Prisoner of the Molepeople

For My Wife
AKA Ann.
Remember that time you were kidnapped by molepeople?
That was fun.

Chapter 1 - Mountain Men

“Thank the undergods, you're still here.”

Expecting to see a creepy man, I turned to the source of the voice.

He was creepy, but he wasn't a man. He was dark and hairy. Furry was probably a better word for it. And I swear he couldn’t have been more than three feet tall. Maybe four. It was hard to say, because he was halfway underground. His little chest was heaving as he caught his breath, saying, “I bring a message from another world.”

I had no reply.

“By the way, you have a lovely singing voice,” he … it … said, wiping a sweaty brow with its long claws.

That was when I screamed and took off, sprinting to the top of the dusty hill. I should have never come. I should have listened to my mother’s warnings about mountain men (in my case, mountain things) who prey on teenage girls. But there was nowhere to hide on the lonely mountainside. The trees were too short, the bushes too sparse. And though, in the valley below, the entire city of Orem filled my view, there was no one in sight to hear my scream. No one but the thing.

The clumsy dirt gave way beneath each step, covering my tennis shoes and seeping into my socks. I darted through thrashing bushes and whipping grass, and finally through the metal bars that marked the entrance to the parking lot. My car wasn’t hard to find. It was the only one there. Not daring to look behind me, I fumbled through my pockets for the keys.

Next thing I knew, I was sitting on soft pleather, the slam of the door fresh in my ears. My left index finger was smashed against the lock button while my right hand clutched the key in the ignition. The sudden silence amplified the throbbing in my ears. It was only then when I thought:

What the heck?

My gaze turning back to the mountainside, I ever-so-slightly loosened my grip of the key. I expected to see a dark figure running toward me with a cleaver, but there was nothing but still bushes. I waited for a whole minute. And then another. Should I have played it safe and driven off?

If only.

The image of the strange creature was burned into my mind, its snouty face reminding me of an animal I’d seen in my biology textbook … something like a mole. Yet it had spoken to me. It thought I had a lovely singing voice. And I had run away … why? It hadn’t looked particularly threatening, even to an unaccompanied teenage girl. But what did it want with me? Something about a message from another world?

Is this what I think it is?

I’d been studying Henry David Thoreau in school. If you don’t know, he was a philosopher who was big on finding enlightenment in nature. He called it transcending. For my class project, we had to do something Thoreau-ish, which was why I was in Cedar Hills state park, finding inspiration in the clouds, talking to trees. Though I'd never done anything so weird, I'd kind of gotten into it. I'd taken in the fragrant sage, the intricate leaves, the dancing shadows, and my soul had been elevated above the urban wasteland in the valley below. I'd even felt the urge to sing, and the sensation had carried me away until I'd been one with nature, losing track of the time.

In short, I had transcended. Which would explain why an animal-man was talking to me.

On top of this delightful revelation came a thought. A troubling thought. And I would explain that thought, but it’s occurring to me that I can’t do so without mentioning my boyfriend. At least I called him my boyfriend. We’d never formally determined our relationship or kissed, but then, we were only sixteen, and we probably shouldn't have been kissing anyway. Besides, in Orem, Utah, holding hands is equivalent to going steady. But that’s not important right now.