The tall woman sitting opposite to Helen was wearing a black suede coat. She had blue eyes with something special, almost dangerous in the glance, Helen thought. Her hair was long and of a colour somewhere between blonde and brown. Helen was 36, and this woman looked like about the same age. For some reason she had had a quick look at the woman when she sat down opposite to her on the train, and the woman had immediately responded with a long glance.

After a few minutes the woman had inhaled deeply, put her open hand over her mouth and coughed twice, fairly deeply. Helen had looked up at her, again she didn't quite know why, and the other woman had looked back into Helen's eyes with her cupped palm still over mouth. She gave Helen a teasing smile, moved her hand to her chest (right under her throat).
- It's just a smoker's cough, she had said with a dark, soft somewhat wheezing voice.
Helen had replied by giving her a quick smile back and continued to read her newspaper. After a minute or two, she had given the other one a quick look, and noticed that she was still caressing that naked part of her chest that was visible in the opening of her coat with her finger tips. She had still had that teasing face expression. Helen again had continued reading but been interrupted by a new coughing from the tall woman who had smiled at Helen as their eyes met.
- Do you like my coughing?, the tall one had whispered.
Helen had started to sweat and feel uncomfortable and had decided to get off the train at the next station and walk the last kilometre to her office. She had never noticed that the tall woman followed her and that her smile had disappeared as soon as Helen had got out of her sight.
Neither had Helen noticed the black mini-van parked just outside the office building when she left late in the evening after a long and tiring day at work. Not until she suddenly was inside it, after somebody had quickly put a hand over her mouth and put her there.

Helen felt a panic building up inside her. She was inside a car, totally in dark, no idea who was driving it and no idea where she was being taken. Could it be a silly joke? Hardly. Ages later, it felt, the car stopped. It was dark outside so she couldn't see who suddenly came in there, tied her hands together and pulled her out. She was quickly forced into a house and into a room. The door was locked behind her.
After a while, that tall woman from the train entered. She was wearing tight black leather pants and a white shirt which left her shoulders and most of her chest naked, down to the breasts, which were covered by the shirt. She wasn't just tall, she was quite broad-shouldered too which made her breast look enormous. She had brought two chairs and made Helen sit down on one of them. She sat down on the other one and lit a cigarette. She took a slow, big, open-mouth inhale before talking.
- So you didn't like my little smoker's cough?, she said slowly. Helen was paralyzed and didn't speak.
- I've taken you here to train you. To teach you not to mind my cough ever again. To teach you... to love hearing another woman cough. She turned her head and coughed slightly before dragging on her cigarette. She got up and exhaled the cigarette smoke slowly, slowly right in Helen's face. Helen, who didn't smoke, tried not to inhale the smoke but the woman put her cigarette between Helen's lips.
- Drag on it, she wheezed, still with smoke flowing from her mouth and nose in Helen's face and Helen didn't dare to resist. By instinct, she was about to blow the smoke out as soon as possible, but the woman squeezed Helen's side, right about her hips so that a reflex made her gasp so that she got the smoke in her lungs. She immediately coughed the smoke out and the other woman laughed with her wheezing sound.

