With photography by Matt Knight
Simon and Caspar and Edmond and Frank were all in a hot air balloon looking down at the map of London, Ontario. Seeing their city from such a great height brought forth a wealth of different emotions: for the first time in his life Simon was fully struck by the fact that, while his city was so large, it was merely part of a province, which was part of a country, which was part of a continent, which was part of a world, which was part of a solar system, which was part of a galaxy, which was part of a universe, which was part of infinity . . . and he was only a dot in a hot air balloon looking down at so many buildings and people and cars; Caspar, a third-hand Buddhist, found the experience relaxing and felt at peace with nearly everything and everyone; Edmond, student of history and art, was inspired by the view, an organic painting of modern civilisation with all of its ups and downs; and Frank simply thought the ride was cool, went on and on about how cool it was, and looked forward to landing so he could tell everyone he knew about how cool it had been.
Outside of the white noise of Frank’s babbling, the boys, all twenty-two years old, were fairly quiet and peaceful.
‘Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.’
Edmond had smuggled a small bag of peanuts onboard and was in the process of cracking one open when Simon heaved a heavy sigh. A wind stole the peanut and slapped Caspar’s cheek with it, at which point the bag was guiltily put away for good.
‘Wind and clouds, take me away,’ Simon said melodramatically to the sky around them.
‘Oh, stop that,’ Edmond said. ‘You’ll find another girlfriend. It’s not the end. After all, look at all of the people in London.’
They had scheduled the ride to help Simon because his longtime girlfriend had left him and he needed to take his mind off of it. There was no way the group would have gone out of their way to do it otherwise.
‘Yeah, I’d rather he find someone here instead of San Fran,’ Caspar piped up as he rubbed his reddened cheek. ‘Otherwise there’d be no more Simon.’ He laughed nervously.
Simon had taken a trip with Tracy to San Francisco the year before and tended to bring it up in conversations completely unrelated to it. The gang enjoyed this, though, unlike Frank’s inexplicable and numerous references to a high school trip to Italy he had taken five years previous. Frank had a habit of taking something fun and exciting and devoting his life to obliviously sucking the fun and excitement out of it for everyone else.
‘Can’t believe how cool this is. Out-of-this-world cool.’
‘Are you going back to San Fran?’ Edmond asked Simon.
‘I like it there,’ Simon said. ‘I don’t like London.’
‘Just unbelievably, unfathomably, inconceivably cool.’
They alternated their north, east, south and west positions, stepping on peanut shells as they went along; during the shuffle Caspar noticed a shiny metal object forming a strange pattern in the distant airspace but thought nothing of it. He merely assumed it was the sun reflecting in his eyes.
‘Would you stay if we put a wig on Caspar?’ Edmond asked.
‘It depends on how nice the wig is,’ Simon replied.
Caspar made some worried noises. Soon the jocularity died down until the only sounds remaining were those of the hot air balloon, the wind, and the word ‘cool’. Each of the young men was lost in their own quarter of London.
After a long period of silent drifting Edmond felt a sudden itch on his shin, but when he reached down to scratch he felt something long, smooth and rounded. He looked down to see a giant green caterpillar latching onto his jeans with pink legs, white head and ocean-blue eyes. The larva looked like it had fallen out of a dream, and Edmond found himself entranced by the bizarre creature.
Picking the thing up in silence, he brought it to his face so that he could inspect it even more closely and carefully. It wriggled like a baby between his fingers.
‘Hello, what are you?’ he whispered to it, but no response was given. Then, without thinking, Edmond put half the caterpillar inside of his mouth and bit into it; however – and much to his surprise – no acidic or disgusting juices burst into his mouth.
When he pulled the caterpillar back out he found that it was dead, and that was when he decided to show it to the others.
‘It looks like Mothra!’ Caspar exclaimed. ‘Uh, before Mothra becomes Mothra, of course.’
‘Well, of course,’ Simon agreed as he turned it over in his hands. ‘Anyway, what is this? Where the heck could it have come from? Frank, is this a relative?’
Frank shook his head. ‘Here, let me see it,’ he said, and for all of his childish impatience it sounded like ‘let me see let me see let me see’.
‘Cool it down, Frank.’
‘I’m cool, man. I’m cool, this is cool, we’re all cool. This is just
PAPER-
THIN
PUNKS
‘Hey, I think it’s still alive,’ Simon noted. The caterpillar twitched a pink leg and was handed back to Edmond for approval.
‘So what do we do with it? Do you guys think we should donate it to science?’
‘Uh, but what if it’s actually a completely normal caterpillar?’ Caspar asked.
‘Then we’d all be laughed at, of course,’ Edmond responded.
‘Which I’m perfectly fine with,’ added Simon.
‘Hey, what did you mean by “cool it down”, anyway?’
An unexpected flash of lightning caused Edmond to drop the caterpillar and everyone bent over as thunder rumbled through their bones. An endless series of flashes lit up the already bright sky. Once Edmond had the caterpillar back in hand everyone stood up again, only to experience something so strange and so intense that they all screamed in utter terror: following a crack, they all saw nothing but blackness, followed by the purest red, and due to their inexperience in dying they thought that it meant they were dead.
Each flash lasted less than a second, but the shock of it left them shaking and disturbed for a long time to come. It was time to land.
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