a very smoky room dot com, Part 8

a very smoky room dot com
by Dromedary Joe

Part Eight: Darren's Story

Darren was almost finished adjusting the lighting for his new video he was
about to shoot. It was the video he had never expected to make, even in his
wildest dreams. Then again, every video in the past year had been a video
which he had never expected to make. He thought of the incredible events
which had transpired over the past year as he finalized preparations for the
video...

Darren had started averysmokyroom.com about three yours before. He had been a
lurker in the smoking fetish community on the Internet for years. He had come
into a little bit of money and on a lark, decided to start his own website.
He started out small with only a few models who he knew personally. After a
year, he managed to break even and had a small, but devoted core membership
base. He had another job, so he was still happy with breaking even. He had
another motivation, of course. It gave him a chance to see women up close and
personal, beautiful women who looked  really sexy when they smoked. The first
year seemed like a fluke as the second year wore on and he started losing
money. There were other sites out there which appeared and seemed to take
away his business. Perhaps the people who had joined his site the first year
did so because it was a novelty. He struggled that second year paying his
bills. He had cameramen to pay for, cameramen who were just going through the
motions and didn't understand the attraction of a sexy woman who smoked.
Recruiting models became increasingly difficult as the original girls who he
knew moved on. His usual spot to hang out at to find girls for the video was
the bar across the street from State U which didn't card the college kids for
alcohol. He was pretty good at spotting the girls who would be most likely to
make the videos, they looked desperate for cash. He hated recruiting new
models, though- he was a little bit shy and on several occasions, he had
girls who told him he was a creepy pervert once he told them what kind of
site it was. 

Around the time of the two year anniversary of his site, he looked at the
balance sheet and knew it was time to shutter the doors for good. He was
simply losing too much money, and after all, this was a business and the
writing seemed like it was on the wall. He had promised his members one more
video, though, and he always delivered on his promises, even if he was a
little late sometimes. 

Darren had decided his last video would be his best video. He had looked at
the list of models he had assembled and decided he needed just one more. He
headed down to the bar like he had on so many occasions. He felt pretty good
about the models he would have in his last video, but felt he needed a
brunette to balance all the blonds he was filming. He sat down at a table on
the far side of the bar and noticed the bar was empty. Maybe he wouldn't find
what he was looking for tonight, he had said to himself. Maybe I'll just sit
down and have a few drinks to unwind a little. 

A tall  slender very beautiful brunette sat down a couple tables down from
his. He looked at her for a moment and knew she would be perfect for his
video. She was crying, though and he knew something was upsetting her.
Another problem was that she didn't look like she was a smoker. She ordered
her drink and Darren could see she could probably use somebody to talk to. He
got up and headed for her table.

"Hey, you looked like you could use a little company, mind if I join you?"

She tried to regain her composure for a moment.

 "Sure, sit down if you want. I'm not sure if I'll be good company tonight
though." she said as she wiped the tears from her eyes.

The drink the girl ordered arrived and she turned to Darren and said, "You
mind if I smoke."

"No, go ahead. I don't mind at all," Darren told her. There was one problem
solved. But Darren wasn't really concerned with making a video at that
moment. He was simply concerned with helping this poor girl with whatever
problem she seemed to be having.

She pulled out a pack of Newport 100's  and lit a cigarette. For the next 10
minutes or so, Darren was mesmerized by this girl. Never had he seen a girl
smoke like she did. It wasn't just the way she smoked. It wasn't the fact
that she was extremely hot. It wasn't just her personality. It was everything
about her which told him this girl would be his best model ever. The sum was
definitely much greater than the parts. He had to film her. He had listened
to her talk about her problems but wasn't really paying attention to what she
said. He was focused on her extremely sensuous smoking. The parts of her
story he did listen to were about her money problems and how she was living
in a cheap motel with criminals living there who fought all night long. 

She crushed out her second cigarette and Darren said out of the blue, "I'll
pay you $500."

He cringed after he said it. He had been thinking out loud, a bad habit he
sometimes had.

"$500 to do what?" the girl asked. He turned red. She was thinking he was
propositioning her for sex. But if that's really what she thought, Darren had
no doubt she would probably consider that, too. Of all the girls he had ever
recruited, he had never seen one who seemed as desperate for cash as this
girl. And he had never had as hot a girl in his video as this girl was.
Having sex with her would be a bargain for $500 Darren thought to himself,
but then he dismissed the thought. He had a certain amount of integrity and
he could never take advantage of a girl in need like this. He would pay her
$500 to make a video, though. 

Darren explained that he had a website and explained what it was all about.
He didn't go into a lot of details about the fetish aspect with the girls. He
would let them figure it out on their own that guys basically jerked off
watching them smoke. Some of the girls hadn't even figured that out. 

"You mean I just smoke?" the girl asked.

"Basically, yeah that's it."

"And I don't have to get naked or anything?"

"Yeah, there is no nudity on my website."

"I kinda smoke all the time now anyway, so sure. I'll do it!"

He set up the shoot for the next day. He called the other girls who he had
told to come that day  and said he was postponing the shoot and would call
them later on in the week. He kind of felt bad about telling them that,
because he was sure this would be his last video.

The girl was getting ready for the video and he asked her what her middle
name was.

"Camille," she told him as she dangled a cigarette while putting on her
makeup. 

Darren smiled and said, "That's a pretty name. That will be your name on the
video."

