Smoking and Divorce and Sweden

The aquamarine and fuchsia lights in the dance hall were making me feel erratic. Why anyone would come here far escaped my reasoning skills as a fourteen year old. Worst yet, it smelled like cigarettes. My mom hated cigarettes. I'd seen her do all sorts of evil things to cigarettes that had she done them to humans she might only escape the death penalty by pleading insanity. Whenever she found a pack of dad's, she'd go on a rampage. First the yelling. I thought fucker was a brand of smokes until the sixth grade. Then the torture. Boiled in a metal pot in the kitchen until the skin peeled away and the nicotine and crap dissolved, toxic gaseous steam rising into the vents over the stove while mom just watched, arms crossed, not a smile or a frown. Sometimes she took delight in flushing them down the pastel pink toilet in the first floor bathroom. She'd walk out, slapping her hands together as if she'd just saved the world. Dad never stopped smoking, though. She'd stomp them underneath her white sneakers. She'd toss them into the fireplace. Once, just for the hell of it, she took one of the balloons I'd gotten from grandma after my piano recital, and tied a half empty pack to the plastic string. I saw her do all these things. Dad assumed she threw them out. Hah. He did get better at hiding them though.