The existence of a Moth Man implies the existence of a Caterpillar Boy.

The existence of a Caterpillar Boy necessitates the possibility of a Butterfly Man.

🌼🦋🌼

Cal Avery spent his whole life being a jerk to everyone, but he didn't care, because his life was full of great moments.

Ain't that a bitch?

For every time he made a rude comment, there was a great sports play he made. For every fight he started with someone smaller than him, a family trip to an exotic location. He had been blessed with the ability to not give a damn about how his actions affected those around him, and he took full advantage of his privilege.

By the time he was nearing adulthood, he'd decided his life had been so full of wonderful moments that settling down and living a normal life would be of no consequence. So, he bought a farm, Hollyhock Farm, in fact, intending on living a quiet life of reflection and toil.

It hadn't been too long after Cal Avery bought Hollyhock Farm that he'd noticed the land's peculiarities.

The prior owner, an old man with an apparently permanent twinkle in his eye, had told him, “Whatever you do, don't remove the milkweed, nor the coneflower, and make sure you plant plenty of dill.”

“Why?” Cal asked.

The old man with the twinkling eye replied, “You'll see at 10:33, when the grass is still wet with dew.”

When the spring came and it was time to prepare the land, Cal made sure not to remove the milkweed, nor the coneflower. And when it was time to sow, he planted plenty of dill.

Then, one Sunday morning, at 10:33, when the grass was still wet with dew, Cal saw them.

Butterflies.

Hundreds of them.

Thousands, maybe.

And all at once, Cal was flooded with moments.

Moments from his life — loves, losses, hatreds, gains, dreams, hopes, nightmares, despairs. And not just his life, but others. Overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of the experience he fell to his knees and wept.

In the throes of this experience, Cal felt the hand of another touch his back, and through salt-teared eyes he looked up, and there, he saw it.

“Hiya,” it said.

“Wha— what are you?” Cal replied, stammering.

"I'm the Hollyhock Farm Butterfly Man,” it replied. Cal studied it to be sure it was true. A man, yes, though overwhelmingly beautiful. He had regular, man arms — but his shoulders were wrong. Dust-coated, brilliantly blue wings had, at some point, sprouted forth from their blades, and antennae had done the same from the bone of his brow.

“What is happening to me?” Cal asked him.

“Moments,” the Hollyhock Farm Butterfly Man replied. “But don't worry, they're fleeting things, and fickle as well. They'll be gone before you know it.”

“Where will they go?” Cal asked.

The Hollyhock Farm Butterfly Man smiled and said, “To wherever I take them.”

Cal then learned from the Hollyhock Farm Butterfly Man that every farm implies the existence of Caterpillars, and that therefore every farm implies the non-zero possibility of a Caterpillar Boy. And every Caterpillar Boy will one day metamorphosize into either a Moth Man, or a Butterfly Man.

“If I had made different choices, maybe I'd be, I don't know, the Cream City Moth Man or something.”

The Hollyhock Farm Butterfly Man went on to explain that, like butterflies, Butterfly Men were useful and gentle. They pollinated the world's moments, they were ferrymen of memories.

“I simply carry them away to where they can be safely forgotten,” he told Cal.

For reasons unclear to Cal this idea startled him. He had experienced many moments and did not want them carried away. Some of them were cherished, some of them were critical.

“That doesn't concern me,” the Hollyhock Farm Butterfly Man replied. Then he set about his work, collecting all the moments in an empty potato sack, before taking them off in no direction in particular.

Cal sat around for days. Feeling empty, he'd neither eaten nor drank. He'd neither slept nor dreamed. All he experienced was the emptiness, and a rather strange gnawing sensation that he'd never experience another moment again in his life.

And you know what they say about gnawing sensations. They have a bad habit of sticking around. It gnawed, and gnawed, until finally Cal couldn't take it anymore.

He went and knocked on the door of his new neighbor, Big John Pepper.

“So you want me to help you track down the famed and beloved Hollyhock Farm Butterfly Man, who is going in no particular direction, so you can hijack all the memories you lost before they are forgotten?”

“Yes.”

Big John Pepper looked his new neighbor up and down, studying the square of his jaw, the uprightness of his back.

