Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

Book the Thirteenth

The Torturous Triumph

To Beatrice

My heart burst into flame when we met.

Right afterwards, you did.

Dear Reader,

Finales are often things you will not want to read. Many times, finales reveal things about the characters that it is better off not knowing at all. The only possible reason you could have for reading the final chapter in the misfortunes of the Baudelaires is that you, like myself at this very moment, are trapped and only have a short amount of time before the police will track you down at last and bring you in for deeds that you know you have never done in your lifetime.

Sometimes you might find finales to contain things such as self-sustaining hot air mobile homes, underwater catalogs, mysterious reappearances, and a very small rock, although I doubt very much that you would be interested in such a book.

This novel is the most dreadful out of all of the thirteen chapters of the Baudelaires' lives, and I hope that as you see their story wind down and die, you will not wind down and die along with it.

With all due respect,

Lemony Snicket

Chapter One

If you have ever heard the tedious childhood story "The Tortoise and the Hare," then you are probably familiar with the famous poet Aesop. Aesop was an ancient Greek poet who wrote over five hundred fables in his lifetime. He created yarns such as "The Fisher and the Little Fish" and "The Cat and the Birds," both of which discuss animals that experienced some sort of unfortunate event, or at least, almost had one thrust upon them. In the story of the fisher and the little fish, the fisher catches a scrawny little fish instead of a big fish. The little fish is frightened at first, but then promises the fisherman that if he lets the fish go, it will return a few weeks later, all fattened up. The fisherman, however, decides to keep the little fish so that he can sear it to perfection, a phrase which here means "broil it until it tastes good," rather than taking the risk of the fish not following through with its promise. The story of the cat and the birds, however, tells the story of a cat who is hungry for birds. He hears tell of a group of birds in an aviary who are not feeling very well. The cat opens his disguise kit and poses as a doctor with a large top hat and a handbag. He knocks on the door and asks of the birds' health, to which one of the birds replies, "We shall do very well when we've seen the last of you." As you can very well imagine, Aesop was soon beheaded by a group of angry villagers.

The things that we respect most about Aesop are his morals. In every one of his fables, there is always a lesson to be learned by the vertebrates of volunteers foolishly dissuaded in the story. The moral of "The Fisher and the Little Fish" is "Be content with what you have, for it is unsure if anything better will come along." The moral of "The Cats and the Birds" is "A villain may disguise himself, but he will not deceive the wise." However, there is one other important moral by Aesop that we should all remember, which states "A crust in comfort is better than a feast in fear." After spending days and days of researching the works of Aesop and other Greek poets, I am finally able to understand what the meaning of this moral is. "A crust in comfort" is referring to having meager portions of food in the best of situations, and "a feast in fear" refers to a small blessing while the natural world has pushed nothing but pain and misery into your current situation. So, what Aesop is trying o get across is that it is better to be starving in the most relaxing of situations rather than being full in dire moments such as the one that the Baudelaire orphans were currently experiencing.

Right now, the three Baudelaires would have given anything to be following Aesop's principle, but it was not so. A phrase that would be proper to describe their situation would be "a crust in fear." The crust was the horror that was haunting their very minds as they were sailing along the sea. Violet, the eldest Baudelaire, was considering her recent actions in escaping from the Hotel Denouement, where all of the volunteers and villains were clamoring around to capture them. Klaus, the middle child, was considering his recent actions in assisting the sailboat he was in descend from the roof, where he and his siblings had just abandoned a fellow volunteer. Sunny, the youngest of the three, was considering her recent actions in assisting igniting the fire that was now engulfing the hotel into flame.

The main reason for all of these simultaneous and unfortunate occurrences was, of course, Count Olaf, who had cornered the Baudelaire orphans yet again just as they thought that justice would be served. He was indirectly, but mostly directly, responsible for all of the deaths that recently happened at the hotel, and even though the Baudelaires were the ones who had accidentally killed a man who had been taking care of them, it was Count Olaf who had been the reason for the killing in the first place.

"At last! At last! Ha! You're in my clutches at last! Ha! I've been waiting so long for this moment! Ha! Now you have nobody to protect you! Ha!" yelled the Count in triumph. "You orphans think you're so smart! Ha! Well, look at your current situation, my dears! Ha! All of your pesky inventing and reading and biting landed you here, in my clutches once again! Ha! It's like I'm seeing things that I recall from the past, or, as the French put it, my vu jade."

"It's déjà vu," corrected Klaus. He was still all aquiver with curiosity for all of the unsolved mysteries he had experienced, along with his perpetual, a word which here means "never-ending," fear of Count Olaf, but it was not enough to stop him defining words.