- Time to meet some of my friends. Get up!, the tall one suddenly said and pulled Helen up from the chair. She forced her out of the room and they got into a bigger room. Four women, age around 35-40 were sitting on chairs placed in a row. All of them dressed in shirts like the tall woman, leaving their chests naked. Helen was forced down on a chair opposite to the four women. The tall woman finished her cigarette and lit a new one. The third woman in the row brought her hand to her mouth and coughed twice, with sharp rattlings. She looked like she was around 35, she was blonde, had big blue eyes and a kind face. The inhale between the two coughings sounded a bit "thick" and rattled a little.
- You thought I was a cougher? The tall one said and filled her lungs with cigarette smoke and walked to the first woman. She caressed the woman's naked chest with her finger tips.
- My darlings here have got bad lungs all of them, and they know what coughing means. Maybe someone would say they shouldn't smoke, but...
She placed her cigarette between the lips of the woman who dragged deeply on it, opened her mouth to show Helen all the smoke before pulling it down in her lungs.
- See, how Meg loves to pull cigarette smoke down in her rattling, black, tired lungs. Meg exhaled the smoke and started to cough. She coughed with a bad, sharp sound for a while and Helen could hear how the woman's chest tried to cough her mucus up.
- Poor Meg, she has had bad lungs since she was six, and she has been smoking since 11, the tall woman smiled. She walked to the second chair and caressed the woman's naked chest softly with her finger tips. She pulled on her cigarette before putting it between the sitting woman's lips. A long drag again and an open-mouth inhale.
- Mmmm, the tall moaned, I heard your cough this morning. Your lungs must be full of your lovely, hot mucus. Helen, you have heard of a lung disease called CF, haven't you? Betty's body's only way to clean her lungs is to make her cough so she shakes, you know. And since Betty loves her cough, she wants to help it by filling her lungs with as much cigarette smoke as ever possible. Betty smiled teasing at Helen. She was thin but tall and had a long, curved nose. Helen guessed she had been coughing since ever.
The first and the fourth woman was coughing when the tall one went over to number three. Same procedure again except from that this woman, called Tamara, nose exhaled. No lung disease, just a smoker's cough combined with the remainder of a pneumonia and a bronchitis, Helen learnt. Tamara was a brunette, shorter than the others. The fourth one, who must be a bit younger was called Winnie, and she had some problems with her lungs too. Helen noticed it was a cute, dark-blonde girl with glasses on her cute nose. She smiled friendly at Helen and said hello before dragging on her cigarette. She had a much more soft and friendly attitude than the rest. Helen wasn't really listening to the details about the lungs of this girl, she was thinking about why they were doing this, what they would do to her and... how they knew her name.
- How... where did you get my name from, she whispered as three of the women were coughing. Winnie, the youngest one had a bad rattling cough and sounded like she was getting a lung up.
- It's the Queen of Lungs who do the talking, Winnie said sharply, a bit red in her face from her bad coughing fit. She was breathing heavily and with rattlings.
- Yes, and now she will tell her what we'll do next, the Queen smiled. - These women will now sit down together foor a little cigarette break. Or rather, they'll smoke uninterruptedly for exactly an hour so that their coughing will be at its top when you'll meet them again. Did you think young Winnie's coughing fit you just heard was the best her only 22 years but already so rattling lungs can produce? Wait until she has been chain-smoking for 60 minutes! The four women laughed, and for two of them it started a coughing fit. They coughed and coughed as they left the room, and the other two coughed a little too, but they could at least walk upright, which soon was out of question for the first too. Helen looked after them.
- Mmmm, their poor lungs inside those big, warm, chests, the Queen smiled when she was alone with Helen again. She took Helen's hand and put on her own chest and massaged it. - Relax, Helen, relax and try to enjoy it, she wheezed, turned her head and coughed. Helen's hand could feel the rattlings inside the chest. - Now, keep your hand and continue moving it around, the Queen of Lungs said and removed her own hand. Helen noticed how the woman really enjoyed being caressed, and she tried to relax and think. I'll just do what they tell me to, she decided. That's my only way to find a way out of here. She relaxed.
- If you ... if you untie my hands, I can use both of them better to massage you, she whispered. The Queen gave her a sharp glance, looked at the two doors and realized they were locked. She untied without a word and looked prepared to catch Helen if she tried anything. But, Helen's soft and warm finger tips continued to caress the soft skin of the Queen's chest. The Queen looked at her with a warmer glance than ever before. She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Helen expected her to exhale in her face again, but she let her nostrils spread the smoke over her chest. Helen's brain was now working hardly to decide what the next step could be.
- Your cigarette, she whispered, and the Queen of Lungs let her suck on her cigarette. She avoided to inhale, but blow a stream of smoke over the woman's chest and noticed that the more active Helen got, the more relaxed the other woman got.

