The Very First

The boy’s first was taken from a box left by a then-alive uncle who, after staying for a few weeks, had left his family’s home. It was a box of the unknown, or rather, the half-known. For he had heard of them from his teachers and churchgoers and non-smoking adults and several guilt-ridden smokers… not mentioning the government-sponsored educational posters on the hallways of any building.

He had heard about the dangers of it – how it contained hundreds of toxic poisons, how it would turn anyone’s lungs to something as black as tar, how it was the gateway to drugs, how it would hook someone into addiction, how it would shorten lives, how his high school friends who smoked couldn’t jog during PE sessions, how it wasted money, and mostly… how nonsensical the idea was to his family and his church friends. And how absurdly they scoffed at everyone who smoked – everyone, but his uncle.

It was such nonsense that lured him the most. The idea of experiencing the absurd without the judgment of anyone around was nothing short of appeals (as on that day he was alone at home to his thoughts). For the box of the unknown was nothing less than a box of somewhat-biblical curiosity.

So the boy reached for one like Adam reached for the fruit.

Soon it was lit, between his barely-adolescent fingers.

He remembered thinking, the smoke was surprisingly gentler than the warnings. And so was the burning embers on the tip.

And there was something so mesmerizing about the way the smoke slowly rose to the air, like there’s no pressing schedule to catch up to, like an entity that slow-dances without a worry in the world. Unlike him, who always had to do something to live up to expectations. Unlike him, who always worried about his family’s money despite his young age, his little brother’s quarrels at school, his daily sins that he could not share with anyone, his loneliness from watching his school friends leave him one by one, his inability to socialize with people at the church, his futile attempt at suppressing critical questions in his minds.

Next thing the boy knew, he already took a huff.

But then there it was: an immediate sensation of getting choked to death by hundreds of little arms by your neck. Like witnessing an invisible ghoul squeezing your chest to the point that your lungs gave up.

So the boy’s body told him to cough. And so he coughed. And so coughed again and again, until he felt like it was enough. And he felt it was enough. It would be his first and last roll.

Until it wasn’t.