#nwphd

"Dan, you coming fer drinks after work?"

Wade walked by Danny's cubicle holding a stack of copies fresh from the printer, still covered in printer slime.

"No. Watch where you're swinging those papers, Wade. I'd rather not have to clarify that I wasn't having personal relations with the thing in the printer."

"God, alright Dan, you're such a downer, man. No drinks, no printer. So uptight. I don't know how the newbie stands you."

Wade walked past some more desks, aloofly talking with the rest of his coworkers moving passively towards the door. Unfortunately, Jake happened to be walking into the office, as Wade rounded the corner to leave through the same door, and they slammed into each other like 2 love interests in a cheesy high school rom-com. Twice as unfortunate was the state of both of their clothes, now stained a bright pink from the printer slime.

"Aw Christ, I just got this shirt dry-cleaned! You gotta watch where you're walkin' Henrece or you're gonna end up with way more paper than you can handle up your ass— like someone I know." Wade shot Danny a sour glace whilst scrambling around, picking up his stack of dropped papers.

Jake wiped his shirt with his hands, ultimately pushing the printer slime even further into his clothes. "Surely this stuff can't be sanitary," he said, walking up to Danny's desk, "what the hell is wrong with our printer anyways? Why's it coat our copies in goop?"

"It's not 'goop,' it's slime," said Danny, only slightly more condescending than normal, "our printer isn't a printer, per se, but a 'copier.' Everyone's got a different name for it, doppelganger, mimic, a- nope, that's all the names for it. We feed it the paper, and it molds itself into the stack of copies we need based on whatever we feed it, and then that detaches from it's corporeal form, and comes out as our copies."

"Why exactly on God's green earth can't we just use a regular printer?"

"Printers put tiny dots on the paper to track the exact time, date, and model of printer. We can't be having that."

"Ok, I'm sort of understanding, but why does the printer just look like a printer then?"

"Confinement and convienience. Can't be having that thing running around willy-nilly without supervision, but unfortunately that doesn't mean that no one lets it out, looking at you Trevor! Also, I'd rather shove paper into a box that I can perceive as soulless instead of thinking about feeding a creature."

"Have you ever touched it?"

"No, but I can point you in the direction of someone who has," growled Danny, voice full of disappointment.

"I'm gonna go touch it."

"Jake, don't touch the—" Danny's voice trailed off as Jake walked past Danny's desk. Again. There were two of them.

"Don't touch the what?" inquired Jake, backpedalling to join Danny's conversation. Upon taking more than a glance at the man Danny was conversing with, Jake was met with a mirror image. An exact copy of himself. He turned back to Danny, hoping, praying that he'd have an explaination.

"So, uh, Danny. Dan. Dan the man. Daniel-Fo-Faniel. Who's uh- who's your friend here?" Jake asked with lots of hands.

"Well, I-"

"Is it a siren? Did you bring a- oh my god, Danny I'm so flattered but-"

"It's not a- it's n- it... No," Danny sighed, "it's not a siren. They can't survive without water."

"So then...?" Jake questioned.

"You touched the copier. It's a copy," Danny said making his disappointment and tiredness apparent, "of you. Which coincidentally, was exactly what I was explaining to it." He said, leading back in his chair after gesturing towards the Jake he'd struck up conversation with. Danny noticed that it's previously very large pink-stain on it's shirt had dissapeared, and wasn't sure when.

The accused copy spoke up, "Hey why can't he be the copy and me be the original?"

"Yeah, what the heck dude, I can be a copy!" Said the second, or perhaps first?

"Okay then," Danny exasperatedly half-apologised, "so then which of you is the copy?"

Both Jakes pointed at each other in unison.

"Fuck me..." Danny sighed into his hands, "Well then do either of you remember what we did yesterday?"

Both Jakes responded at the same time, in the same tone of voice, as if they were handed a script and auditioning for a film, they circled eachother as they talked, ultimately leading to Danny losing track of which was which.

They, in unison, said, "Well, we mostly did actual work around the office because you turned down a haunted mansion job because you said it would end up being 'too much paperwork' which doesn't make sense because we take jobs like that all the time like when you had me go to the eldritch coffee shop and pick up everyone's orders because I'm the most mentally stable person in the office and if anyone else went in they'd lose their minds trying to comprehend the horrors, which seemed like exaggeration because I went in and it looked, smelled, and felt like a normal coffee shop but maybe thats just a feat to be credited to my amazingly compotent brain. Anyways it was just paperwork yesterday."

Trevor and his pals hanging around the water cooler snickered, finally hearing Jake's side of that story.

Danny saw he was getting nowhere with these two, and something inside of him snapped. He was tired, sure, but he'd rather write up more paperwork for the incident he was going to cause than try to dentagle the duplicate debacle in front of him. Danny angrily marched out of his cubicle and down to the large pillar in the center of the room with a big red phone. The office fell quiet as everyone working looked on in awe.

Danny was going to call Them.

The red phone rang, and as if someone had tripped the fire alarm, the entire room rang in response. After 4 rings, I picked up the phone, like right now, gimme a sec I gotta take this, ahem.

Danny! My man, how've you been, dude?

"You know how I've been, dude, you're God, and I am not in the mood. Which one is real?"

I don't have any i-diddly-dea what'chure talkin' about man.

