My Life as a Mole
by Dylan Haversack
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
To address my condition, the homeowner consulted a friend of hers, a doctor, and she asked him about my situation, framing it as a hypothetical, lying and saying it was something she had read in a novel.
I imagined his response went something like this:
“These days we can treat anything,” he said, with solemn certainty. “If it were my patient, I would advise a course of immunotherapy, gradually increasing exposure to sunlight and thereby raising the body’s defenses.”
Fortunately, the homeowner couldn’t bring me to the doctor, nor the doctor to me, not unless she wanted me to tell him the whole story, which would almost certainly land me in prison, or perhaps a laboratory, or even the zoo. Though, actually, that sounded preferable to remaining her captive. In all likelihood, the state would simply throw me in a hole and forget about me. The homeowner wanted me to join her in the light.
“Just for a minute,” she said, waving at me from her perch, up behind the high basement windows, which were open and airy in the afternoon. She was squatting down, her long brown thighs running in parallel with the close-cut grass.
Pretending to oblige her, I clambered onto a stool she had set beneath the window for the occasion. Her smile grew in anticipation. I smiled back, feeling an unfamiliar warmth. Then I thrust my head out the open window. The homeowner squealed. She was so delighted. But for me the pain began immediately.
Fighting back tears, feeling as if a branding iron was hovering just inches from my face, I surveyed the simple suburban lawn. It was the middle of the day, and there was no one around. Still, I craned my neck skyward and, in the loudest voice I could muster, I cried out, “Help, please, someone, anyone, help, please, help me, please— ”
Hearing my cries, the maid tugged my chain, cutting me off with a violent jerking motion. I came down hard, my belly slamming against the seat of the stool, and I rolled off, wheezing my way down to the carpeted floor, my paws outstretched. The maid gathered me up and set me on the bed and redrew the curtains.
Minutes later, the homeowner’s face reappeared above my head, angelic and, to my surprise, flush with compassion. She held my burned paws and caressed my sun-damaged cheeks, and she apologized profusely for the maid’s actions. “You must forgive her, my darling. She is a simple creature. She does not understand. No more sunlight for now, not until you’re ready.” Then she wiped away her tears and retreated up the stairs.
The maid remained. “Now she never lets you go,” she said
“You could release me,” I said, pointing to the shackle.
“And then she ask me, ‘Oh, where is my precious mole man?’ And then I am blamed. And then I am dismissed.”
“Well, maybe you should never have told her about me. Did you consider that?”
She rolled her eyes. “I figure she get rid of you. She see you for the freak you are and cast you out. How I am to know she wants you for friend?”
“She seems lonely.”
The maid smirked. “Maybe you were meant for each other, like you two peas in pod.”
Consider my situation: Chained to a bed, weakened considerably by inactivity and the scars on my paws, no idea where the maid had taken my pickaxe — again, you are thinking incorrectly if you think moles have no need of such tools — not to mention my catalogue.
I explained to her that that was all I really wanted, my pickaxe and the fruits of my incomplete labor, and then I would be on my way.
“I wonder when you ask me about it,” she said, tapping her head.
“Where is it?” I asked, mimicking her. “Up here?”
She rubbed her thumb and her forefinger together in the most universal of gestures.
“If you want—”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “I want.”
“Then play along,” she said. “She wants to help.”
“What do you care?” I asked. “She’s delusional.”
“She has big plan, I think. An ‘unveiling.’ You play along. Then I give. Then you go.”
Then she walked over to the dresser and pushed it aside as lightly as if it belonged in a dollhouse. There was my pickaxe; there was the catalogue.
The maid held up the key to my shackle.
“Play along, little mole man.”
* * *
“Wonderful, wonderful,” the homeowner said, when I told her I was willing to brave the sunlight once again.
“That’s wonderful,” she repeated. “I knew you would come around, dear.”
She was out on the grass, behind the basement windows again. Just the one curtain was open for a solitary sunbeam to cut across the floor of my basement cell. I sidled along the edge of the light, gradually making my way over to the window.
“You’re doing great, dear.”
I heaved myself up on the stool.
“Closer now, dear.”
I pulled myself up on my hind paws.
“Come on, just poke your head up.”
Inches away, I hesitated for only a moment; then I trust my face out into the light and bit my tongue against the pain.
The whole time she was counting: “One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi... ”
When it got to be too much, I pulled my head back inside and scrambled off the stool.
The first time we tried it, she counted to fifteen.
The second time, we made it to twenty-six.
The third time, forty-five.
After that we stopped for the day because hairy little boils were breaking out all along my jawline. The homeowner could not have been more delighted with our progress. The maid just stood there with her arms crossed, though she seemed satisfied, as well. That evening, when she came down to collect my meal tray, she whispered to me in the darkness, “Keep it up, Mr. Mole Man.”