“Alright,” Big John Pepper said. “I will help you.”

And so, Cal and Big John Pepper wandered off in any direction, because of that old truth that all wanderers, and Butterfly Men, knew: no one direction was better than any other.

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"They told us that time flies, didn't know what it means. Now I feel like we're just running around trying to catch it and hoping to cut off its wings." – NF, Lost in the Moment. ReVival 84 had left Big John Pepper with many uncertainties. Had he been wrong about the Anglo Luchador all along? That he wasn't his old friend in disguise, but some jabroni from Philadelphia? Had he been wrong about the treacherous young Winkle squire's moral fabrick?

Big John Pepper was certainly wrong about a lot of things. But also, he was certain about something, and it certainly made him furious.

“The young Winkle squire dressed up as a moth man, and thereby attempted to distract me from winning my fanny whooping contest with Hayes Hanlon!” Big John Pepper shouted from the backseat of a black, Cadillac Escalade that was rolling on 24” chrome. “The gall!”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, Big John, I know! I know!” Fred Dick shouted back from the driver's seat of a black, Cadillac Escalade that was rolling on 24” chrome. “You're drivin’ me got damn nuts, man! NUTSSSS!!! You’ve said that same spiel to me over and over, word for fuggin’ word, god damn, seven damn times since we left the arena! ‘Eueughhh, tHe yOuNg WiNkLe sQUiRe! tHe GaLL! tHe nErVe!’”

“The nerve!!!” Big John Pepper shouted, having been reminded about the nerve.

Riding around in a black, Cadillac Escalade that was rolling on 24” chrome in Mexico City was a risky proposition for most people. But Fred, a street cat, notorious for always having his ear to the ground, knew the streets in Mexico City had his back.

He was as confident as a Fred Dick could be whilst he drove through the city completely lost, turning down questionable alleys, and even more questionable back streets.

Sinister boulevards.

Grave cul de sacs. 

His confidence was so great that he didn't even question the janky, improperly-constructed barricade that blocked his way forward.

“Huh,” Fred said, shrugging his shoulders. “Guess I'll have to turn around.”

His confidence was so great he didn't even notice the blinking eyes.

“Fred,” Big John Pepper said.

So many blinking eyes.

“Not now Big John Pepper,” Fred said, whistling. “I gotta turn the Escalade around.”

Creeping closer towards the car.

“Fred,” Big John Pepper said more sternly.

Mere feet away from the car.

Fred sang merrily while reversing the Escalade, “Oooooh the camp town lady sing this song, doo dah, doo dah, camp town racetrack five miles long, oh dah doo dah dayyyy—”

Inches.

“FRED!!!”

“WHAT!?!?” Fred said, slamming on the brakes. “What, what, what, what, what, what, WHAT!?!?!”

Big John Pepper pointed out the windshield. Fred turned, and he saw what Big John Pepper was trying to draw his attention to.

How many were there? 20? 30?

“Moth men.”

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“Regret is such a short word, and yet it stretches on forever.” -Renata Suzuki Cal Avery wasn't sure how long he and Big John Pepper had been walking in no particular direction, but it couldn't have been less than ten minutes, or longer than ten months.

But the gnawing was eating him alive.

Literally.

“Big John,” Cal said, weakly. “What's happening to me?”

“You're metamorphosizing,” Big John said plainly, but the wood of it was stained sadly.

Days became seconds, or, seconds became months, or, well, some stretch of time stretched into some other stretch of time.

Cal's spirit, even as they marched across what appeared to be an endless swath of desert, was undeterred, but Big John Pepper noticed Cal's legs were very much deterred. They were starting to… change.

“My legs are tiring,” Cal said.

“Looks that way,” Big John Pepper replied.

Cal sighed and said, “You want to know why I want my moments back?”

“Alright.”

Cal took a deep breath, and said, “I'm terrified that I won't have anymore moments ever again. Because I'm a jerk. And now, all my best moments are now lost, carried away to be forgotten.”

Big John Pepper nodded. It was a fear with a weight that made it difficult to wrestle with.

Then he said, “It's okay, I think. To be worried about that. But it's eating you alive. Making you a Caterpillar Boy.”

“What's a Caterpillar Boy?”