"You know exactly what I mean, I know what you do up there, man. I don't wanna be one of your stories, which one is Jake."

Danny pulled a-

"Daniel. When you're talking about me, it's Daniel."

Daniel had clearly had enough of this 'Them' person, and was audibly getting angrier. Anyways so he pulled out his gun and pointed it at the two Jakes and screamed,

"Shut your fucking mouth and tell me which one of them is my partner goddamnit!!"

Alright alright, fine, the one you wanna shoot is on your left.

Daniel slammed the- oh shit he hung up sick I can call him Danny again, so Danny slammed the red landline onto it's reciever as he squeezed his service weapon's trigger, firing a bullet into the head of Jake. Jake staggered back, shaking, praying to some force that he might survive. No answer came. Jake fell to the ground, and melted into a pink slime that Danny would most likely be made to clean up later. The red phone rang again. This time, as one might expect a normal phone to ring. A recieving call. Danny- ahem Daniel picked up the-

"What do you want."

It's for Jake Henrece.

Danny angrily shoved the corded red landline into Jakes chest, grumpily retreating to the janitor's closet to retrieve a mop.

"H- Hello? God?"

Hey, Jake, that coffee shop was not 'eldritch'. It was a regular coffee shop; they made you get everyone's normal order at a normal coffee shop. Just thought you should know.

"Oh, uh... thanks... god?"

No prob.

Jake heard the dialtone, then very camly put the landline to God back onto the pillar in the middle of the New Wallachia Paranormal Hunters Department.

Danny and Jake strolled under the overcast sky by the harbor. Both wore large brown trenchcoats to keep warm in the sad weather. Danny was telling Jake about the history of the town, "New Wallachia was, and still is mind you, an odd place. It's some 300 years old, founded by some Romanian immigrants in the early 1700s, but only until recently, the population seemed to consist of about 100 or so people. Then, while back Devon Grey, y'know, big wig of the Grey Company, so he moves here, and now this place is the fuckin' center of urban development. He builds a big ass tower right in the middle of the town."

Danny brought a small pause to his ranting to point out the tallest skyscraper in the near skyline. The building itself is quite bland, and its color fits its moniker, The Grey Building. The brutalist love letter almost blends in with clouds that grey the sky itself. The skyline it inhabits isn't yet complete, scattered with unfinished buildings whose girders are still exposed.

Danny resumed. "Anyways so then he starts funding the urbanization of this fuckin' drab drop in the middle of- oh for Christ's sake are you fuckin' liste-" Danny turned around to find a distinct lack of Jake.

Jake had wandered off after Danny mentioned Romanians, feeling staring into the wavering grey waters would bring him more joy than listening to another word out of his partner's mouth. As he skipped off the trodden path and into the rocks between the ocean and the concrete, he heard a sweet song, some simple melody that he'd heard a thousand times before and yet caressed his ears brand new. It was accompanied by the calm plucking of a guitar.

Jake looked out into the water to determine the origin of the sound and saw about 10 feet into the water, which seemed quite shallow. A man sat on a folding chair, plucking his thin, slender fingers upon the strings of his acoustic guitar. Danny hadn't noticed him before and wanted to ask a couple of questions. The man's song and visage grew clearer as Jake approached. He looked about 6'5" and was muscular enough to visibly fill out his top. The man wore a flannel with no under shirt, the top 3 buttons undone, revealing the man's clavacle and a bit of chest hair. His pleather pants clung quite well to his form, excentuating his defined legs. His chin was perfectly cut, dabbled with sparse stubble. His voice was like melted butter upon a decadent desert, soothing and sweet. The man stopped singing as Jake got within an arms length of the man.

Jake began, "Hi sir, I'm Jake with the New Wallach-" He was, in his personal feelings quite rudely, interrupted by a gunshot. Jake whipped around to see a frenzied Danny, his handgun drawn pointed at the two men in the water. He turned back to the musician but did not find him there. In his place stood some awful urchin-like creature. Its upper half was covered in a dense layer of black spines. Its bottom half resembled worms being pulled out of the ground, although these were clearly a sort of tentacle or appendage. Jake looked down into the sand he stood upon to find the same worm-like appendages lay slack around his shoes. He spent some time kicking them off and walked back to shore.

"The one time," Danny started, "the singular time I decide to take my eyes off you for half a second and you almost get fucking got by a siren."

Jake tried to reason with Danny. "Bu- but!! Sirens aren't just guys in water!" Danny gave a little smirk and a raised eyebrow, which went un noticed by Jake for some time. Jake, oblivious to Danny's face continued. "Sirens are the ladies that promise you sweet and endless tomorrows and unrealistic body standards. Not guys in-"

"In what, tank-tops and short shorts?"

"No, what? Unbuttoned flannels and pleather."

"Pleather? C'mon man, get some class."

"What? What d- whats with that face, Danny. What does that face mean?"

"Sirens psychically link with a victim and then manifest in whatever way they think will get someone to walk close enough to them, and potentially touch them. Those spines you saw paralyze you, and then it drags you below ground with its little tentacles and eats you there. Essentially, it mimics someone exactly your type to try and get you to touch it. You fell for it hook, line, and sinker."

Jakes face was bright red, and only partially because he'd been out-mythos'ed.

"Your punishment for almost losing your life and making me have to do paperwork is that I get to tell you about the architectural flaws of the Grey Building."