One evening, a young man named Alexander lay down to sleep and in the dreams of the night, he was carried off to a wide green valley. The sky was baby blue and the place was warm and peaceful, with just the hint of a breeze.

At first he was alone and he sat there quietly and enjoyed himself.

He looked down at the grass for a moment and when he looked up, he saw a girl standing there, a teenager, dressed in t-shirt and blue-jeans, with golden hair cascading about her shoulders. She held in her fingers a long, white, unlit cigarette.

As he watched, she lifted it to her lips and balanced it there. In another moment, she lit it, with the touch of a lighter, fumbling slightly. She inhaled -- and coughed violently. He realized instinctively that this was her first ever real puff of a cigarette.

She stood close enough to him that the stacatto spasms of her cough burst across his face. But she seemed not to notice he was there. Mingled with the rich aroma of the tobacco her young lungs had rejected, was the faint scent of the grape bubble gum she was chewing. He drew it all in hungrily.

She inhaled again, more carefully this time. Then she exhaled a long, creamy stream of smoke with just two punctuations of a cough. It rolled across his face, cascading across his nose, mouth and eyes, fresh, spicy and strong.

She made a face and pursed her lips. The taste of the nicotine was apparently not to her liking. She opened her lips and spat and Alexander didn't move in time and caught it directly on his lips. He found himself reaching up to wipe the moisture away but taking it into his own mouth instead. It was hot and wet -- sweet with the taste of her bubble gum and yet bitter with the nicotine.

As she stood there, suddenly the valley around them began to fill with people -- all women and girls, dressed in skirts, slacks, blue jeans, kimonos, saris, shorts and bikinis, even some in their bras and panties. Each held in her hand a cigarette -- and there were billions of them.

The voice of his dream spoke:

This is every woman and girl on Earth who has ever smoked a cigarette. This is every puff she has ever taken, this is every nicotine hit that has ever pleasured her body.

And as he watched, billions of slender arms raised to lift cigarettes to billions of lips. The baby blue sky had faded in a haze of smoke and through the gloom, billions of cigarette tips glowed red. Earth's whole atmosphere seemed to be vacuumed into their hungry mouths and mingled with tons of fragrant smoke, swallowed down into their lungs.

There were girls just old enough to balance cigarettes in their fingers without dropping them. There were teenagers, giggling with their girlfriends. There were business women and housewives, waitresses and prostitutes, twenty-somethings and even mature women seasoned by a lifetime of smoking.

He felt his own lungs burn as if he'd inhaled gasoline. He felt a trillion gallons of nicotine blast through his body and countless tons of tar coat his throat and cover his lungs. He felt more pleasure than any mortal could stand, surging through his whole body.

You are experiencing at once the inhale of every smoking woman and girl on Earth, the voice said.

The cigarettes fell away from the lips, the mouths opened and suddenly he was submerged in smoke. Tight streams, nostril exhales, cones, wisps, rings, short puffs, lazy drifts and firehose blasts rose by the millions from their mouths. Every molecule of cigarette smoke that had ever been exhaled from female lips, every ounce of smoke that had once pleasured a female body, now surged into his face at once, burned his eyes, stung his nose and gathered around him, thicker and thicker until he could hold out no longer and had to open his mouth to breathe, whereupon it rushed in, every puff, cloud and wisp, choking him, drowning him, burying him under it.

Now the multitude of women and girls at once snapped the ash from their cigarettes, burying him in a burning hot, soft gray snowstorm. He struggled to dig himself out and emerged only to be blasted again by billions of mouths exhaling more smoke.

In his dreams, he found himself cupping his hands and curling up. Suddenly, billions of cigarettes -- corktips and all-whites, Capris, Mores, Mistys, Virginia Slims, Marlboros, Eves, Satins, Camels, Kools, Salems, Benson and Hedges and countless others, were being thrust at him. Some bore red lipstick deep upon the filters, some beige, some pink, some sparkly gloss.

Now you will become the ashtray for every woman who has ever smoked on Earth, the voice said. And suddenly his skin burned as if bitten by a billion fire ants, as every cigarette ever dropped or flicked away by a woman's hand now was tossed at him.

Then millions of fingers were rubbing out and crushing out cigarettes on his hands and body, some gently, some with savage thrust.

Then suddenly, his vision was of nothing but sandals, boots, pumps, flats, mules and sneakers, as every woman's foot that had ever crushed out a cigarette loomed suddenly above him. Little girls in their tiny school shoes, elegant women in their heels, weekend women in their loafing sneakers, beachgoers in their glossy sandals, all showered him with their spent cigarettes, all stepped onto his burning body and ground out their smokes with all the variety that Earth's women could possibly produce -- casual toe taps, savage stomps, elegant ballerina twists, one-two press-outs and filter-ripping grinds.

The pressure was too much -- and he felt his consciousness slipping away.

Then he awoke.

And wished himself in vain to be back in that dream world.