My Life as a Mole
by Dylan Haversack
part 1
I stopped at a crossroads underground, where thirty roads met like thirty spokes in a wheel. Each road was dark and uninviting in its own way. I braced my back against a small hollow and contemplated my next move. A tremor shook the earth. Springing onto my hind paws, I twisted around, raising my pick above my head, fully prepared to brain whatever might emerge from the dirt. I held back when I found myself snout-to-snout with a fellow mole.
He had the knotted gray beard and long yellow teeth of someone who had been living free underground since before I was a pup. His belly bulged, fat and pink and patched with conspicuously well-groomed fur. He asked me where I was going and, when I told him I was having trouble deciding, he pointed me down the surprisingly smooth, clean, well-lighted tunnel from which he had just emerged.
In a low, conspiratorial voice he said, “Down there’s a place where you can lay your head.” He placed a cigarette in his mouth and struck a match on the wall. “Oh, yes,” he went on, “there’s some prime real estate down there, brother.”
“That so?” I asked, a little suspicious. “Why are you hurrying away, then?”
“Who says I’m hurrying?” said the older mole, lighting his cigarette. He puffed twice. “Had a bit of trouble with the maid, that’s all.”
“So, the place isn’t empty?”
“Oh, she don’t live there, brother,” he said, sucking in smoke so the end of the cigarette flared. Exhaling, he projected a thin gray cloud along the root-hung ceiling, adding that, “She comes to clean, is all.”
“Tell me more,” I said and lowered my pick.
What he described sounded like it might be too much for a humble mole like me. I had survived this long by not overindulging. But the old mole was convincing, and the thought of another night underground... of coming to a dead end... of having to eat another grub or earthworm or rotten field mouse for dinner... Before I knew it, he was ushering me inside.
The old mole seemed quite pleased to have found new accommodations for me. In fact, he knew I would like them so much that, as soon as I entered the tunnel, he began to seal it from his end, piling up the loose dirt and small rocks shaken loose only moments ago.
Looking back, I caught a glimpse of him waving goodbye, and I waved back and, moving right along, exited the tunnel through a small, mole-sized hole. Suddenly I found myself gazing wide-eyed around a large basement with high, curtained windows. Inside, I waited, listening for the sound of human activity. Hearing none, I concealed the hole in the wall behind an empty dresser and made myself at home.
* * *
I met the maid in the library a few days later. She came right in and announced herself with a low grunting cough that sent me flinching back into one of the bookshelves, scattering several antique volumes on the hardwood floor. She was a large woman, with a small nose, smaller eyes, chapped red cheeks, and a helmet of mud brown hair. Her accent was... well, I don’t know what you would call it. Flavorless.
“You stay?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. Confident, firm. “I stay.”
“Don’t know about your types,” she said, setting her hands on her hips, which were a yard across, easily. “One of you made trouble, but now is gone. Another, before him, he made trouble, too. And before him, there was another. All gone now.” She paused, looked at the floor, looked up at the shelves and the scattered books on the floor. “They make trouble. You, you don’t make trouble, no?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t make trouble.”
We faced each other, impassive as duelists.
“When does the homeowner get back?” I asked, breaking a long silence.
“Two months,” she said. “Three, maybe.”
I looked around the large library. Two months seemed sufficient time to make a reasonable survey. There were many other delights in the house, many pleasures in which I might have indulged: home theater, stocked pantry, private gym, game room, full-service...
But I could go on for pages and pages. In truth, my only real love was for the library. It had comfortable carrels with leather seats and warm lamps with green shades; there were tall shelves reachable with wheeled ladders, and hundreds upon hundreds of priceless books. You may think a mole would not enjoy reading, but you would think incorrect. For how else can we learn about the surface? Our vision is too limited for movies and pictures, and the sunlight is too harsh for our sensitive skin and light-deprived eyes.
Speaking of the sun, I saw some behind the maid. It was spilling in through windows which, before she arrived, had been covered with curtains. Now, they were pulled wide open, and the glass was filmed with cleaning solution. “Do you always wash those?” I asked.
“The basement is always dark,” she said. “No need to clean. Curtains closed.”
Then she scrutinized my face, as if she were seeing me for the first time. I let her stare while I gathered up as many books as I could, tucking them under both arms. Then I ran past her, sprinting through the sunlit hall, and I did not stop until I reached the basement. I did not go upstairs again until well after the maid had gone for the day and the sun had set.
I drew the curtains in anticipation of the next sunny day.
* * *
Let me be clear: My intention with the library was not to read every book, but to create a useful survey of all the books. Cataloguing, as I call it. And once my catalogue was complete, it would enable me to pick and choose the texts that held my interest. You see, reading is time-consuming, much like tunnel-digging. It prompts thoughts which are not your own. It generates many questions. Troublesome questions. Questions you can avoid while cataloguing.
Each bookcase took me about a day, sometimes longer. I confess my progress slowed considerably whenever I stumbled upon a particularly interesting volume that demanded immediate inquiry, and I wasted hours plucking books from the shelves and reading them in one of the comfortable carrels set beside the banisters. Often, I left these withdrawn books open, strewn about according to a logic known only to myself, because I never knew when I might need to return to them.
I admit, I might have made a bit of a mess, and this may have displeased the maid; but what could she do? I hid in the basement whenever she came to clean, and if I sensed she was coming down to punish me — as if she would ever dare! — I could just push the bookshelf aside and escape back into the tunnel. So, instead, she wrote notes chastising me, excoriating me in angry penmanship for making messes, and she stuck them around the library.
