoke, which he seeked out more and more.

Later on, he found an exotic new alternative of cigarettes, a cigar. First time he used it, he instantly feel in love. A strong wave of complex scents filled his mouth, he could never begin to describe it, everyone who wanted to know, had to experience it themselves.

Most of the time, it was aromatic and pungent. Some of them are acrid, some of them are sweet, they vary from different spices. For Louis, the cigars tasted like eucalyptus and red oranges, yet it all depended on the origin of the fermented and blended tobacco leaves.

The drizzling smoke was so intense as it filled his tastebuds, that it made him numb for a moment. The high nicotine amount in it, triggered a far higher craving for nicotine. It no longer travelled down his throat like in a cigarette, it didn't have to, all it had to do was fill his mouth with the intruding aroma only to be blown right out.

Some people even said it was better, since the poisonous smoke doesn't go down his airways and 'blacken his lungs', but everyone who ever had their hands on a cigar, knew better.

The bittersweet smoke was made strong enough to completely give you the buzz and make you forget all your sins. People could take it in a good way, or a bad way, depending on who you ask. Louis would definitely define it as a drug too, since it would give you the intoxicating effect and the mild high.

The nicotine is multiplied by a thousand in a cigar, which makes its high kick in way harder, but also fade out way quicker. Normally, it would last 30 minutes, despite that sometimes Louis would experience longer periods too, because he had been smoking a great deal.

Cigarettes, were his jittery habit, while cigars were a whole other experience.

One night out of the week, he would sneak out to smoke a cigar. It was on rare occasions, really, and if his mom ever found out, she'd be so disappointed. He kept a small box of cigars in the second layer of his cupboard, so he could take it out any time and go on the windowsill, letting his legs dangle into the emptiness beneath him. It was his safe place, kind of the only place he would find peace and silence at the end of the day.

He was well aware that everything good didn't last forever. The better it comes into your life, the worse it'll come out. So he wasn't really be surprised when something went wrong.

On a late Thursday night his mom caught him.

He was at that time really high, everything around him was blurry and fogged up. His mom had heard his window creak open, which he was usually very careful about keeping quiet, but at that time he didn't care.