They were gone.

"And they were gone!" Amelia exclaimed loudly. "When I was returning from the shower, I swear they were still lying there, but when I turned my back on them, they disappeared!"

Lily didn't seem even remotely as surprised as Amelia was, nor Berry, who only felt bad for her, since she was known for her… absent mind. She probably put her clothes somewhere else and forgot about it, regardless…

"So you want us to help you find them? Why didn't you call us both, instead of just Berry?" Lily asked, as she crossed her arms, looking down at her towel-wearing-only friend.

"I thought you will be busy, since you wrote that you will speak with the teacher, so I thought we will find my clothes quickly and then go wait for you before you return, but now that you are here, perhaps you could also, you know, help…"

"Let's get to it." Lily sighted, put her backpack near the bench and started to look through the open lockers.

"Ah, I already looked through all of them, but I found nothing! Maybe you should look on top of the lockers, Lily, since you are the tallest of us?"

"And how could your clothes find themselves on top of the lockers?" Lily asked, but nonetheless locked the locker before her, and began to walk on her tiptoes, with her head tilted, looking at the top of all the lockers.

Amelia was looking around unmethodically - behind a dustbin, inside a locker, under a locker… Berry decided it's probably for the best to look under them. She put her backpack nearby Lily's and went down on her knees, before pulling her school's skirt slightly, making sure to not make the material dirty from the school's not so clean floor. It hurt a little, having a direct touch with the hard, stone floor with her bony knee, but she didn't mind doing it to help her friend.

Under the lockers was quite dark, though, and Berry could hardly say if there was *anything* here at all, besides dust. She took her phone out and turned on the flashlight, trying to see anything, but just as she turned the light into the black spot she saw… nothing changed. It was like the light being consumed by the darkness under the locker. It took Berry a couple of seconds to comprehend what was even happening, when suddenly…

"Ahhh!" she screamed, surprised, when the darkness jumped in her direction. She backed away, pushing herself out of its way, when… this darkness slithered away from her rapidly. It stopped in the middle of the room, as if to look around, and then went through under the doors in the direction of the gym.

"What happened?" Both Amelia and Lily reacted, but not fast enough to spot the escaping dark thing.

"There was something under the locker…" Berry said. "It went to the gym's direction, very quickly…"

"A dog?" Lily asked, but Berry wasn't certain. It didn't even look like an animal.

"Aaaah! It must've taken my clothes! I knew it! Give them back, bad dog!" Amelia sprinted out of the locker room, in just her towel, to the corridor leading to the gym class.

"Amelia!" Berry shouted, but it was too late. She and Lily stood in their place for a moment, dumbfounded by her friend's sudden action, before they realised what exactly she did.

"... Let's better help her." Lily said, as she left the locker room first. Berry followed shortly after. "Was it a dog?"

"I… I don't know. It was something very dark, I couldn't tell what it was…

"Oh, well. Let's just help her and get home. I'm tired of Amelia's shenanigans…

As they just entered the gym class, they saw Amelia running after that black thing Berry saw earlier. From so far away, they still weren't able to tell what exactly it was, but it seemed to be of a size of a small puppy. Amelia was rushing it so hard, she finally cornered it, and with no way for it to escape she surely will catch it now, and they could have a closer look at what it is exactly… except that, when they approached, the creature didn't seem to look like have a shape at all. It was more like walking oil - dark and watery.

"What the hell…" Lily commented, when they were just a couple of meters away from it.

"Give me back my clothes!" Amelia shouted and took a step forward the thing, which looked as if it was… boiling? Like hot water…

*GULP*

Suddenly it grew. Not just by a couple of centimetres, too. If it was a puppy before, now it was a size of a full-grown dog. An aggressive, big dog, because as soon as it grew, it jumped. Onto Amelia.

"AH!" she squirmed, before the black oozing thing covered her entire body. "Take it off! Take it off! Take it off!"

Lily sprinted in Amelia's way, and so did Berry after a while.

"Get off!" Lily's first reaction was to kick the thing. "Ah!" As it turned out, not the best idea, as now her leg was stuck. She tried to pull with one, strong motion, but it was absolutely impossible to pull it out, making her slip and fall on her butt to the gym's wooden floor. "I'm stuck! I can't pull out my leg!"

"It's so slimy I can't take it off!" Amelia joined Lily's screams, as she tried her best to push off the thing out of her, but to no veil. As soon as she touched the slime with her hands, they went inside it, and she was stuck. "Berry, run! Save yourself!"

"Get something to help us!" Lily said instead, as she still tried to pull off her leg. Berry stood dumbstruck, seeing both of her friends in such a weird situation. What was going on?

"I-I will get some help!" she said and turned away, running for the doors.

"Who should I get?! A teacher? Some boys, who will pull them out of there? Maybe I should call the police?" Berry's thoughts were filled with many different ideas, being in such a helpless situation. "What is that thing? Did it really steal Amelia's clothes? What will it do to them?" Suddenly, she stopped. What will it do to them? Should she really leave them? What if it… does something to them? It kind of looks like slime from those… stories… if it does something like that to them… no, she can't just leave them alone!... but what is she going to do? Throw something at it, or…