A Series Of Unfortunate Events ~ Book The First

Chapter One

If you are interested in novellas with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other fantasy tale. There's one I've heard of about a teenage boy going to a magic school, fascinating for the children. In this electronic book, there is no happy ending or beginning and very few happy things in the middle. 

That is because not very many happy things happened in neither the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters or mine. Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire were smart children and they were charming, resourceful and had attractive facial features. I, however, was anything but those things. 

Not smart, not lovely, far from capable and no attractive facial features. However, we did have something in common; we were extremely unlucky and most everything that happened to either them or I was rife with misfortune, misery and an unfortunate aura. I apologise for informing you, but that is how this story goes. 

The first of these melancholy accounts started when I was 15 and living with my evil father, Count Olaf. Messy grey hair, horrible wrinkled face, teeth blacker than space and yellower than sweetcorn, hairs you could never imagine in all the right places as well as the wrong ones, that's just the way he looks, don't get me started on his character.

He was cruel and evil to anyone and everyone, whether it's his teenage son who does everything he says out of trauma and fear or the German girl selling frankfurters down the road. Anyone who is or was living is an enemy of Count Olaf, which makes this anecdote one of the more positive ones in this saga.

Count Olaf kicks my bedroom door open and bangs pots and pans to wake me up. My bedroom is nothing special, just a dusty, dirty attic infested with creepy-crawlies. I have at least 5 enter my mouth each night. The whole house is decaying and dying, every corner filled with cobwebs and all the wood inhabited by asbestos and termites.

We would, of course, pay to get the house redone or move out, but we don't have any money due to the fact we are broke. Olaf's career of stealing money from orphans isn't the most lucrative, so when it came to making a plate of pancakes and Eggo waffles for Olaf's breakfast, I had to visit a very close friend of mine. Since that was precisely my task, which I knew by Olaf's shouting directly into my ear, I put on my glasses and walked to the front door of the house.

I never looked great, but it was better than nothing. Scruffy and long dark green hair, dark blue eyes, a matching set of glasses, a blue jacket with a green armband and a dimmer blue vest underneath, ripped red jeans and broken black boots. It was a getup which I thought looked decent. A hand appeared onto my shoulder as I grabbed the door handle. "Where are you going, child?" was a question I hated answering every day.

"Ju-justice St-Strauss, fa-father..." I responded with a tremble and fear in my voice. "She h-has your b-b-breakfast..." At which, I opened the door and walked outside before suddenly being unable to move. I was floating off the ground. I was confused before screaming as I flew through the air into my neighbours front yard.

Now, as much as I'd love to continue my side, I believe we should travel back in time by 5 minutes and over to the opposite side of the town to visit the Baudelaire household. Unlike my family, the Baudelaires are extremely rich and live in a well-furnished and stable mansion. They are well-mannered and always polite and behaved.

Violet is the eldest at 14 and is an incredible inventor who makes interesting inventions, such as a basket that retrieves stones skimmed across a lake or ocean, or a grandfather clock which was given a new life as a toaster. While her inventions are most certainly weird, they are incredibly beautiful. She liked to dress in retro-victorian dresses and anything purple. She also had long, black hair with a natural purple tint and matching purple eyes, an unnatural congenital disability.