"Shut up, orphan, and row!" cried the Count. "Ha! We're going to pick up a few things first, and then, once I have everything I need, I can flatten V.F.D. like a spatula flattening a pancake! Ha!"

"I do wish you would stop doing that, Olaf," Violet groaned. "It's much harder to concentrate on rowing with you constantly laughing like that." Violet was getting a headache due to Count Olaf's new chortle, a phrase which here means "villainous laugh that tends to give people migranes, which is a word that means 'headaches,'" which he had first shown off to the Baudelaires early that morning.

"I don't care about your damn head! Now stop chatting and row!" screamed the count. Of course, we all know that profanity is something we should never use, but the Baudelaires were unfortunately accustomed to Olaf swearing since he had disguised himself as an assistant to Dr. Montgomery Montgomery, a herpetologist who was only known to his closest acquaintances by that name. "And baby, why aren't you doing any damn thing?"

"Tired," Sunny moaned. She was incredibly exhausted, as they hardly had any time to sleep that morning before they were all escorted to a trial of conviction that failed miserably.

"You may have suggested to start the fire, baby, but that doesn't mean you can start gibbering to me about being tired! Ha! Why, I had absolutely no sleep last night, and look how much I accomplished!" declared the Count with a sort of grandeur in his voice, a phrase which here means "showing off as if he were performing another one of his dreadful plays."

The Baudelaires turned to look at one another in misery. They knew, of course, that all Olaf had accomplished during the night was killing Dewey Denouement, a sub-sub-librarian who the Baudelaires had taken a liking to. Dewey had just come in contact with the Baudelaire orphans that very morning, but to the children, it felt as if they had known him for quite a while. Dewey had been the third of the three Denouement triplets, the other two's names being Frank and Ernest. Whenever the Baudelaires had encountered Dewey's two unfathomable brothers, they could not tell which was which, no matter what kind of observations they made.

"Where do you think we're going?" Klaus asked Violet, his face lined with sweat from the heat of the smoke and fire.

"I don't know," Violet replied, equally sweaty, "but we're bound to stop rowing sooner or later. Olaf did mention he had to go pick up a few things, so maybe we can escape when we get to wherever this boat is headed."

"Poidar," Sunny said, which was her unique way of saying, "I don't think it would be the best of ideas to abandon Count Olaf."

"Why not?" Violet and Klaus asked in harmony, a phrase which here means "simultaneously," instead of "in a melodic sort of chorus that makes a sound pleasant to hear."

"Eye," Sunny replied, which meant "We should keep an eye on him, in case he is plotting any further treachery, so that we can stop him from doing any more acts of villainy."

"Like finding the sugar bowl," Klaus said. His siblings nodded in agreement. All three of them knew that this special sugar bowl contained a secret that V.F.D. was as eager to keep hidden as Olaf was eager to find it. Klaus had just recently deduced that Dewey had tricked everyone into thinking that it would land inside the laundry room of the Hotel Denouement, while it really had fallen into the underwater catalog that contained enough evidence to put Olaf and the rest of his villainous cohorts in prison forever.

"Stop whispering to yourselves at once and keep rowing! I haven't got time to stop this boat just so you can discuss your orphan affairs!" cried Count Olaf. "Once I succeed in achieving what I am sailing to achieve, then I am going after every single volunteer who has ever stood in my way, including that ridiculous Snicket sibling!"

Violet leaned in to her siblings to murmur, "Which one?" The Baudelaires were well acquainted with two Snicket siblings named Jacques and Kit. They had met Jacques in the Village of Fowl Devotees, where he was set up as being Count Olaf and ended up getting murdered by the count himself. The orphans had only recently met Kit Snicket, when she took them in a taxi from Briny Beach to the Hotel Denouement. However, there was a third Snicket sibling whom they had never met before, and the only frame of reference, a phrase which here means "picture of him," they had of him was a picture of him on a page of the Snicket file that Klaus had kept safe and hidden inside his commonplace book. The orphans had yet to encounter this third Snicket sibling, who happens to be a man very close to my work, and who I know recently developed a habit of smoking in order to communicate with his sister to let her know that the volunteer she was out to retrieve had been, in fact, murdered, along with a crewmate of his who had just recently given up his job in a sinister lumber factory. Since Jacques was dead and Kit was somewhere far away, the Baudelaires could only conclude that Olaf was referring to the third Snicket sibling.

Just then, Violet felt Count Olaf grab her by the collar so he could look her in the eye. His horrid breath was "Listen, you little brat! I am extremely bad-tempered right now. Stop talking with your idiot siblings this instant! If you so much as row slowly, I swear I will beat you incredibly long and hard, so help me God!"

