#snickets

if you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other books. in this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle.

Lemony Snicket as a child

Okay so 

Olaf was already starting to talk with the firestarters before he was orphaned, before he and Kit broke up, before he switched over to their side

It started with little things. 

Someone approached him while he was on a trip with Beatrice. It was a mission of sorts, an attempt to restore some old book to its rightful place in a museum (Olaf wasn’t really paying that much attention to what they were doing, he just knew that it was a nice excuse to get out of the city for a couple nights with one of the only people he truly liked in their organization). 

He and Beatrice were in a hotel near the museum they were going to for a night before the job and a night after, and they took great advantage of it. The two shared a room, Beatrice bringing face masks and ice cream, Olaf bringing nail polish and whiskey, ready for a night of gossip about the other members of their organization and complaints about their beloved Snicket fiances. 

Olaf left to go get a bucket of ice, and was approached by an unfamiliar man. He could just see the ink peeking out under the cuff of the man’s pants, and smelled the faint but familiar scent of smoke soaked into the man’s skin. 

“Olaf?” The man’s voice was a growl, which here does not refer to the sound that an angry animal makes, but rather to a low and rough type of voice.

Unsure of what to say, Olaf merely nodded at him, holding the empty bucket in his arms. 

The stranger laughed quietly, pulling something out of his pocket and setting it in the bucket before walking away.

Now dear readers, most all of us know that one should not accept presents from strangers, even if that stranger may appear to be apart of the same secret organization as us. 

But Olaf wasn’t a normal man. He was an actor. And as most know, actors, no matter how untalented they may be, have an inherent curiosity for new things. Olaf couldn’t resist his curiosity, reaching into the bucket without thinking about it. 

His organization was well known for liking books, so you would think that what he was about to pick up would be something that made sense to him, as it was indeed a book. 

Olaf, however, was more confused than ever when he held it in his hand, for this particular book was not the kind you read, but was instead a book of matches. 

“For instance...for instance,” He muttered quietly to himself, “Matches?”

Olaf knew he should’ve thrown them away, but an impulse came over him and he shoved the matches into his breast pocket and returned to the bedroom, taking the ridicule from Beatrice for forgetting ice with ease and forcing himself to laugh through the night, all the time aware of the heat of the matches in his pocket, a heat which is here a metaphorical one as the matches were not lit, but were sending spikes of flame through his conscience.

After that, matches would simply appear in places where he was. It started slowly, once a month or so, soon once a week, and then soon once a day. He didn’t take them at first, but the began appearing in places where they could get seen by other people, by Kit or Beatrice or Jacques or any of the other people that he knew he didn’t want to see it, and so he would grab them quickly and shove them into his pocket. 

A few of the matchbooks would contain notes. Little things.  Quotes from Fahrenheit 451 or 1984. And then, one day, a time and place. 

 It was the same strange man as before. 

A man that Olaf would form a friendship of sorts with, the person that would give him resources and information about the firestarters, the person that would help introduce him to that side of the schism when the time came. 

The strange man was the one that taught him that the firestarters were beginning to use poisoned darts. Information like that, Olaf passed along to Kit, hiding that the man seemed to be trying to recruit him, just telling her that he had a source on the other side. 

When Kit approached him one morning, requesting that Olaf get some of those poison darts from his source, it wasn’t hard to do. Although she wouldn’t tell him why, his complete faith in Kit meant that he simply called up his firestarter and got the darts by noon that day. 

And when he got the news after that, when he realized that he’d been forsaken by the woman he loved, by two of his best friends, by everyone he thought he could trust, there was no difficulty in transitioning to the other side. With nothing but that first book of matches in his pocket, he left. 

The only one who dared ask him about his leaving the firefighters was Jacques, visiting him in his new apartment above the cheapest local liquor shop with a bottle of vodka and a book of poetry in hand. 

Olaf opened the door to his favorite Snicket, looking closely at the ragged look on his face and the gifts he held in his hands. He crossed his arms over his chest but let Jacques enter, a sneer covering his features, “What do you want, Snicket?”

Jacques held the gifts out to him, a look of pity overcoming him, “How are you, Olaf?” He asked, in the way that shows that while his words said how are you what he really meant was how could you go to the firestarters?

Olaf knew that in a moment, well aware of how apt the Snickets were to say things they didn’t mean, and mean things they didn’t say.