The Gift: A TAWOG Story

Chapter 1: The Beginning

There was black everywhere. A black void, but not like the one in "The Void." This was pitch-blackness all around. Resembling the void that Eleven enters in Stranger Things, this void is also dead silent, sounds only made by those who occupy it.

Inside this void stood a little blue cat. A tween, he wore a tan sweater, jeans, and brown cuffs around his wrists. His name was Gumball Watterson, and he looked all around the lone desolate void he stood in, wondering what anything was or if he belonged there. The only sounds he heard were his breathing, breaths made from the panic and anxiety he felt within, as well as the shuffle of his feet.

Gumball kept walking until he saw a figure mysteriously appear in the distance. This figure revealed itself to be another cat whose fur was the same shade of blue as Gumball's. A girl cat, she was tall and wore a white collared shirt and gray skirt that made up a work outfit. Gumball immediately recognized her as his mother, Nicole. She was down on her knees and had her back turned to her son.

"Mom?" Gumball called from the distance, hearing his plea for attention echo all around him in the darkness. He called out again. "Mom?!"

"Yes?" replied Nicole, not turning her head around to acknowledge her son. "What is it, Gumball?" Her voice echoed all around the void as well.

"I need to ask you a question," Gumball began, feeling a sort of compulsiveness within himself to stick to a sort of script that his mind had given him. His insides felt loose as he tried to overcome the lump in his throat from nervousness. Fear had struck the blue cat as he tried to form his words to continue.

"What is your question, Gumball?" Nicole replied once more, still not turning around to her son. Gumball nevertheless never felt so scared talking to the back of her head. After a few moments of extreme hesitation, he finally whipped up a tiny bit of courage to form his words together.

"What made you who you are, Mom?" He asked. "Why are you so... evil?"

"Oh, Gumball," Nicole replied. "How many times do I have to tell you, sweetie, that... IS CLASSIFIED!!!!" The last two words were amplified in a deep monstrous like husky voice that wasn't Nicole's. She finally turned around fast before she said the last two words of her sentence to reveal her eyes glowing yellow and her teeth elongated and sharp.

Gumball shrieked. He quickly fled in the opposite direction of his mother, only to be immediately stopped by a gargantuan wall of fire. A huge ring of fire formed, trapping Gumball inside with his demonic mother. Gumball panicked and dropped down to the floor, covering his head and burying his face in his knees, practically paralyzed with fear. Nicole approached him.

"Remember my meaning of life, Gumball!! CRUSH YOUR ENEMIES!!! SEE THEM QUIVER BEFORE YOU, AND HEAR THE LAMENTATION OF YOUR WHIIIIMMMM!!!!!"

Gumball shrieked so loud he woke himself up. He also woke Darwin up by causing him to jump out of his bowl and out the window!

"Don't hurt me, Mom!!!" He cried. He was drenched in sweat from the nightmare he just had, and felt a huge gust of relief when he looked around his bedroom, reassuring himself he was in the real but abnormal yet amazing world.

"Mrs. Mom would never hurt you," Darwin replied. Gumball did not recognize who it was at first.

"W-wha? Who said that?"

"Gee, I don't know," said Darwin. Gumball noticed two fins hanging onto the windowsill for dear life. "Maybe its the goldfish hanging out of the window!!!" Gumball got up and approached the window across his room.

"Wait, Darwin? Is that you?" He looked over to see his adopted goldfish brother continue to hang on, swinging his legs back and forth.

"No, it's the Tooth Fairy! But I forgot my dollar!" Darwin said sarcastically. "Now pull me in!" Gumball reached out over the windowsill and grabbed one of Darwin's fins, hoisting him back up through the window and into their room. "That was quite a shriek you just made," said Darwin. "And you're drenched in sweat! It was another one of your recurring dreams, wasn't it?"

"Yes it was," replied Gumball.

"Was it the one about the poodle and the surfboard and the jar of peanut butter?"

"No."

"Was it the one where you were skydiving in your own bed?"

"No."

"Was it the one where I stole Penny from you?"

"No! Look man, I'm just... too embarrassed to say, alright? It really shouldn't have to be this way but it is. It's better that you just don't know, alright?"

"Well now you have to tell me," said Darwin, climbing back into his fishbowl. "Now you got me dead curious. Come on just tell me!"

Gumball shrugged. "I don't know..."

"Hey, hey," Darwin said as he grabbed Gumball's shoulder with his fin. "I am here for ya, man." He gave his adoptive blue cat brother a wink as he said this.

"Okay," Gumball said. He turned around and paced back to the window. "Well it was the one where Mom trapped me in her void and tried to take over my soul all because I tried to ask her what made her so..." He turned around and saw his brother immediately asleep once again, blowing out little bubbles with every exhale inside his bowl. "Well, so much for being here for me," Gumball said with a disappointed frown.

He wallowed back to his own bed and got back underneath the covers. He had trouble falling back asleep himself as he kept thinking about his nightmare, what it meant. The more he thought about that, the more he thought about his mother, Nicole. He kept thinking about her savage instincts and all the times her outbursts have traumatized him. What worried him most was when the next time it would occur, as Nicole has done it both provoked and unprovoked. This unpredictability of when Nicole would unleash her supernatural abilities that result from her anger were enough to make Gumball start crying. He sobbed softly into his pillow, trying not to wake Darwin again.