The Unexpected Sleepover

Rudely Interrupted by Shrieking

The book young Klaus Baudelaire held in his hands was made out of now worn leather with a cracked spine that demonstrated that this was a good, loved collection of information. The orange print that made up the title complemented the blue of the rest of the book cover, and it was peeling after a long history of being read.

Languages of the Forest

By Benjamin Conway

Foreword by Daryl Cleveland

Bertrand Baudelaire had told his son that when he first read it, he presumed that the title was of playful, metaphorical speaking when in actuality it was a book discussing how various creatures of the forest communicated with each other. It was one of the quite literal hundreds of books that the Baudelaire family had acquired (the last time Klaus counted they had 667, excluding the books on the top shelves that he was no longer allowed to touch) in the fifteen or so years Betrand and Beatrice had owned the mansion. Now it was time for Klaus to read number 284. He looked around the library and spied several of the tales he had already read and smiled slightly at the thought of all the knowledge he had gained from said books. Time to gain some more.

Klaus lowered his head again, lifted his hand gently, and grazed his paper-cut fingers across the old cover. He gripped the tarnished upper-right-hand side of it and flipped it open gingerly, enjoying the crack of the spine. He began to peel pages back and held them there with his left hand, stopping at the foreword. He took a deep breath, leaned backward in the armchair he was sitting in, and began to read.

Foreword

By Daryl Cleveland

          There are over 6,700 animal species that reside in the forest.

That was when he was oh so rudely interrupted by a blood-curdling shriek that sounded like it was coming from his mother. Perfect timing (sarcastically, of course).

 Klaus pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and shot out of the library like a bullet, trying to identify where the scream was coming from. "Mother?!" he cried out, heart rate fleeting.

The boy heard feet barreling toward him and turned around to see his older sister, Violet, coming down the stairs. She had come out of the shower not too long ago, for her wet, shiny hair clinging to her yellow pajama suit and stained the white polkadots on it a darker grey. "What happened?"

"I don't know, Vivi.", Klaus replied shakily.

She ran to her brother and grabbed his hand, intertwining their fingers together as she locked her stormy blue eyes with his. "I got you."

Unbeknownst to anyone else but Violet and Klaus themselves, Klaus used to call Violet "Vivi" often when the little one was first learning how to talk, but now that he's older, he only called his sister Vivi when he was scared. Violet slowly came to realize this and never made fun of him for it. It was one of the many reasons why he was unsure as to what he would do without his sister being there for him.

The duo sprinted down the hallway as fast as their legs would carry them as they searched for their parents, checking in every room they came across.

"BERTRAND!"

The siblings knew that that was their mother.

If you know the feeling you get in the back of your throat when you want to cry but are fighting not to, you know what the Bauelaire children were experiencing in the bit they were searching for their mother. They didn't know how long they were searching for, but it felt as long as a scene in a horror movie where you know something important or scary is about to happen. In a way, it was.