Horst Cabal wakes to a sight he's only seen once in years, and hadn't hoped to see again -- the bright, yellow vibrance of the sun.
His bed is four-poster, with peppermint-striped pillars supporting a thin canopy of spun sugar. The daylight's streaming in through a skylight overhead . . . but no, popping excitedly out of bed, Horst discover's his skylight is in fact a huge hole in the ceiling, cut in the shape of a gigantic comical imprint of human teeth. Someone has taken a giant-sized bite out of Horst's gingerbread house.
He runs down the stairs and flings wide the graham cracker door, intent on seeing what's going on almost as desperately as he is on seeing the simple beauty of the morning sun.
He finds confusion and disappointment and . . . a hell of a lot of candy.
The sun in the sky is not a sun. It's a lemon wedge, bright yellow pie sections glowing unnaturally against the fluffy pink and blue clouds. And it's not just the sky. Everything, in fact, is candy.
Everything.
The street, the grass, the houses, the fences, the cars.
Even Horst --
Well, no. There's an exception.
Horst Cabal -- Horst Gumball, more like -- is not made of candy, with the exception of the two blue gumball eyes he can't, himself, see. He's made of used popsicle sticks, facial features marked out in sloppy pink stains, with his hair and clothes made from used candy wrappers: gold foil, crumpled plastic, torn and sticky wax paper fashioned into the rough and ugly shape of a man.
And he hungers. He hungers desperately, as a vampire has always hungered.
For corn syrup.
It takes Horst about fifteen seconds of willpower before he starts discreetly attempting to break off a piece of his lollipop mailbox between his flat wooden fingers.
[Location: Candy Taxon village]
His bed is four-poster, with peppermint-striped pillars supporting a thin canopy of spun sugar. The daylight's streaming in through a skylight overhead . . . but no, popping excitedly out of bed, Horst discover's his skylight is in fact a huge hole in the ceiling, cut in the shape of a gigantic comical imprint of human teeth. Someone has taken a giant-sized bite out of Horst's gingerbread house.
He runs down the stairs and flings wide the graham cracker door, intent on seeing what's going on almost as desperately as he is on seeing the simple beauty of the morning sun.
He finds confusion and disappointment and . . . a hell of a lot of candy.
The sun in the sky is not a sun. It's a lemon wedge, bright yellow pie sections glowing unnaturally against the fluffy pink and blue clouds. And it's not just the sky. Everything, in fact, is candy.
Everything.
The street, the grass, the houses, the fences, the cars.
Even Horst --
Well, no. There's an exception.
Horst Cabal -- Horst Gumball, more like -- is not made of candy, with the exception of the two blue gumball eyes he can't, himself, see. He's made of used popsicle sticks, facial features marked out in sloppy pink stains, with his hair and clothes made from used candy wrappers: gold foil, crumpled plastic, torn and sticky wax paper fashioned into the rough and ugly shape of a man.
And he hungers. He hungers desperately, as a vampire has always hungered.
For corn syrup.
It takes Horst about fifteen seconds of willpower before he starts discreetly attempting to break off a piece of his lollipop mailbox between his flat wooden fingers.