Suddenly, they were interrupted by a beep from an alarm clock on a table.
- Mmmm, we've had a nice time for half an hour already, the Queen said. Her cold, teasing, dangerous smile was back and Helen felt tense again. Shall we... she got a deep coughing fit starting with a prolonged rattling. - Shall we pay a visit to our friends? , shhe said when she was able to speak again. She sounded like her throat was full of something coughed up from inside her. She tied Helen's hands again and made her walk with her. They went along a sort of corridor until they reached a room with glass walls and stopped. The four women were sitting there, and they were coughing almost all the time. Helen understood from their face expressions, the way their bodies were moving, from everything she saw, that they were coughing intensively and that they had been doing it for a while.
- Look at the ash tray, the Queen wheezed and Helen looked. It revealed that the four women had been chain smoking for half an hour and there were no sign that they would stop. They smoked and smoked at the same time as they had to keep their coughings back by force to be able to inhale the smoke and keep it in their lungs for at least a short while. Every now and then, Helen saw someone of them bending her body forwards so she almost fell off the chair. Sometimes, she understood they were coughing up mucus. She could only hear a little of the sounds, because the room was well isolated despite the glass walls to the corridor.
- Seen so deep inhales before, the Queen whispered in Helen's ear. Helen could hear a small sound of rattlings and she felt the woman's smoky breath.

They went back to the room and Helen decided to try to talk to the woman.
- When... when will I get out of here?
- Mmmm, we'll see. Depends on how you behave after our little session that we'll have soon. Then something to eat, and then we'll see.
- You realize you'll end up in prison for this? Helen said after hesitating.
- Will we? Will you tell the police that someone called Mistress Lung did this to you? Or four women called Tamara something, Winnie something and so on? Do you think Tamara is called Tamara by the way? The woman laughed with a wheezing sound and started to cough. For the first time, Helen heard her cough up mucus and swallow. - We're not from this part of town, anyway. Nor from this part of the country, so we won't meet again, you know. Besides, I'm sure you'll love this soon, if you just relax and try to.
Betty deciced to get back to her strategy of satisfying these people. And that she would stick to it in whatever would happen soon.
- Do you want me to massage you again, she asked quietly.
- Yes, I do, Mistress Lung smiled, but you need to relax now. Very soon, you'll be massaging as much as you, I mean WE want. So I suggest you just sit there and prepare yourself.
- Do your... guests usually manage to satisfy you? Helen dared to ask.
- Oh, you're our first ever. You see, the five of us have a little coughing club. I was on my way to meet the others in this house that we have rented for this night and tomorrow only when I saw you glancing at me when I coughed this morning. You haven't still managed to convince me that you didn't like it, by the way. Anyway, we decided to borrow you just to make you our little slave tonight, which also will teach you not to look at coughing people like you did when I coughed. You see, my little cough is a very close friend of mine, and I don't want people to look at it like you did.
- But if you insist that I would have liked to hear you cough, wouldn't you appreciate it, Helen said quietly. - Let's say I was looking because I liked it.
- Yes, but I'm not sure what you really thought. And don't try to affirm that you liked it, because we've decided to test whether you like such things or not within (she looked at the alarm clock) five minutes only.
Helen realized there was no use trying to talk. She watched Mistress Lung putting the four chairs in order, on a straight row. She put a fifth chair a few metres in front of them.
- There's Mistress Lung's place, if you're wondering, the woman explained. - You won't need a chair. As soon as they'vve got in here, I'll untie your hands. Let those hands be as good to my darlings as they were to my smoky chest earlier. You were really good you see. I loved it. She touched Helen's cheek kindly. - R-e-l-a-x she said slowly and quietly. The alarm clock made a beep.