A group of workers exit an office building through revolving doors. Within seconds they have drawn the object of their desire from pockets and bags, thumbing lighters and inhaling the first of many, deadly breaths. Smoke curls amidst the throng, edges blurred in the haze. They puff hungrily, sucking in the vapour with relish. A man stubs out a quickly devoured one, leaving a rough black smudge on the wall. Withdrawing another from a depleted pack, he asks the girl beside him for a light. She looks too young to smoke. Old enough to get pregnant, apparently, from the look of the bump jutting out beneath her woolen sweater. They chatter intermittently, in between drags and the din of traffic.
A suit and a skirt flirt over their Benson & Hedges, smouldering looks over smoke and ashes.
The skirt exhales smoke suggestively, pouting her lips and letting the streams rise against her blonde bob. The suit smiles, eyeing her intently as he places a filtered end between his lips.
An older woman with a pursed mouth and saggy jowls lifts one carefully, smoke following the course of her hand in slow motion, long fake nails attached to the ends of her reedy fingers - chemical purple and shiny as night. She briefly pauses the ritual to allow a wet cough to erupt from her chest, the explosion bubbling like a kettle on the boil. Confident that the tremor has run it's course, she continues with her original plan, sucking it in appreciatively.
One by one, the group dissipates with the fog that had surrounded them, like thoughts from idle minds. Some hurriedly squeeze everything they can from the tubes, discarding the exploited remains on the footpath.
They are gone. All that's left is a pile of twisted and deformed butts, yellow and brown, smeared with lipstick and spit.