“A boy simultaneously on the verge of manhood and at a crossroads in his life.”

It wasn't long after that when Cal found he could no longer walk. That sensation which had been gnawing at him, had now enveloped him fully. He tried to cry out to Big John Pepper for help, but something had covered his mouth.

And then his eyes.

Cal Avery had been cocooned.

And he would emerge as something different entirely.

Big John Pepper felt terrible. He could tell by Cal's disposition that he was not going to be a Butterfly Man. Butterfly Men were useful and gentle. Cal was not useful. And he was only gentle because he was incapable of violence. To be truly gentle was to be capable of violence, and yet refrain. Otherwise, that was just being a rabbit.

But Cal was not becoming a rabbit, either.

He was becoming something else.

Something selfish and bitter.

Big John Pepper wondered if he should just… squish him, right there. After all, Cal was well on his way to becoming a hideous monster. A lightbulb addict.

A Moth Man.

But Big John Pepper, capable of great violence in that very moment towards a totally prone individual, refrained.

He started setting off in a certain direction, towards somewhere else.

And he was never more certain that, with a moth man around, somewhere else was exactly where he wanted to be.

Yet…

He couldn't just leave him there, could he?

No… that wouldn't be right either.

Big John scooped the cocooned Cal up in his arms, and carried him back to Hollyhock Farm.

There, on the front porch, Big John Pepper placed the cocooned Cal down. Then, he reached inside the door and turned the porch light on.

He thought that the little rascal might enjoy that once he emerged from his cocoon.

🌼🦋🌼

“Moths are okay. Actually, moths don't bother me near as much as, say, spiders do.” - Jeffrey Dean Morgan

“What the fugg're we gon’ do neow, Big John Pepper!?” Fred Dick shouted, eyes wide, freaked out about all the moth men surrounding them on an abandoned road in Mexico City.

As one would be.

“Lock the doors, lean the seat all the way back,” Big John Pepper said, leaning his seat back. “Turn the high beams on.”

Fred did exactly as Big John told him.

“What neow?”

“Not a lot,” Big John Pepper replied. “Just be quiet and… endure… the awful things that are about to happen to the lights on this beautiful, black, Cadillac Escalade riding on 24” chrome.”

“...Whatchu mean, ‘endure?’ Whatchu mean, ‘awful thangs?’”

But before Big John Pepper could answer...

The awful things?

They commenced.

It started with the moth men lining up one by one to kiss and make out sloppy-style with the headlights. Then the moth men took off their clothes, real smoothly, real sensual-like, like a striptease they were performing for the headlights. Then, butt-ass naked, the moth men collided their disgusting bodies over and over again into the headlights.

“Nasty ace shid they doin’,” Fred muttered. “Gettin’ freaky on my headlights. Dirty dancin’ and gyratin’ all on my headlights. Why? Why oh WHY are they showin’ out like this on my headlights, Big John Pepper?”

“Because,” Big John replied. “They are out of moments, and they are jerks.”

“That don't make no damn sense nary at all! They outta moments and they jerks, so they gotta fug on MY headlights!?”

“Well, it's the only light they see, so they have to… ejaculate upon it, I guess? Ruin it for everyone else?”

“LAME,” Fred said. “I got a light for them. Damn sho do. Got a flashlight right here in the got damn glove compartment. I'ma get out and shove it up each and every ONE of dey aces!!!”

Big John Pepper reached out and placed a firm hand on Fred's shoulder.

“Don't.”

“Why not?” Fred asked.

Big John Pepper looked Fred in the eyes as sternly as humanly possible.

“They'll put, like, tiny holes in your clothes.”

🌼🦋🌼

Dear Vinny,

You might not believe this, because my handwriting is perfect, size 12, Times New Roman font, but I am writing you this letter by hand, to be delivered by the Lasagna Squire, Toddrick.

Do not shoot him.

Why am I, Big John Pepper, writing this letter to you by lamp light with ink and quill? 

Well, truthfully, I am concerned about you.

Setting aside your distraction attempt in my match, I want to talk to you about something more serious than costumes and mountain dew — though I'd seriously encourage you not to drink that witch's brew.

I want you to stop being such a jerk. And to make more moments with your dad. 

