One-Sentence Smoker, by Eric Smith

One of those guys who could “think into a typewriter,” he let the first cigarette of the day dangle from his lips unlit—a butt with a recessed filter, the full-flavored king variety, the other nineteen nestled snugly in the box that sat on the desk to the left of the manual while the wooden kitchen match waited on the right for him to stop when the moment arrived so he could light it with his thumbnail, touch the flame to the end of the coffin nail and return to work—as he pounded the keys, the desk shaking under his heavy touch, he looked down occasionally as the paper, the twenty-fifth page, filled with prose, yes, the best he’d ever composed, without a doubt, his confidence grew, as the plot rushed toward the climax, the characters expanded and continued to surprise, the sense of place blossomed in his head as he felt himself walking the same streets, sitting on a chair in the same house, the crisp staccato dialogue filling his head, he lost all sense of the time that had passed but felt an urge, a need, for something (what was it?) and then he knew; so, he stopped typing, stopped thinking, reached for the match and lit it deftly with his nail and drew the flame into the brown weed and paper, concomitantly pulled his first drag deep into his lungs, and lost all memory of what he’d been writing—it was gone.