And Darren made Camille Solo that night. "It's a great video", he said to
himself, "Maybe it'll make a little profit and I can finally pay the bills."
A couple days later, he released the video. The day after he released it was
a day in which he had to work long hours at his other job, a job he really
hated, but which he had to have. It was a rough day at work and he didn't
even check his messages or see how many videos he sold that day when he went
to bed.. He  was off the next few days and he would use that time to fulfill
the orders he had outstanding, do a little bit of miscellaneous business and
work towards closing down his site. 

The next day was an amazing day. He went online and checked his e-mail. The
company which hosted his website sent him an e-mail saying he was dangerously
close to exceeding his bandwidth limit. He would have to pay some money to
avoid having the site shut down. He frowned. Had he forgotten to pay the bill
last month? He looked at his bank statement. He had paid the bill and
besides, that wasn't the same message that was usually sent. He'd seen that
message a few times. Something was up. He checked the website which hosted
his online store  and stared at the screen for a minute. Usually, he would be
happy selling 50 copies of a video.  But within 24 hours of its release,
Camille Solo had sold 5000 copies. He went to his bank's website and checked
his balance. He saw six figures to the left of the decimal point when he
checked his balance. Two days earlier he had had less than ten dollars in
there. 

What had happened or why it had happened- Darren never really understood.
When Darren had started his website, he got advice from a few other smoking
fetish website owners. They all told him the same thing- don't expect to make
a lot of money. Yet, in one short year after Camille Solo, he had become a
millionaire. Darren had always been an agnostic and was naturally skeptical
of anything supernatural, but something during his college days had made him
open to supernatural phenomena. Darren had majored in Anthropology and
between his junior and senior years of college, he had gone on a field study
to Africa to do research for his senior thesis. The tribe he had lived with
that summer was at war with a neighboring tribe and the war had been going
badly for the tribe he was studying. One night a week before he left, the
tribe had a religious ceremony in which the tribe's shaman put a curse on the
opposing tribe. After the ceremony, Darren asked the shaman what kind of
curse he had placed on them. Darren was still learning the tribe's dialect
and the best he could figure out, the shaman had put "the fetish curse" on
their enemies. Darren, of course, was skeptical- especially since he himself
had a fetish and knew that his own fetish was deeply rooted in his childhood.
People just don't develop a fetish later in their life, Darren thought to
himself at the time.

The next day, the other tribe was soundly defeated.  Actually, not really
defeated- they simply didn't fight at all. While before the other tribe had
been determined fighters, they now had some sort of obsession which took
priority over the war.  The tribe Darren had been studying had attributed
victory to the  fetish curse which the shaman had placed on the other tribe.
Darren hadn't had time to study the other tribe or to see what exactly kind
of fetish they had been cursed with, but was convinced that something
supernatural had definitely happened. 

As Darren got his sale figures the  first week after the first Camille video,
he remembered the fetish curse and wondered if the curse had had something to
do with his sales. Had someone in the tribe put a spell on people to make
them have a smoking fetish, he thought. This didn't make sense since other
smoking fetish website owners had  only had a small bump in sales since the
Camille video- only his website had had a dramatic increase in sales. Had he
been put under some sort of spell, Darren thought. This again, didn't make
sense- Darren made lots of videos, but only the Camille videos made any
money. Besides, the spell was a curse, not a blessing and he had been made an
honorary tribe member before he left Africa. If there was a link between the
curse and the success he had been experiencing, it had to be Camille. Camille
had to be the focal point. That didn't make sense either- Camille had
prospered from these videos almost as much as Darren had. Besides, the tribe
he had stayed with in Africa was isolated and it seemed unlikely that an
eighteen year old  American girl could  have come in contact with the tribe.
Darren did know that some of his tribe's religious beliefs had made their way
into some of the Caribbean voodoo rituals. Whatever phenomenon was at work,
Darren was sure he would never find out what exactly had caused the dramatic
sales of the Camille video. Hell, perhaps he was just trying to  find a
supernatural reason to explain something which was very  obvious-  that
Camille was the sexiest smoking model ever. Camille was a superstar.

Darren didn't really have time to dwell on the how or why anyway as things
moved quickly. He found a new cameraman online, one who understood the fetish
named Bill. He hired a company to handle the logistics of shipping his video
orders. He quit his dead end job. He hired a web designer to make his site
look more professional. He bought top of the line equipment and rented a nice
apartment to film his new videos in. And he called Camille. For a couple of
days, her cell phone service had been shut off and he was relieved that it
had finally started ringing again. He didn't want to have to risk his life by
knocking on every fuckin' door of every single cheap motel on the east side
of town, but if it had come down to that he would do anything to get this
girl back. 

"Hey, Camille, how are you doing? It's Darren,"  His heart was pounding as he
realized he was finally able to get in touch with  her.

"Oh hi. I was hoping you would call me," she said in that voice which melted
the hearts of so many people online. Did she realize the power she had over
people?

" You ready to make another video? I'll pay you $1000 for this one."

"Really? OK, I'll do it !" she said with excitement. She had no idea how
underpaid that really was. She was just happy to be able to get some more
cash. He would continue to pay her $1000 a day until he made the mistake of
letting her see his new Jaguar about a month later. For a girl who seemed so
naïve, she was a hard negotiator, but she knew he needed her. And Darren
would have paid anything to keep her happy. She was his meal ticket...

And a year later, sitting in front of him was her best friend, Juliet, the
girl who Camille had talked about in a few of her videos. The anti-smoking
girl who now apparently was a closet smoker. And Darren knew he was falling
in love with her on first sight...

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