The phrase "so help me God" is indeed a curious one, for it has multiple meanings to it. It is commonly used by people of many religious faiths, who use it when they are delivering their prayers to God. One other usage of the phrase is to make things seem harder than they really are, like in the sentence "Give me a hand, would you, L? Hold my cigar for me. These stacks of newspapers are really heavy, so help me God!" But when Count Olaf said, "so help me God," he was not referring to a figure worshipped in synagogues and churches or a heavy stack of newspapers that had tiny woodchips all over them. His usage of the phrase "so help me God" was used in a way of expressing frustration over something. Certainly at least once in our lives we may find occasion to use the phrase "so help me God" but a time when you are traveling through a sinister sea, using spatulas as oars and having a very dangerous fungus sealed in a helmet located at the head of the ship is a very inappropriate time to use the phrase "so help me God."

"Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes! I was gloating!" shouted the count in a theatrical tone. He walked off to the other side of the boat and started cheering and whooping and celebrating over his torturous triumph. The Baudelaires took this opportunity to their advantage to speak with each other.

"Where do you think we're going?" Violet asked.

Klaus opened his commonplace book and consulted one of the pages. "Maybe Count Olaf is going to look for the sugar bowl. As long as we don't tell him that it is inside the underwater catalog, the secrets of V.F.D. will be safe forever."

"Uncat," Sunny replied, which meant something along the lines of "We need to get to that catalog before Olaf does."

"You're right, Sunny. If we can find the sugar bowl, we might be able to find out why it's so important," said Violet.

"And we can call in the proper authorities to clear our names and take Olaf away forever," Klaus replied.

"If we're lucky," Sunny mentioned, using a phrase that her brother and sister used when the Baudelaires stayed at Prufrock Preparatory School.

If you are somewhat of a dunce, then you will probably assume that the Baudelaires' assumptions are, assumably, correct. Just like the assumptions that the orphans assumed at Prufrock Prep, these assumptions are assumed to be assumably wrong. However, fate has a way of twisting itself into shapes that are considered freakish, like a contortionist who was currently trapped along with her two coworkers in a hotel that was currently burning to the ground. There are people lucky enough in the world who have not had to deal with things such as horrible and talentless villains, venomous reptiles, harsh storms, heavy lumber products, tiring gym classes, dark elevator shafts, angry villagers, conniving cranioectomies, ferocious lions, evil cohorts with evil facial hair, submarines shaped like octopi, and unfathomable people in an unfathomable hotel. But the Baudelaire orphans are not those sorts of people. They are the kind of people who are unlucky enough in the world who have had to deal with things such as horrible and talentless villains, venomous reptiles, harsh storms, heavy lumber products, tiring gym classes, dark elevator shafts, angry villagers, conniving cranioectomies, ferocious lions, evil cohorts with evil facial hair, submarines shaped like octopi, and unfathomable people in an unfathomable hotel. As you can probably guess, things will most definitely not get any better than that in this fickle finale.

But the Baudelaire orphans did not know that. They were hoping for a happy ending to their fable. I am sure that even Aesop would have a hard time choosing a moral for the story of the Baudelaires. However, after discussing morals and fables with my closest associates, I am able to safely conclude that almost all of his morals can be applied to the Baudelaires' lives. The moral of "The Fisher and the Little Fish," which, if you recall, is "Be content with what you have, for it is unsure if anything better will come along." For right now, the Baudelaire children were forced to be content with their miserable situation on Count Olaf's sailboat, and had to wait until something better was to come along, which would happen in a short while. The moral of "The Cat and the Birds," which, if you recall, is "A villain may disguise himself, but he will not deceive the wise." The Baudelaires, over the course of their lives, had seen Olaf wearing a variety of disguises. But when I speak of disguises, I do not necessarily mean only disguises that you wear on the outside, but also ones that Olaf used to fool people after the usage of outer disguises. He adapted a disguise that made people think that he was a kind, caring, and trustworthy person, and tricked the same people into thinking that the Baudelaire orphans were villains, arsonists, and murderers.

However, there is one moral of Aesop's that is basically a summary of the Baudelaires' lives, which is "Misfortunes springing from ourselves are the hardest to bear." The Baudelaires' misfortunes did not spring from without, but from within. They did not start their series of unfortunate events, but they actually helped spread it themselves. The orphans relied too much on the adults in their lives to protect them that sometimes they did not think to attempt to save themselves. True, the Baudelaires were charming and resourceful, and they did save themselves sometimes, the three of them were at fault, a phrase which here means "were not always successful in defending themselves." Almost none of this was the orphans' fault, but fate has its way of causing you to do things that you never wanted to do in the first place. And although the Baudelaire orphans never wanted to be in the current situation in the first place, they felt as if the first place, the last place they wanted to be, was the only place that they could feel safe until they were able to have their feast in comfort at last.