I know it's hard. You have a crazy life. Your father is a prizefighter who is either fighting or sleeping. Your mom is probably walking in on you beating your meat, pissing you off. I get it, young man. I was a teenaged boy once myself. 

But you're in the days now that folks look back on.

When they sit on their porches with wrinkles on their face and far less time in their pockets than they used to have, they think back and remember moments from the times you're in right now.

By then, memories are so bad, that moments are all anyone has left.

A smile your mom had one day on a beach.

The way a friend said something with a particular inflection.

The way your father was proud of you for accomplishing something. 

And if you aren't careful, a Butterfly Man will show up and take those moments away.

Then you'll be left with none.

So I've heard.

But I'm worried that you won't need a Butterfly Man for that. I'm worried that you're leaving yourself with no moments to reflect on, anyway. 

Staying in trouble, staying grounded, constant study hall credits.

And then this moth man business? 

Momentless, in terms of quality.

As a matter of fact, young man, though I'm not sure I'm the one who should be telling you this, every man is either a Moth Man or a Butterfly Man in the end.

You can be a total lunatic, a deranged freak, a moment-less jerk.

You can even spend all your time being a freelance detective for a case that means nothing to anyone but you.

(That would be a very Moth Man thing to do.)

About as useful as humping the headlight of a Cadillac Escalade. 

Or, you could be useful.

And gentle.

You know, regardless of how this pillow fight in Mexico with your dad turns out — I don't think he's ever going to admit that he's my old friend, Rip. And at this point, I don't know if that's because I'm wrong, and I've made a huge mistake, or if he's just being stubborn as a constipated mule.

But I do know that, whether I'm right or wrong about who he really is, he really is useful. He really is gentle.

And those are very good things.

Emulate him, and stop being such a jerk. Make moments with him. He's a good man.

Forget this Moth Man buffoonery. 

Be a Butterfly Man instead.

Be a good son.

Warmly,

Big John Pepper

🌼🦋🌼

On Hollyhock Farm, a miracle happened.

Big John Pepper was actually wrong about an assumption he had made.

Cal Avery emerged from that cocoon with beautiful, blue wings sprouting from the blades of his shoulders, and antennae from his brow.

He was a Butterfly Man.

He breathed in deeply and smiled brightly. He was colorful and immaculate. He was useful and gentle.

It could've gone another way.

But at some point, whilst trapped in the clutches of that cocoon, perhaps while Big John Pepper was toting him back to Hollyhock Farm, he decided that maybe he'd stop being a jerk, and maybe he'd make more moments, by being useful and gentle to those around him.

And now?

Now the sunlight on his face felt so, so good. Cal thought maybe he'd go play in the milkweed, or coneflower.

As his first day as a Butterfly Man started, he really only had two questions:

1. How does he start collecting moments?

2. Who the heck left his porch light on?

🌼🦋🌼

When the sun began to rise, and all the naked moth men had tired themselves out and left the scene of their awful sex crimes they committed on Fred's headlights, Big John Pepper snored so loud he woke himself up.

He blinked his eyes open once, twice, and then, he saw Fred.

Sitting in the driver's seat.

Holding a cake.

The cake read:

‘HAPY 2-0 CAYKE 4 BIG JOHN PEPER CAYKE.’

“You remembered,” Big John Pepper said.

“Made yew a promise, didn’t I?” Fred said with a grin. “That I'd get yew a cake every time ya won, and a pie every time ya lost. Well, I'm a man of my word, ain't I?”

“You are,” Big John Pepper agreed.

“You wouldn't believe how difficult it is for a guy to get moth man spunk cleaned off his headlights and a cake made in Mexico with the words spelled right all before breakfast,” Fred said. “But after some intense negocheenations, I managed.”

Big John scooped a handful of cake into his mouth.

It was so good.

"You want some?” Big John asked.

“Nah,” Fred said. “This here's for yew.”

Fred smiled as he watched Big John eat cake like a one year old at their first birthday party.

“Know what?” Big John Pepper said with cake all over his face. “This is a good moment, Fred.”

Fred nodded. "Yup," he said.

It really was.

🌼🦋🌼

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. - Ben Franklin