Oh dear reader, I am about to impart to you another woeful tale – indeed, a tale so full of woe that it would take four hundred two-time lottery-winning puppies made entirely of lucky nickels and therapy just to graduate this tale to a status of merely “disappointing.” “Disappointing” is a word which here means “what you are to your mother.”
On the day this terrible tale begins, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire (who, as you may remember, were orphaned when a fire consumed their home and loving parents) were just about to meet the next relation who would be caring for them. “Relation” is of course a word which means “someone who will care for you after your loving parents are consumed in a fire, but who probably doesn’t actually love you because no one could ever love you. Even your parents. They were lying.”
The taxicab dropped the Baudelaire orphans off in front of a grocery in a mini-mall that also contained a dry cleaners, another dry cleaners, and a restaurant selling very old soup. “This is a strange place for us to live in,” said Violet.
“I agree,” said Klaus, picking up his infant sister Sunny, “but this is the right address.”
“Fee!” said Sunny, which probably meant something like “I think that vagrant is masturbating himself.”
Suddenly, the door to the grocery flew open and out lurched a robust Vietnamese woman with a hump on her back.
“Chao ong, children! I am your aunt Phuong!” Of course, “chao ong” is a word in the Vietnamese language which here means: you don’t have to learn it.
“You’re related to us?” asked Violet.
“Of course I am, children! You will be living here with me from now on,” said Aunt Phuong, smiling cheerfully.
Violet was wary of Aunt Phuong. Could she actually be Count Olaf in disguise? In the past, the wicked Count Olaf had made numerous attempts to gain control of the Baudelaire orphans’ vast fortune through lying, murder, and overacting through heavy makeup reminiscent of his performance in The Mask.
Klaus was thinking the exact same thing. His favorite thing to do was read, and he had read a great number of books on people of Aunt Phuong’s background. “I certainly don’t feel Vietnamese,” he said. “I don’t live in a hut, and I don’t know what napalm tastes like or anything. I mean, I’m good at math, but that’s chinks, right?”
“Blaag!” said Sunny, which probably meant “What, bitch? Everyone was thinking it.”
Aunt Phuong looked thoughtful. “You children have a regrettable view of ethnic stereotypes,” she chided. “Regrettable” is a word which here means, “grettable again.”
“Now children,” Aunt Phuong continued, “come inside and we can play a game of pin the tail on your ridiculously wealthy flesh.” She thought for a moment, then said, “That’s Vietnamese for Scrabble,” subtly dropping the hatpin she had been carrying.
Suddenly, Violet was struck with an idea. She grabbed the hatpin from the pavement and jabbed it into Aunt Phuong’s hump, which gave a loud pop and disappeared.
Now that the cat was out of the bag, Aunt Phuong, who was actually Count Olaf, made a grab for the Baudelaire orphans. Klaus, however, had been taught exactly how to deal with these situations.
“RAPE!” screamed Klaus, plunging his knee deep into Count Olaf’s groin. “RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE!”
Count Olaf doubled over in pain, but he had easily two hundred pounds on the orphans, so he was able to overpower them anyway. After having each of the assembled vagrants promise to “forget” the events of the evening in exchange for a swig from his flask, he took the Baudelaire orphans inside and strangled them, but not before converting Klaus’s scream from a warning to a prophecy. And of course, “prophecy” is a word which always means “violent, unlubricated anal rape.”
