The Flamethrowers

by Rachel Kushner

I felt alert to every granule of time. Each granule was time, the single pertinent image, the other moment-images, before and after, lost, unconsidered. All I knew was my hand on the throttle grip, its tingling vibration in my gloved fingers: 130, 138. Floating Mountain hovered in the distance, a mirage at its skirt. Hazy and massive. Whatever happened, it would watch but not help. Pay attention, it said. You could die.

“Looking for an enemy. Tall. Slim. Ruthless. With a sense of humor.”

Sometimes one turns on a radio and they listen to music, or to the news, but they don’t care about the actual news, just that the radio is issuing a steadyish sound whose particulars they do not have to follow to understand what the radio is actually telling them: life is being lived.

And here I arrive at my point. The point is that everyone has a different dream. The point is that it is a grave mistake to assume your dream is in any way shared, that it’s a common dream. Not only is it not shared, not common, there is no reason to assume that other people don’t find you and your dream utterly revolting.”

In any case, death was death: it had its own gravity.