The Last Mole Man

J.B. Malory

      Ten-year-old Ely watched in shock as his mother excused herself to use the restroom, leaving him with the dermatologist, a hairy man in his 50s who did not have a single visible mole. Alone, the doctor pointed to a cluster of moles on Ely’s arm. Unlike the single mole on his cheek, this cluster posed a threat: moles, particularly these types of moles, were vulnerable to the sun’s unforgiving rays. The boy was at risk.

      The doctor’s scrupulous eyes flashed behind his glasses. “Fair skin burns easily.”

      At home later that evening, Ely stripped and inspected himself before the bathroom mirror. The dark spots on his chest and shoulders, previously unremarkable, appeared as malevolent holes excreting some inner sickness. What toxins were inside him, and why were they trying to get out? What had he done that he shouldn’t have?

      The moles seemed to multiply before his eyes. Was that one on his shoulder new? What about the fleshy burr tucked in the crease of his upper thigh? He didn’t remember seeing it before, but now it pulsed with foreboding, as if it were the tip of some horrible, expanding mass.

       Ely looked away to collect his bearings. “They were always there,” he muttered.

       As he repeated the mantra, his eyes returned to the mirror and the terrible thing he could no longer deny: the conspicuous mole just under his left eye. It was the most egregious one on his body. A round, mahogany mound, it jutted from the skin at the juncture of two black veins. It was this mole that had brought him to the dermatologist after months of pleading with his mother to make an appointment. His father had been disgusted; his son’s lack of talent on the soccer field was a much bigger cause for alarm than some birthmark. Did the boy think he was Cary Grant? His father scoffed.

      “Stop that, Paul. He doesn’t know what you’re talking about. You’re just going to frighten him,” his mother had said, but her intervention had only made things worse for Ely, who lowered his eyes under his father’s glare and watched the big man’s steel-toed boots stomp out the door.

      A part of Ely had hoped that the mole on his cheek would prove dangerous and that the dermatologist would have a medical reason to remove it. The mole had become a great source of anguish at school, where it set him apart from his classmates and their unblemished flesh. He was a slow moving target. Mole Man! He even tried covering up the mole with make up, which only gave his bullies more fodder for their torture techniques. He was branded, there was no escape. Each day, his home room teacher’s eyes inevitably drifted toward the mole, and the teacher, infected with morbid curiosity, would call on him again and again, forcing Ely to stand before the class for examination.

      Now his last hope had abandoned him. The dermatologist, rather than prescribe some solution, had dismissed the idea of removing the mole as preposterous, claiming the scar would be much worse than any birthmark. He had thrown Ely back to the wolves, but with a warning: Be careful, or else.

      Be careful, son. Wear sunscreen at all times, cover up, wear a hat, stay inside, keep the lights low, or maybe no light at all, wear ski masks and turtlenecks outside, especially in summer, and if new moles appear, as they invariably will, remember: I warned you.

      Ely gazed at the stricken figure in the mirror. He saw himself in five years, ten years, twenty years. In time, his body will be utterly transformed by the moles, his entire exterior scabbed over as the moles bubble up from the inside, every surface overgrown with brown, black and pink scars. Hundreds, thousands of them, round, oblong, asymmetrical; flat, bulbous and tumescent. He would be ostracized. Isolated, he would grow bitter and angry, until the whole world became his enemy. He would hide himself away, his only chance at salvation would also be his undoing as he descended into madness. At his father’s insistence, Ely would return to school a pariah. His mother, exhausted and disillusioned, would no longer have the energy to protect him. Weak and pallid from light-less living, he would slowly withdraw from society, only dragged from his dungeon once a week to degrade himself on the soccer field before his disappointed father.

      Ely leaned in closer to the mirror to inspect his stigmata. How had this all begun?

      Both his parents were clean, the sickness of the moles could not be blamed on the gene pool. It was Ely who had somehow brought this on himself.

      Unless it was a seed planted as a joke by some cruel master, bestowed on him as punishment. From one, many would grow. Like dandelion seeds on the wind, the moles would sow themselves over the cemetery of his humanity.

      No one would look at him again except to stare in pity, and strangers would sneak photographs of him to show their friends. I was standing right next to him, can you believe it? His only employment would be deep underground in some hidden role. It would be a long and lonely life. His father and mother would refuse contact with him, and he would be unable even to attend their funerals. His own funeral would have a closed casket.

      In the mirror, Ely’s life came into focus.

      His hand held his father’s razor. It glinted before his face.

      Doctor’s don’t know everything. Didn’t his father say that?

      He put a towel in his mouth and bit down.

THE END