Fahrenheit 451

It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.

Ever since he was a boy, his eyes would glint with wonder when he held match after burning match in his small fists, staring on at the dancing fire for hours on end. Smiling with ecstasy as his saliva snuffed flame after glowing flame and filled his curious mouth with smoke, gaping his jaw like a fierce dragon with its newly-acquired treasures around the ruins of a crumbling castle.

It was an exceptional pleasure to wield such power.

As he grew up, Guy Montag would still experience these pleasures. His arsonist's lullaby would be sung by his coworkers, those who fight forbidden knowledge with fire. Sung by their symbol, the humble salamander fed by flames. All orchestrated and composed by their new world, reborn like a phoenix that had once fallen from grace because of its old acts of hubris.

No longer would there be hidden words, secret messages, conspiring whispers directed toward their glorious government. Montag loved this new world as much as he yearned for the afterimage of destruction ingrained in his eyelids, the rush of heat against his masked face, the stench of gasoline lingering on the engulfed building turning to ash before him.

Even if there were thoughts of what could have been etched on those charred books in the back of his head, Guy knew that the flames would never leave him.

His burnt fingertips would still itch to strike sulpher against phosphorus even outside of work, when he couldn't hold a brass nozzle to make a reaction. His eyes would still gleam like the embers they gazed off into. His face and hair would remain as dry as noontime in the Sahara, and the scars would remind him of how he had boiled oases as a job instead of drinking from them.

He may decide one day to burn the lies he had lived to find the truth behind it all, but would still look back at the beckoning fire as he escaped. Would he ever truly escape?