"Hey hey, champ. How are you?"
"Murmuhrmerm!"
"OK, then. You just sit tight, pal. It'll all BEE over in a second!"
He let out a fatherly chuckle as the swarm of yellow jackets, a species of wasp, approached. As they started their attack, I thought about how my life. All those years of being a failing, 27 year old magician living with my parents had begun to feel like a waste. I never could master the craft like they had. They seemed to do even the most complex of tricks with unequivocally ease. It was almost as if they sold their souls for such talent, but that would be ridiculous! Who would give up something they cared so much about for some lousy slight-of-hand? No one! No one... of course! They hadn't given their own lives, they gave mine! It all made sense, like the tale of the woman who could weave gold! She promised her first born son to... Uh, what was his name? Ronald Stickson? Didn't matter. What did was that the yellow jackets had bored their way into my belly.
Right as I felt them break through, they all dissipated into an eerie black smoke. I looked down at the hole they had left, but my skin was untouched. There was blood on the ground and my shirt was torn to shreds, I had felt their stingers tearing open my abdomen, but there was nothing. "That's impossible!" I thought, bearing no mind to the fact that wasps don't usually evaporate. "Wait, wasps don't usually evaporate!" I exclaimed, slowly catching up. "What's going on?" A question, in hindsight, I should have asked earlier.
"Your father, he promised your life to otherworldly beings." my mother stated in what seemed like a redundant way.
"Mom, what are you doing here!?"
"This is our house."
I looked around, realizing the chamber of death my father had trapped me in was merely our living room with fake cobwebs and black construction paper bats dotted around. As I got up to meet my mother, I realized I was no longer taped to the couch, but able to get up and meet my mother.
"My mouth isn't taped anymore." I said, proving my point.
"Yes, I took care of it."
"How did you do that?"
"The same way your father taped it originally, magic."
"Magic's not real." I said, disregarding literally everything that'd happened so far.
"Don't be so dense." said the fat cow.
"Ok so, wait, Dad got his magic from sacrificing my life to... space wasps?"
"The yellow jackets are merely a means of killing you, the being that granted him his abilities was from another universe, one parallel to our own." My mother always had a way of butchering commonly used phrases to make herself sound more intelligent. "It harbors great power, however, it comes from a primarily capitalist society whose main currency is human souls. He traded your soul to it for a portion of its power."
While this seemed like a thin and poorly made explination, I took it because my mother would never lie to me for personal gain. It just wasn't in her character.
"So, you got powers from the demon, too?"
"That's actually why I'm here." she said as she put her hand on my back and led me out our house's front door. "Our powers have affected us very differently. Your father has become much more light-hearted and erratic, while I've become more calm and calculated." She wouldn't use the word cold, no, because that would be negative and Lord knows she's the perfect little sunflower. "As such, logic would dictate that the source of our powers must be different." As she spoke, I came to the realization that we were no longer in our neighborhood, but a thick forest shrouded in water vapor. "It's called 'fog'." she said, seemingly reading my mind. "I am reading your mind." she said in the same condescending manner I'd grown accustomed to over the years.