I improved on my times the next day, and the day after that.
On the fourth day, my maximum dipped from a minute-forty to a minute-thirty, but I bounced back two days later.
Ten days and I could hold my head in the sun for three minutes and thirty-three seconds.
Of course, there were consequences. There are always consequences for going against the natural order of things. By the end of thirty days, my skin had crisped up like a honeyed ham fresh from the oven and, every night when I went to bed, it felt like my stomach had been pulled out and was vigorously massaged by a strong pair of hands.
The maid brought me a bucket when I started throwing up.
“How much longer?” I asked, after draining the glass of ice water she had given me before bedtime.
“Little while longer,” she said, sounding almost sympathetic. “Will get easier.”
“If this is your way of getting back at me, I think you’ve made your point.”
She shrugged, taking the empty glass.
The worst part, worse than all the pain and nausea, was that the homeowner didn’t seem to notice. She saw the damage and smiled. She was convinced my body wasn’t deteriorating, but that I was building up a protective shell. I played along for three more days before I couldn’t stomach it anymore.
The highest I ever got was eight minutes, twenty-one seconds. That evening, I told the maid, “Forget about the catalogue, forget the books.” I tugged on my chain. It held fast, and so did the maid. “Just let me go. I’ve made her happy long enough. We’re even now.”
“What makes you think this about her happiness?” She tapped my snout with the key, and I recoiled in pain.
“One more day,” she said. “Tomorrow is big day. Tomorrow I give. Tomorrow you go.”
* * *
On the morning of the big day, I saw leggy shadows moving behind the basement curtains. These should have tipped me off, but it wasn’t until the maid came down and let in the light that I realized what was going on. I counted several dozen faces pressed up against the glass. Then the maid popped open the window, and I heard their hushed voices;
“What is it?” asked a little girl.
A boy, who might have been her brother, said, “Why does its skin look like that?”
A slightly older boy cut in, “Where’s it come from anyway?”
All three were hushed by a woman in a flowery orange dress.
“Sarah, Sammy, come stand by me,” she said. “Danny? You, too. Let’s go find your mom.”
There were similar scenes with similar parents and similar children all throughout the crowd. My homeowner’s neighbors, I realized.
“Come here, Mr. Mole Man, come here, my darling,” said the homeowner, sweeping in front of the gathered crowd and beckoning me forward. She looked back at her audience, who looked back at her with scrunched-up faces, as if they might be sick.
“Can you believe that when I first rescued him, he would shy away from the light? See how brave and strong he is now.”
I stood trembling on the threshold of where the sunlight fell on the basement’s carpeted floor. I supposed the worst of my features were hidden in the shadows.
“Why is it chained up?” the little girl, Sarah, asked.
“Is it dangerous?” asked the woman in the flowery orange dress, in a slightly lower register.
“Oh no,” the homeowner said. “No, no, no, not at all, no. Not my darling mole man.”
The maid urged me forward. “Let them see you,” she hissed. “Let them see.”
I did as she said. The homeowner cheered.
“Wonderful, wonderful,” she said. “A little closer now. Wonderful! See how strong he is.”
But where the homeowner saw my red, scaly skin and charbroiled paws as proof of her achievements, all this and more merely repulsed her neighbors. The children shrieked the loudest, when I stepped into the light. Fortunately, I didn’t need to remain in it for long before the children broke and fled from me as fast as possible, the woman in the sundress hot on their heels. In short order, everyone else followed suit, their pastels blurring into pandemonium on the sun-soaked lawn.
“No, come back!” The homeowner wailed, chasing after them. “Come back! Come back! He’s harmless! Come back!”
Later, after everyone was gone, never to return, the homeowner came back and sat outside the window. Looking down at me, her legs crossed in the grass, a shadow of recognition fell on her face, as if she were seeing me for the first time. But it might have just been a bit of cloud sliding in front of the sun. Regardless of whatever it might have been, when the shadow had passed, she got up and walked away, her splendid face heavy and forlorn, and I never saw her again.
Behind me, the maid cleared her throat. I spun around slowly, like a doll on a string.
“Now you go,” she said, pushing away the bookcase, unshackling me, and shooing me toward the tunnel. “And you don’t come back, no? No more of you?”
“No more of me,” I said. “I’ll warn others to stay away, too.”
* * *
So, I returned to the crossing, where the thirty roads met, and I filled in the tunnel and beat the dirt flat with my paws. When it was well compacted and I felt certain that no one would ever find it, I went and stood in the dead center of the crossroads. There, with my eyes closed, I spun in a circle until I was too dizzy to stand and, falling, landed flat on my back. I stayed like that until the dizzy feeling had passed, and for a long while after, as well. Then I got up and, selecting a path at random, I ventured off into darkness.
Copyright © 2025 by Dylan Haversack
