Danielle's heart was suddenly pounding with an urgency and anticipation that made the cigarette smoke she was trying to inhale into her lungs feel all the more relaxing. As she pursed her full lips and exhaled a thick stream into the night air, she maintained eye contact with her daughter who had left her last words hanging in the room like a proverbial carrot.
"I think that's probably a bad idea," she whispered, mostly to herself.
It wasn't that she was unsure if what she was saying was true; of course it was. Smoking meth was a bad idea. Full stop. Regardless of how recklessly she'd been trampling over the long-preserved values of her previous self, objectively, smoking meth was not the answer to any problem she had. No, it was most definitely the beginning of a lot of other problems, she was sure of that.
And yet.
She was certainly sure she believed what she was saying was true, she just didn't know if that mattered as much as she'd like to believe. Sure, a month ago she'd never smoked a cigarette or cheated on her husband, or gotten wasted at an Applebee's and drove around with her daughter in the car like she was campaigning for the world's shittiest mother award but meth? That was another rung of debasement that she couldn't possibly descend, right?
So, why was she having so much trouble just saying it? Why was the prospect of getting high with her daughter in the safety and solitude of her bedroom at 3am in the morning so enticing? It was irresponsible, reckless, short-sighted, and foolish. All the things she had never allowed herself to be for the last 18 years of her life. And now? The very reason that she had denied herself those conceits of youth was sitting next to her, lighting her cigarettes and offering her a peace pipe full of methamphetamine.
It was almost uncanny how Emily seemed to know how close Danielle was to teetering over the edge to fall through yet another floor of herself to reveal an even lower floor that she didn't even know existed. Pulling the glass pipe from her purse revealed it in more detail. One end a glass straw and the other a bubble with a small hole on top. It was this hole that Emily dropped a small shard of what looked like hazy ice, which she recognized as a slang term for the drug rather aptly. It clinked softly to rest on the floor of the 'bowl' and Danielle was entranced by her daughter as she flicked her torch lighter to life and began swirling it around the base of the bubble.
The solid shard of what she assumed was meth began to melt before her very eyes, and Emily responded to this by bringing the straw side of the pipe her lips. Danielle had anticipated her trying to inhale the vapors but was surprised to see her blow softly instead. Her efforts resulted in vapor being propelled out of the little hole in the bubble as she continued training the flame on the glass and twirling the straw between her thumb and forefinger. The entire shard had now melted into a puddle of clearish liquid that Emily twirled in the flame which seemed to indicate it was ready.
Emily removed her lips from the straw of the pipe and turned her head, emptying her lungs completely of all oxygen before replacing her lips where they were. This began the moment that Danielle had been expecting before, where the vapors of the liquid being turned to gas were devoured hungrily by her daughter's needy lungs and drawn through the straw. Her lung capacity was impressive as seconds ticked by and Emily continued her noxious ritual. It wasn't until she had arched her back to accommodate the fullness of her expanded lungs that she removed the pipe from her mouth and smiled goofily at Danielle.
She wondered what her own expression reflected back at her as she watched in awe as her straight A student daughter--the smartest, sweetest, most responsible teenager she had ever known parted her pouty lips and expelled a milky white cloud so thick and voluminous it totally obscured her from view. When the 'fog' finally did clear after several seconds it was hard not to feel more intrigued by exactly what she had just witnessed.
"My clouds are getting insane," Emily appraised with a smile.
Danielle wasn't quite sure how much time and practice it took for a person to do what she had just seen her daughter do, but the implications of that line of reasoning should have been terrifying for her to consider. Instead, she recognized the echo of her fearful self from the depths of her buried consciousness and suppressed it with another drag off her cigarette.
"I didn't realize it looked like that," she acknowledged with words punctuated by sputtering puffs of smoke.
Emily smiled, clearly pleased with herself.
"Well, for most people it doesn't. But I've been working on my clouds for a while and I'll admit that I kinda wanted to show off," she replied.
It was admittedly a very strange thing to say to your mom, but after everything that had happened that day--it didn't really seem that strange anymore.
"So? You wanna try?"
Again, the opportunity presented itself, her own daughter the unanticipated purveyor of sinful delicacies thrusted into her lap. First nicotine, alcohol, and then boys. Now meth. Danielle knew that her desire to please and connect with her daughter had been perverted and now she was accessing parts of herself that had only the faintest thread connecting itself to those original motivations. Yes, technically accepting her daughter's offer could bring them closer and make them as fatefully intertwined as Bonnie and Clyde, but she was having a very hard time forgetting how that ended up for them. Two bullet-riddled corpses in the front of a Ford instead of just one.
Was she about to jump into the passenger seat of this doomed vacation from reality with the one person she'd dedicated her life to protect?
"What do I do?" Came her meek reply.
"You don't have to do anything except inhale when I tell you to, I'll do everything else," Emily said.
Danielle took a final powerful drag on her cigarette before flicking it out the window hastily, not even bothering to angle her exhale toward the night air. The streams of thick smoke trailed from her nostrils and tickled and burned ever so slightly. She liked it. After she'd leaned enough toward her daughter to indicate her wordless acceptance of her offer, Emily lifted the pipe and began to heat up the liquid again with her lighter.
It was hard to ignore the pounding beat of her heart reverberating in her ears like her conscience was trying to beat down the door to stop her at the last minute. The momentum of the moment, however, was unabated. It seemed to have taken on a life of its own and was now a force unseen, guiding her movements just as assuredly as if she were a puppet being operated by a series of strings ascending into the stratosphere of destiny intertwined through the fingers of fate. She danced to their whims now. Heedlessly.
Already in liquid form, the toxic contents of the pipe relented to the flame readily, producing the vapor that she had seen Emily fill her lungs with only moments before. This signaled the next step, which her daughter encouraged by bringing the straw end up towards Danielle's lips. She pursed her lips ever-so-slightly to accept her daughter's offering, now only inches away from getting high for the first time in her 35 years.
"Don't suck on it like a straw, leave a little space between your lips and the pipe when you inhale," Emily instructed.
Danielle did her best to follow her daughter's tip by not sealing her lips around the end of the pipe and leaving a little space, almost as if she were kissing the pipe instead of sucking on it. This seemed to work and made the process of hitting it smooth and effortless and it took a few moments before she realized her lungs were filling with anything. There wasn't much of a taste, and as it filled her chest it only really registered as warmth and fullness and the tiniest hint of burnt metal.
Perhaps foolishly she kind of lost herself in the process and found that she was about to take a massive hit for her first time, only pulling back when her lungs felt like they were about explode. What did explode was a cloud of white that tumbled out of her mouth like a volcanic eruption. It didn't have the controlled form she'd seen from her daughter, she was only able to breathe it out in a hasty exhalation akin to letting pressure out of a balloon.
The feeling was immediate. Her heart raced, her body trembled, her ears hummed, and all throughout her limbs an electric-like energy reverberated like she was a tuning fork that just been struck.
"Breathe," Emily said.
It only now occurred to Danielle that she had been holding her breath. She sucked in a lungful of air and that seemed to calm her ever so slightly as the feelings of euphoria continued to build. It was an almost orgasmic experience and she felt her pussy respond with an unexpected warmth that made her wish she could borrow Emily's vibrator for a while. She felt her cheeks flush and the tiny hairs on her forearm raise up from her skin like a current was pulsing through her.