Family Comes First- ASOUE

Chapter 11: Tower Room

*Violet's POV*

"How pleasant of you to join us," the hook handed man said as I tried to regain my balance, "Why don't you take a seat?"

"What are you going to do to me?" I asked.

"I said take a seat!" He exclaimed. I quickly scrambled to sit down in the nearest chair, taking off the invention. He glared at me as he fumbled to get the walkie-talkie from his pocket, pressing the button on it. "Boss, it's me," he said, "The oldest one just climbed up here to rescue the biting brat... Some sort of rope..." He said, looking at the tied together sheets strung across the room. I looked around, seeing that his eye motif spread throughout the whole house.

"It was a grappling hook," I said bitterly, crossing my arms."I made it myself!"

"She said it was a grappling hook." He repeated into the communicator. "I don't know, boss. Yes, boss. Yes, boss, of course I understand she's yours. Yes, boss." He pressed a button to disconnect the line and he looked at me with a disappointed look on his face. I couldn't tell if he was disappointed in me, but nevertheless he was upset. He picked up my device and tossed it out of the window. I heard it break into pieces at the ground many feet below.

"Count Olaf is very displeased with you." He said.

"I'm not seeing my reason to care here..." I replied.

"You should care because as of tonight, you will be his wife."

I glared at him. How could a group of people be so detestable? Our situation was detestable... Everything was all wrong. I found it lamentably deplorable, a phrase which here means it was not at all enjoyable. The trapdoor across the room opened with a loud creak as Olaf pushed my brother and the Quagmires into the room. They were confused, scared, and still wearing their pajamas. "You know," he said, sighing heavily, "some people say the hardest job in the world is raising a child, but it is nothing compared to conceiving, writing, directing, producing, and performing in a theatrical presentation for the purposes of stealing their dead parents' fortune. It's a very difficult job and I will not have any orphans mucking it up!!!! Hooky, gate!!"

At Olaf's command, Fernald grabbed a lock off the table near the window and jammed it into the gate, sealing Sunny away from us. "We're going to go make some final preparations for tonight's performance," he told us. "No monkey business."

"Unless you four want to dangle out of the window too!" Olaf added with an evil grin. They shut the door behind themselves and we heard them lock it from the outside.

"Violet, what happened?" Duncan asked me once we were sure our captors wouldn't overhear. "Did your grappling hook work?"

"Yes, but I got caught," I said. "I made too much noise."

Klaus looked at me in shock. "It's so high up, you must've been terrified."

"It's not as scary as the thought of marrying Count Olaf."

"I should have distracted him..." Duncan frowned.

"It doesn't matter what we should have done," Isadora interrupted. "We're up here now, and there's nothing we can do about it."

"I'm with Izzie." I said in agreement. "We need to rescue Sunny before they come back to fetch us for the performance."

"It's gonna be okay, Sunny." Izzie tried to calm her.

"Just hang in there..." Klaus added.

"Mmph?" Sunny tried to speak although it was muffled by the tape.

"He didn't mean it as a joke."

"Violet, do you think you could invent something that could help us escape?"

I looked around the room for things I could use. "Maybe."

Isadora walked over to a table, picking up a book on it. "Klaus, how about you and Duncan do research to get us out of the wedding?"

"That'll work." He said, taking the confiscated copy of Nuptial Law.

"If I'm going to invent something, I'm going to need some materials," I said. "If you have pockets, empty 'em."

Duncan, Isadora, and Klaus stood around the coffee table, laying out the things they kept on them. The Quagmires, I knew, always kept their notebooks on them. They said the notebooks contained things they wouldn't even tell eachother, so they'll get worried if they don't have it all the time. Klaus had his little cloth for his glasses and a couple scraps of receipt laid out in front of him. I reached into my pocket, pulling out my ribbon, and I was about to tie my hair back before the entire room grew dead silent and there was no movement. I looked at Klaus and the Quagmires. Klaus had pulled out the broken whatchamacallit from his pocket, and Izzie was holding a similar looking thingumabob.

The two looked at eachother with wide eyes and connected the two pieces, locking them into eachother. "Where did you get that?" They asked eachother in amazement.

"In the ruins of our old home." Duncan and I answered in unison.

Isadora fiddled with it a little bit, extending it into a telescope-y thing. "It looks like a spyglass. Why would our parents have matching spyglasses?" She asked, handing it to Klaus for his input.

"I think it's more than that," he said. "Look at all the dials. It might be a device used for cracking codes."

"Well then why would they have matching devices for cracking codes??"

"Maybe they knew eachother." I suggested.

"Then why don't we know eachother?"

"I don't know," I answered, "but we have more important things to worry about. We need to get out of here. Fast."

Isadora helped me look for items we could use while our brothers researched. We didn't find much, but many many wine bottles. I hadn't seen this many bottles of wine in my life. "If we had kerosene," I said, "we could make Molotov Cocktails with the empty bottles and throw them out of the window to catch the attention of a passerby or a neighbor?"

"My mother knew how to make Molotovs!" Isadora grinned. "I don't think there's kerosene in here though."

A few hours passed. We took turns taking naps since we hadn't gotten much sleep that night and sometimes went over to Sunny to smile at her and make sure she knows we're still thinking of her. "This isn't as difficult when I get some sleep," Klaus had joked at one point.

Eventually, one of the boys gave us a suggestion. "If you were a polygamist, Violet," Duncan said, "Count Olaf's marriage plan wouldn't work."

"What's a polygamist?" I asked him.

"It's someone who takes multiple wives or husbands." He explained. "In this community they're breaking the law even if they follow the proper marriage requirements. It's right here in Nuptial Law."

"But I'm not a polygamist." I said, shaking my head. "I don't think I'd ever want to be one either."

We were all silent for several more hours. "We could break the wine bottles and use them as knives." Isadora said. "But the troupe could overpower us..."

"Violet could say 'I don't' instead of 'I do'," Klaus added. "But then Olaf might have Sunny dropped to her death..."

"I certainly would!" Olaf said as he opened the door. I stuffed my ribbon into my pocket and Klaus, Duncan, and Isadora grabbed their things quickly. Count Olaf was wearing a suit with a big fur coat. "It's time for the big event, Orphans! My associate here-" here, Fernald appeared as well, "-will stay with your sister and we will be in constant contact with the use of these walkie-talkies! If anything goes wrong during tonight's performance, the brat will be dropped to her death. Shall we?"

I looked at Klaus, then the Quagmires, then at Sunny, and glumly started to follow. The others released small sighs, telling me they had a similar hopeless feeling. I would have felt the exact same way for the rest of my life, until I grabbed the stairwell's banister with my right hand to keep my balance. I recalled the marriage requirements in the community, looking at my hand and thinking much harder than I have in my life...