A sampling:
“Wipe up after your own self.” (She wrote our language as poorly as she spoke it.)Another: “Please to put books back from where you took them.”
One of my favorites: “Desks are not shelfs for books.”
In response, I left notes of my own, ones where I tried persuading her that it made more sense to leave the books lying out for the duration of my stay. “After I leave,” I wrote, “you can restack them all in one day.”
I did not succeed. No big shocker there. Like most domestics, the maid was rigid in her thinking, and she refused to change her policy. Sometimes, this meant I had to wheel a ladder back over to a shelf I had previously catalogued so I could retrieve a book that interested me. Other times, she mistakenly returned a book to the wrong shelf, which caused much confusion in my cataloguing efforts. Despite these obstacles, I made progress. By the end of my first month, I had surveyed the library’s entire first level.
But setbacks mounted. The maid’s mistakes multiplied. She grew more aggressive with her reprimands. I began to fear her more than I feared the sunlight. Minutes, sometimes hours before she arrived, I would withdraw to the basement, to read lying on the queen bed set far back from the basement windows, and I would come up only after I heard the slam of the front door that signaled her departure.
Except for books, the basement had everything I needed: a comfy bed, a stocked pantry, and a bathroom for washing. I got so comfortable down there that whenever the maid came to clean, I started dozing off. By the end of the second month I was ahead on my reading, but greatly behind in my cataloguing efforts.
The situation was precarious. If I stayed on a third month, it increased the risk that the homeowner would return and catch me before I had a chance to escape. On the other hand, if I departed early, all my cataloguing would be wasted, not to mention the library would be lost to me. Eventually, I decided to risk a confrontation with the maid, and I asked her flat-out what day she expected the homeowner to return.
“She is gone and back like that,” the maid said, snapping so loudly it bounced between the rooms. “You go soon?”
“Soon,” I said, clutching a book under one arm. “I go soon.” And I glanced down at another book that had fallen on the floor beside the carrel. Leaving it there, I scurried down to the basement.
* * *
When I think of the incident, when I think of the way the light was hinting through the basement curtains on that fateful afternoon, I think about how it all could have been prevented.
Upstairs, the maid was cleaning, her vacuum loud and irritating, and the book I had taken to occupy myself turned out to be boring and uninteresting, which is why cataloguing is essential; so, I dog-eared the page I was reading, laid the thick volume on my lap, cradling it between my paws, and dozed, watching a speck of dust dance in the hem of yellow sunlight that skirted the far wall.
Like a curious child, I observed its indecisive descent. Occasionally, it leapt up and was briefly suspended by a puff of vented air, but it always returned to roughly the same spot. I was watching it and waiting for the front door to slam shut. And I was still waiting when I fell asleep.
Later — minutes or hours, I can’t be sure — I awoke to the smell of burning flesh: My own. Someone had flung the basement curtains wide open, and the whole room was now flooded with harsh and blinding sunlight.
You who live your life above ground cannot begin to understand, cannot even begin to conceptualize the pain. I screamed. I scrambled. To the sink, to the sink, to the sink, I thought, to the safety of the downstairs bathroom, and turning on the water, praying for relief, I thrust my burned flesh underneath the tap, realizing all too late I had mistakenly switched the handle to hot, so that the water seared my skin and flowed like warm blood between my swollen fingers. My flesh hissed. Steam flooded the room, which was spinning, spinning like I had never seen the world spin. Everything stopped just before I lost consciousness.
Sometime later — minutes, hours, days? — I awoke with one ankle chained to the foot of the basement bed. The skin on the tip of my snout was charred like barbecue. My paws were red and blistered like roast tomatoes. My skin was cracked and baked like a dry riverbed in the sun. At the slightest movement, my fur crackled like static electricity. Concussed and delirious, I slipped in and out of feverish sweats.
That night, I heard the maid upstairs on the phone talking to the homeowner. She was telling her all about how she had caught “a mole man freak” and how she was keeping me “under observation.”
* * *
The homeowner arrived five days later. I recognized her from the pictures framed around her house. They didn’t do her justice. Despite, or perhaps because of, her resemblance to my natural nemesis, she was splendid: tan, tawny skin; long supple limbs; honey blonde curls extending from the crown of her head in a delicate, shimmering corona.
She was so splendid, in fact, that I felt myself consumed by her presence, and I almost didn’t notice that the basement curtains had been pulled away again, not until my snout began to tingle, my cheeks began to itch, and red bumps the size and shape of pimples began to break out all along my neck and my hands. Then I darted beneath the covers, but no sooner had I done so than the homeowner ordered the maid to strip the sheets.
Gleefully, she complied, but her smile melted away instantly at what the homeowner did next.
“Oh, what a darling little creature you are,” the homeowner cooed, patting my head.
From the expression on the maid’s face — a mixture of horror, pity, and revulsion — I saw that these words surprised her as much as they did me.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Mole Man,” the homeowner continued, in the same smooth, placid tone of voice. “I see now you could not help doing as you did. It was a natural consequence of your affliction.” She clutched one hand to her chest. “But your hard days are behind you, little one. These days, every affliction can be overcome, and I am going to help you.” And then she smiled.
And I think I saw her shed a tear.
* * *
Copyright © 2025 by Dylan Haversack
