Malignant

At first, we thought the black liquid was oil, that we’d struck it rich and that we’d be able to retire and live in leisure. We actually started writing down all the ways in which we’d spend the money.

Our first choice was to pay off the house. Or that was my choice. Clara wanted to buy a shiny Lamborghini that we could drive up her parents’ driveway on Thanksgiving Day. That would shut their mouths next time they criticized the dust clinging to our clothes.

I had to admit, that did sound more fun than paying off debts. We could do both, I reasoned. Pretty soon, we would be rolling in more money than we knew what to do with.

Two days later, that black liquid—a canvas of oily rainbows under the sun—began to move. All on its own. It oozed toward our front door, covering the brittle scrub grass and the sunbaked earth. Clara and I gathered as much sawdust as we could get our hands on and used it to build a wall around our door, but the sawdust didn’t absorb any of the oil. We watched the liquid roll over the dusty piles.

The only other thing we owned that had any powers of absorption were towels. We grabbed every towel in the house and attempted to soak up the oil. None of our efforts slowed the attack on our house.

Helpless, we watched the oil, gleaming under the sun, crawl over our windows. I ran upstairs to check the little round window in the attic, but the oil had covered that one too. Rushing back downstairs, I found Clara checking her phone only to discover that she no longer had cell service. Our wifi was out as well. We looked at each other, but neither of us said a word.

There would be no sudden fortune raining down on our heads, changing our lives for the better. We were entombed inside our little country house.