A Series of Unfortunate Events #8: The Hostile Hospital

the Baudelaire orphans sat and waited for a reply to their telegram, they only felt more and more alone.

in the belly of the beast

“I’m not an idiot,” the hook-handed man said, stopping to glare at his fellow associate. “I’m physically handicapped.”

She could be anyone from Mikhail Bulgakov to Haruki Murakami.

I am alone this evening, and I am alone because of a cruel twist of fate, a phrase which here means that nothing has happened the way I thought it would. Once I was a content man, with a comfortable home, a successful career, a person I loved very much, and an extremely reliable typewriter, but all of those things have been taken away from me, and now the only trace I have of those happy days is the tattoo on my left ankle.

You might read a book on how to have a successful marriage, when the only woman you will ever love has married someone else and then perished one terrible afternoon.

Mikhail Bulgakov to Haruki Murakami.

There were four people in the photograph, standing together outside a building the Baudelaires recognized immediately. It was 667 Dark Avenue, where the orphans had lived with Jerome and Esmé Squalor for a brief time, until it became another place too treacherous for the children to stay. The first person in the photograph was Jacques Snicket, who was looking at the photographer and smiling. Standing next to Jacques was a man who was turned away from the camera, so the children could not see his face, only one of his hands, which was clutching a notebook and pen, as if the obscured man were a writer of some sort. The children had not seen Jacques Snicket since he was murdered, of course, and the writer appeared to be someone they had never seen at all. But standing next to these two people were another two people the Baudelaire children thought they would never see again. Bundled up in long coats, looking cold but happy, were the Baudelaire parents.

“‘All thirteen pages of the Snicket file,’” he read, “‘have been removed from the Library of Records for the official investigation.’”

Was it really necessary? Was it absolutely necessary to steal that sugar bowl from Esmé Squalor?