The Tar Baby

                     The Tar Baby appeared on a Tuesday. It came from the cabinet under the sink, and I have little idea what birthed it. The amorphous, black thing somehow still managed to resemble a baby crawling towards me in its general shape. I, admittedly surprised at finding a blob of tar where there was supposed to be hairball stain remover, jumped back in surprise. When the thing began to crawl towards me, I followed suit and crab walked away from the thing.

       That was when I noticed that it was leaving little spots of tar on the floor where it crawled. Those little spots were growing. I saw them gradually expanding, bulging upwards and spreading out to cover everything. Very quickly, the floor behind the Tar Baby, and the bottom half of the walls, were covered completely. My brother just had to walk in and step in that tar at that moment.

         I saw him scream as the tar spread up his leg, bubbling and slurping with joy and hunger, and covered his torso, his other leg, his arms, his hands, and finally his head. He tried to scream as it went into his mouth, down his throat, and pulled his lips shut. His eyes were the last to go, and I still remember the terror I saw in them before they disappeared. He stood there for a minute, and then the corpse of my brother began to walk towards me as well. 

            It walked with jerking, unnatural steps, like it couldn’t fully control its legs (and like it took effort to get its feet unstuck from the ground. It left more spots of tar on the ground, and they began to grow as well. It was at this moment that I first realized that the tar covered the sealing, and that the Tar Baby was almost touching me. I sprang to my feet and ran away. I got a match and threw it at the tar, hoping to burn it away, but this wasn’t what happened. The match was buried beneath the flames almost instantly, but the tar began to bubble and squirm and bulge, and it began to spread faster. 

      I ran from the house and shouted in the streets. “The Tar Baby is coming, the Tar Baby is coming. Run away!”

               The people who could hear me looked at me with a combination of concern and neglect, but when the tar burst from the windows and started to spread over the exterior of my house, people were more inclined to believe me. And when the Baby itself came out through my front door, it became impossible to deny my claim.

        People ran from the house and shouted the warning to everyone else.

     “It’s the Tar Baby, run for your lives!”

    People continued running, but behind us, I heard the Baby begin to wail in frustration. It was harrowing to hear, but even worse was what we saw. The Tar began to soak into the baby, and that amorphous mass began to grow much, much bigger. It was covering huge strides, caving rooftops and spreading the tar everywhere. The tar was spreading faster than ever, and it only got faster and faster with time. More and more people were enveloped and swallowed by it, and soon, I was one of them. The last thing I remember was the tar running down my throat, into my stomach and lungs, and through my veins. But, the tar soon covered my eyes, and without any air, it all faded away.