Hak Smog loved to smoke cigarettes. Smoking was not only his habit, it was his hobby. He enjoyed cigarettes when he woke up, as he waited for the bus, as he ate his lunch, and after dinner. But things were changing for him.The bus system banned Hak from busses as long as he insisted on lighting up, and few restaurants allowed him to come back after he annoyed the other patrons with his "wafting trails of pollution". At work, Hak's self-described position of "career smoker" wasn't funny anymore. "Career" and "smoker" were fast becoming mutually exclusive, as evidenced by the memo he received one May Nineteenth.
It was a troubling memo, as it was directed only at him, even though it was addressed to the office population at large. It was an insult of the highest order. It was signed anonymously, but had the unmistakable mark of his cigarette-hating boss, it was on stationary that had the familiar red circle around a cigarette with a line drawn through it, in the upper right hand corner or the stationary.
Hak could not understand why his boss did not come talk to him in person. Was he no longer entitled the respect due someone of his standing? He read the memo in disgust. It was an anti-smoking memo, and it was put on his desk on the eve of the third National Anti-Smoking Day.
As of the next day, there would no longer be a Smoking Room for him to enjoy his breaks in. This was a great blow to him as he had lost the privilege to smoke at his desk three May Twentieths before, and since then he had become attached to the sticky-walled, poorly-ventilated cell. He was accorded that room because of his position in the company, and now he was no longer worthy of preferential treatment. He was suddenly as common as the lackeys whose ranks he had managed to rise from into his current position of importance.
He finished the day in a foul mood and stormed home to write a letter to his representative, or his attorney, or someone, but not until after picking up a surplus of cigarettes at the tobacconist. The store had a sign on the window that said "going out of business", and the owner said only that the Anti-Smokers were running him out of town. The people who sold cigarettes were outcasts just as the smokers themselves were. Hak bought an extra carton.
The next day started out as any other day. That is not to say that it started well. The alarm did not wake Hak Smog early enough to get breakfast at the diner around the corner, and the heat in his apartment was off. His gaze swept across his surroundings with customary dismay, stopping on a half-empty pack of cigarettes placed carefully on a worn and beaten nightstand. He remembered the memo, and figured he had to smoke as much as possible before going to work. He lit his first cigarette of the day and got the morning paper from his doorstep.The headline jumped from the paper: "No More Smoking--Cigarettes Banned as of May 20!" Hak did not know what to do. It was unthinkable. He lit another cigarette and read the story, unbelieving. A certain government official, who hated smoking, hated smokers, had decided to make good on his promise to his constituents--to ban smoking.
"Unbelievable," thought Hak, "the one time a government official makes good on a promise its this one".
He got dressed for the day, forgetting about the breakfast he had missed, and left for work in a mood more foul than the day before -- his shock and disgust at the news had caused him to forget to buy surplus cigarettes, and he was almost out.
Hak could not find a place selling cigarettes anywhere on his way to work, and while he was looking he was chased by a group of men and women in suits who were spitting on him incessantly. They kept yelling "Put that filthy cigarette out!" and would then drench him in saliva. He ran and ran and ran, but could not keep out of their reach because his lungs were not what they used to be. Eventually they cornered him in an alley.
Hak Smog woke furiosly -- late, feeling trapped, drenched in sweat, having slept through his alarm because he was held captive by the most terrible of nightmares--he dreamt that they had banned cigarette smoking and that anti-smokers were chasing after him to drench him in spit--as if he were a lit cigarette. He looked about his dismal apartment and found his half-empty pack of cigarettes on the dreary nightstand. He lit his first cigarette of the day and ruminated on his awful dream. The dream reminded him that today was the first day that he would be denied all rights to smoke anywhere near his office. The Third National Anti-Smoking Day.Hak ground the cigarette into an ashtray and lit another, putting on the slippers his great aunt had made him for his birthday. They were an embarrassing shade of green velvet with ugly purple stitching. They matched the horrible sweater he felt duty-bound to wear every time he visited her. But the slippers did help keep the chill of his apartment from entering him through his feet. He would have to speak to the landlord about the heater; broken again -- the third time since he admitted to his landlord that he was a smoker.
Hak Smog picked up the newspaper from his doorstep and could not believe the headline. "Smoking Banned Today," it read. He could barely comprehend the implications. "No more smoking?", he pondered, "unacceptable." He read on, and discovered that the ban was for one day only--National Anti-Smoking Day. It was still atrocious. He decided not to go to work that day, but instead to get to the bottom of the conspiracy.
Hak went to the bathroom to shave. In the mirror was a six-foot-tall cigarette. He splashed cold water on his face and looked again. He saw himself.
