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He was an unsettling man to be around. He was fat and wore a large coat with too many pockets, and he had the poorly shaven and scuffed look of a man who didn't have a place to lay his head at night. This was only compounded by the massive pack he wore, which was stained and bleached from the sun. He smelled of cheap cologne and... was that the scent of pumpkin? His cocky grin revealed teeth that were oddly white and straight for the rest of his appearance. It was an altogether deeply unsettling aura, and Jessica found herself wondering just what exactly a man like this was doing at the Penrose Archives.
"Can I help you?" she asked politely.
"No," he said, toothy grin stil plastered across his face. "But I can help you."
She narrowed her eyes. "Pardon?"
"You gotta lil homunculus problem," he said. His voice was a meandering growl, akin to honey if it tasted like sandpaper.
"I'm sorry, sir, did you say homunculus?"
"Yeah. Homunculus." He leaned on the counter, his grin somehow widening.
Jessica began to wonder if the man might not have been all there. Drug abuse was common amongst the homeless, after all.
"See, a lil' birdie told me you was losing files. Pretty much errything 'bout that election back in 1896, yeah?"
She sighed. "Yes, that's right," she said. "The Archive seems to have misplaced most of the local files from that time period. Newspaper records especially."
"Yeah. Your papers got et."
"...et?"
"Et. Little bugger swallowed 'em down. Probably no way to get them files back now, but I can stop it from chowing down on any more."
"I'm sorry, sir, I'm afraid I have no idea what-" Halfway through her sentence, he seemed bored and brushed straight past her, heading down the hallways. "Sir!" She stood and followed him. "Sir, we need your name for our records before you can enter the Archive-"
"Don't got no name," he said. "Ol' Pappy Homunculus wiped it from the permanent record years back. Damn shame. But you can call me Sammy, if only cause I wantcha to quit calling me sir."
None of those words made any sense. "Sir-"
"Dinnit I just tell you to call me Sammy? Kids these days," he said, shaking his head as he continued weaving his way through the hallways with impossible purpose.
"Sammy," she said, "I don't know what you think is going on, but I can assure you that whatever issues we have going on in the Archive are our business. If you would kindly leave us be-"
"Shh!" He said suddenly, holding up his finger and coming to a halt in the middle of a room. Jessica stopped talking more out of shock than actually trusting his directions, and he smiled. "Lil missy's around here somewhere."
Without further adieu, he started carefully walking down the rows, rapping on each filing cabinet quickly with his knuckles as he passed it.
"Sir, if you don't calm down immediately, I will have no choice but to call security-"
She was interrupted by some sort of horrid, gurgling squeak from within a cabinet that Sammy had just tapped against. The very sound of it was enough to nauseate her. Sammy, for his part, seemed overjoyed.
"Cmere," he said. "You wanna see the sonnabitch?"
She stepped closer. The unease she'd felt at sharing space with Sammy only compounded the mounting sense of trepidation, but she needed to find out what had made that horrid noise.
Sammy pulled the filing cabinet open a crack, retrieving a penlight from one of his many coat pockets and shining it inside. "Take a look," he said.
Jessica peered down into the cabinet and immediately recoiled, shocked at what she'd seen. The thing inside was about the size of a grapefruit. It scurried about on a green, mucusy, froglike lower body, but its eyeless head was wide and flat, no visible features of any kind except for the wide jaw, which pointed straight up. It reminded her somewhat of an antlion, if an antlion's mouthparts were filled with warty tongues instead of pincers. It had long, spindly arms, jointed in too many places, which it was using to drag scraps of paper in front of it, hiding away from their gaze.
"What is that?" Jessica demanded. She felt sick.
"I told ya, it's a homunculus. Alexandroblivion, specifically. Crops up a lot in libraries an' archives an' whathaveyanot. Eats history."
"What is a homunculus?"
"Annoying lil' beasties made out o' fears an' insecurities an' doubts an' pet peeves an' shit. They get their rocks off being nuisances. I hunt 'em down."
"And kill them?" she asked. Was she dreaming or something?
"In a sense," he said. "No such thing as a dead homunculus, just a dispelled one. Constant uphill battle. Sisyphean, one might say. But the best way to make sure they ain't coming back too soon is to hit the fouders with their own fears."
Fouders? Is he just making slang up now?
Sammy took out a digital camera and snapped a picture of the thing inside the cabinet. "Alexandroblivion's afraid of being remembered. So whenever one crops up I make sure to get a picture and put it somewhere it'll stay around. " He sighed. "I'm gonna run out of new places at some point, but there's still plenty of archival projects left in the world. Anyhoodlie-doodlie-doo, that's neither here nor there!" He slammed the file cabinet shut and walked away.
Jessica called after him. "What about the homunculus?!"
"It'll be gone in a few days!" He called back cheerily as he left her vision.
Stunned, she stood there, mouth agape, as he left the building. From inside the filing cabinet, the homunculus made a chittering little burble.