A Tale of Wretched Occurrences: The Beginning

𝓛𝓸𝓸𝓴 𝓐𝔀𝓪𝔂

If you are interested in stories with happy endings, then you would be better off somewhere else. In this story, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning, and very few happy things in the middle.

My name is Lemony Snicket, and it is my solemn duty to bring to light the sorry history of the Baudelaire children as it happened so many years ago. But you, the audience, have no such obligation, and I would advise all readers to stop reading this immediately and read something more pleasant instead.

This story will be dreadful, melancholy, and calamitous, a word which here means “dreadful and melancholy.” This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the Baudelaires.

Violet, Klaus, Millie, and Sunny were intelligent children. Charming and resourceful, they had pleasant facial features, but they also had extremely wretched luck. Most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. I’m sorry to tell you this, but that’s how the story goes.…