In a room under only dim light, a man was sitting on a sofa. His upper body was bare. He had his head resting against the sofa, and both his arms were placed on the armrests. A cigarette was burning between the fingers of one of his hands; it had burned down to the filter and was scorching his fingers, but the man seemed unaffected by the burn. The entire room was filled with smoke—clearly many cigarettes had been burned the same way.

The ashtray overflowed—a miniature graveyard of crushed filters and grey dust. None of them had been properly stubbed out; they'd just been left to die between his fingers, one after another.