"He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have."

- Socrates

The Mother looked almost on the verge of laughter, with a grin the stretched across her face like the painted smile of a clown. “Stop The Father?” she replied, a faint chuckle behind the words. “The Father cannot be stopped. The Father is going to tear into your world and there's nothing you can do but watch it happen.”

Tim twiddled his thumb at the side, feeling the clamminess of his palm as he carefully waded through the verbal battle. He looked at the piece of paper provided, the sentences reading as gibberish to him. Even though he could make out the letters as that of the alphabets, he could not form them into words for his mind, as if he had sudden dyslexia, or his brain had sprung a leak. “If that's the case, then I'm not signing your contract. You obviously cannot provide everything, so there's no guarantee you can provide me anything.”

“There are other ways to make you sign.”

“But don't you think it would be easier to just talk me into it?”

“Dead men don't usually ask much questions.”

“I'm not dead yet.”

She screamed, “You're about to be!” her voice echoed sharply through the room, piercing his ears with its sudden shrillness. Her anger however, quickly subsided and she stated, “You can close the portal after it has been opened. If, you have the right ingredients.”

“And what would those ingredients be?” he pushed carefully, not wanting to step too far into The Mother's comfort zone. He needed to make sure she was answering her question, but at her own will so she would feel in control and he could continue the conversation instead of moving on to some form of torture. “Of course, you can choose not to answer, but that will just make me doubt you more.”

She scanned him, eyes lolling up and down his body, measuring his stature. “You're small in size, but that just mask your cunning. You'd make a great businessman.”

As casual as talking with a friend, Tim replied, “I was thinking more along the line of detective or police officer.”

“What's the difference?” she asked without batting an eye. Leaning further back into her seat, she answered, “To close the portal, you'll need someone who's able to manipulate this.”

Putting a finger into the air, she drew a line horizontally across his vision. Her fingers elegantly slashed through the air, leaving a trail of blue mist in its wake. Her eyes wandered across the floating tracks with a lustful glint, licking her cherry lips in anticipation.

Without waiting, Tim asked, “What's that?” to which The Mother immediately jumped forward in her seat and hissed back, her eyes flashed bright red, with anger or annoyance he was unsure.

The creature took a deep breath, the luminescence in her eyes slowly dissipated as the cloud before her vanished back into the thick of the air. With calming inhales, she sat back into her chair for the third time.

She continued, “Prana. Mana. Mist. Aether. Seither. Dark Matter. Many names for it across many worlds. And every universe has a certain amount of it, which is how we are all connected here,” she waved her arms outwards, gesturing towards the universe they reside in. “Dream world. Peninsula. Forth dimension. Whatever you call it, the source of the matter that you see before originates here, leaking into all the multiverse. The weave that ties realities. So long as you exist here, you are made entirely of it.”

“How do I control it?”

“You can't. Your time doesn't have the technology, nor has your species evolved to the point as to be able to manipulate it.”

“If that's the case, you can't help me. And it just proves that you are not all powerful.”

She leaned forward and with one slender arm, slipped the paper contract further towards him. “I can give you the power to manipulate the Mist. All you need to do is sign.”

“But that's not enough any more.”

“And why not?” he could see wrinkles crunch her forehead, her hair grew impossibly more crimson than it was a second ago. Her iris seemed to slit themselves, almost cat-like as her annoyance with his dragging grew. “What more do you need?”

Keeping his best stoic face, he replied, “There's nothing more I need from you.”

She growled, “I can tell you how to kill The Father.”

“I already know how to kill him,” he replied. “Besides, why would you tell me?”

“Because I know you can't succeed. And that once you see the futility of your effort, you will be begging for my power,” he watched as her eyes darted around in thought. Almost as if different visual stimulus could give her clarity. Before long, with less of a growl than earlier, she continued, “You already know you need his real name to bring him back to your world. You also know that to counteract his powers, you need surpass his control over your emotions.”

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His heart beat with anticipation, but he kept his excitement hidden with cool indifference. “And?”

“But he won't be able to die permanently. Someone must be willing to take his place. Otherwise, our...boss would just put him back to serve out the rest of his...contract. If you kill him in your world, it would take a much longer time because of the disconnect between dimensions, but Father would eventually return.”

“So...” his mind began piecing together the new information. “Someone has to die and replace The Father after he is killed in the real world?”

“Exactly,” she replied with the same faux smile. “Someone willing to suffer through a hundred fifth dimensional years in his place. Someone like you...” again, she inched the contract ever closer.

Lost in thought however, he did not notice the gesture, nor that he had muttered, “So I can't save Sister either.”

“No, you can't,” The Mother replied, to his initial surprise. “Not without someone taking her place,” he thought of a reply but was cut off by, “But your friend already knew that.”

He felt the wind knocked out of him as if a car had decided to use him as as road. “What...did you say?”

Realizing she had hit a spot, The Mother's grin grew wider. “The girl with the pretty blonde hair. She was like you, asking all these questions.”

“Not possible,” he denied outright. “She's not your target. And she can't jump dreams.”

“We don't choose our targets. Our targets chooses us. Depending on their personalities. The closer they are to our requirements, the easier it is for us to bridge the gaps between our minds, and yours. A short laps in judgement, maybe a traumatic event for one moment, that's all it takes,” for the first time, she stood from her seat and circled around her chair. Leaning into the spine of it, she said, “Sign the contract,” and finally, a pen materialized on the desk, signifying the end of their discussion.

Tim stood to his feet, fist balled as a sense of urgency overwhelmed him. “I know how your power works. It's so cliché Miss Businesswoman,” he circled his own seat, increasing the gap between him and his opponent. “Father kills with physical harm, Sister with a kiss. The Grandmother with food. You, for some reason, do it with a contract. I sign it with the promise of having anything I want, but you never specify where, how, or if I will get it. That's where you do your job, and move me to the next world. Classic movie premise really.”

He looked down at the contract and the words started to make sense. The first word he saw being 'death'. Gripping the spine of his chair tightly, flexing his muscles, Tim readied himself.

“Clever boy,” she hissed. “But you're not getting away. I will, have your soul.”

Her nails grew to the length of daggers. And with them, she swiped viscously at him. With all his strength, he pulled the chair up as a shield, the claws slashing into the cushion of the back rest, the force of the attack pushed him a step back.

Crossing his legs, he pivoted on the spot, spinning the chair with all the strength he could muster, the muscles in his entire left arm strain from the weight. Despite that, and with a desperate heave, he managed to fling the chair towards the window, falling over his own feet just as The Mother slashed overhead with another attack, leaving her mark in the wall behind.

The chair crashed through the glass pane, and fell off into the abyss below the building.

Tim scrambled to his feet, desperately charging towards the opening he had made. Behind him, The Mother let out an inhumane screech, his eardrums nearly popping from the shear pitch. He could not tell if the scream was getting louder or if she was closing in on him. He made no effort to turn back to satisfy that curiosity.

At the edge of the floor, between the window pane and a plummet to his death, he jumped without hesitation into the open sky, the claw-nails just scratching away an inch of his pants leg before he began his drop down the impossibly tall building.

Through the cloud and out into the lower atmosphere, he saw that the office building was the sole structure within a large, barren dessert. Seconds counted down the drawn-out fall, long enough for him to reflect on The Mother's words, including Stella's knowledge about the conditions to kill the dream creatures. On top of that, she had continued to search for Sister's real name despite that knowledge, and had not told him of the conditions. Which could only mean one thing.

Stella intends to take Sister's place, he thought. He smashed face first into the sand below.