Just as he was ready again to lather his face, he thought he saw the cigarette in the mirror. He put down the shaving cream and took a deep breath. His nerves, he thought, were playing tricks on him. Nicotine deficiency. He looked straight into the mirror and saw himself--unshaven, but otherwise normal-looking. But as he reached for the shaving cream, he thought he saw the giant cigarette once more. The image was disconcerting. He decided not to shave, but to get some fresh air instead. Hak went back to his bedroom and found the heater suddenly working. In fact, it was working too well; the place was an inferno.
As he dressed, he noticed the smell of something burning. It smelled like a cigarette, only he could see nothing burning anywhere. He checked the ashtray, the wastebasket, the bed, and found no fire. But the smell persisted. Suddenly, his hair felt funny, like it was waving in an imaginary breeze. Smoke billowed around his face. The burning smell was coming from himself. He ran to the bathroom to throw water on his head, and as he passed the mirror saw a giant lit cigarette bending toward the sink. When he had sufficiently drenched himself, he was afraid to look in the mirror, but he forced himself to do it. What confronted him was an unshaven man in his late thirties with smoldering hair. He wondered if he were dreaming. He reached for a cigarette, but they too were drenched.
When he returned to his bedroom to get his surplus cigarettes, he could not find them. He knew that he could not have smoked them all the night before--they must be in his apartment somewhere. Finally, he found them under the bed, drenched; unsmokeable. He did not understand what could have happened to them. It was apparent that he would have to find a place that would sell him cigarettes on a day when cigarettes were banned.
"But what about the apparition in the mirror?", he asked out loud. "What if it were real?"
Clouds gathered in darkened threats. The world closed in and pressed on his chest. Time beated like a heart.
He went back to the bathroom and looked--his reflection was incomprehensible. He was a cigarette. A cigarette. Smoke billowed from his hair. It smelled like burning tobacco. He fled his house in search of sanity. And cigarettes.
The tobacconist from the night before was boarded up--there had been a terrible fire followed by the fire department flooding the place with water--no cigarettes left to smoke--only a drenched and ruined mess.
"But maybe a few cigarettes survived", Hak thought.
As he bent down to pick up a twisted and soggy remnant, he overheard a Fire Marshall saying something about arson. He turned his head to ask who did it, but an enormous amount of ash fell to the sidewalk. He could smell the burning tobacco again, and knew that it was him; that he was burning like a cigarette in plain view of any anti-smoker that happened by. He gathered his coat around himself and hurried to an alley to think.
An old bum sat in a corner, an unlit cigarette dangling from his weathered lips. He shouted "Hey, buddy, got a light?" as Hak examined him.
"If you give me a cigarette."
Hak approached the man who suddenly stood up and lit his cigarette on Hak's head, an indignity Hak did not know how to react to. The man held out his pack of cigarettes, jerking it with his wrist so that a few protruded. They all looked like Hak! He could see his face on each cigarette, staring at his burning hair. He jumped back and ashes from his head fell all over his coat and hands. He looked back to the old man's cigarettes and they all looked like cigarettes again, so he took one. Just as he did so, the cigarette turned into a miniature version of himself again. It smiled and burst into flame. Hak dropped it.
Not much is known about what happened next, except that a group of anti-smokers charged into the alley to drench the bum and his cigarette while Hak fled down the street, leaving a trail of pungent smoke in his wake.
He found himself in another alley, this one further from the downtown area and devoid of people. He inhaled the smoke from his burning hair and noticed that it was as if he were smoking a cigarette. The thought struck him that he could not stay lit forever, and certainly not at work, or in a restaurant, or on a bus. Would he not burn down to a wretched and discarded butt? What was he going to do? If he was becoming a cigarette, and cigarettes were banned and being destroyed, what was to become of him? His thoughts were interrupted by another group of anti-smokers barging into the alley in search of people violating the smoking ban.
Hak got up and ran as fast as he could. He fled the alley and ran down a main thoroughfare. The anti-smokers were not far behind. He took sharp turns at random, but his assailants never lost the trail. With more smoke pouring out of him as he increased his speed, he knew he would never find a hiding place. He just kept running through the streets, looking back every block to see if the anti-smokers were still behind him. They always were. As he sped by storefronts, he was hit with his reflection--a half-bent cigarette trailing smoke and ashes as if it were in a brisk wind. He passed two more tobacco shops that had been set on fire and consequently flooded by the fire department. He realized he had to be put out for his attackers to relent, so he headed for the river.
Before long, Hak Smog was underwater, with a mob of people cheering and waving from the banks. Few details are available about how he got out, or who helped him back to his apartment, but he woke the next day to find himself soggy and burnt.
Nobody knows why, or especially how, but when Hak Smog, the "Career Smoker", arrived at work the next day, he said nothing about smoking, nothing about National Anti-Smoking Day, and nothing about the memo from two days before. He looked soggy and tired, and his hair was considerably shorter than when they had last seen him.