It was a dark and stormy night.
This is an awful, awful opening to many horror novels that I'm sure we all have heard, and is a large cliché, a word which here means "phrase that I don't like and must be excused for using." One problem with this phrase is that most nights are dark, and the fact that it is does not to be stated. Most of the time, the story that follows is so ruined that it is not even especially horrific; but I assure you, the following account of the lives of the Baudelaire Orphans is so full of woe, misery, and despair that it is quite appropriate. It is also appropriate as it, in fact, WAS a dark and stormy night, and I have vowed to be as accurate as possible in chronicling the lives of these poor youths, so I must be excused.
It was a dark and stormy night. The Baudelaire children were sitting in the cramped space of Mr. Poe's car, driving to an unknown place to go live with an unknown relative.
Violet, the eldest of the Baudelaires, was sitting in the front. She loved inventing things, it was her hobby and skill. A telltale sign to show that she was thinking of an invention was when she pulled up her hair in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes; whenever she did that, the gears in her head were whirring at top speed. Now, however, she was too depressed to try to invent something. As what one often does when one is in a car, looking at the rain, one thinks of the past; and in Violet's case, the past was nothing but bad things. The Baudelaire parents had perished in a fire that burned down the Baudelaire house; and now a certain Count Olaf would do absolutely anything to get his gnarled hands on the Baudelaire fortune. Violet was thinking of the happy times she experienced with her parents, the way things were before. Yet when you think of happy times and you know those times will never happen again, those thoughts are quite sad.
Klaus, the middle Baudelaire, was sitting in the back seat. His passion was reading; in the late Baudelaire household he devoured every book, and his ability to recall inummerable facts was always useful. Right now, he was asking himself questions about the future. Would his new caregiver be kind and generous? Yet even as these thoughts rang through his mind, he knew the chance of that was quite slim, a word which here does not mean "skinny" but "next to none."
Sunny, the youngest Baudelaire, was sitting on Klaus's lap. Sunny was but an infant, with a tendency to bite things with her four sharp teeth, and had seen more misfortune in her short life than most other people do in their lifetime.
"Mr. Poe, what do you know about our new guardian?"
Mr. Poe worked at Mulctuary Money Management, as was also, unfortunately, was in charge of the Baudelaire Orphan's affairs— needless to say, he had good intentions, but was not doing a very good job.
"Her named is Mrs. Murus, and I'm not sure what her full name is, but she will tell you if you are allowed to call her by that name. I think she's your mother's mother's cousin's sister's niece."
"Birga!" Sunny murmured. Sunny, as most infants, spoke in intelligible words, but this time everyone knew she meant "I hope Mrs. Murus will be nice and I hope that this ride will end quite soon!"
"I agree," muttered Klaus.
Soon enough, the car past an archway, and a flash of lightning was enough for the Baudelaire orphans to see it read "Welcome ad oppidum Latinimus!"
"What does that mean?" asked Violet.
"I'm not sure, but I think this place is called Latinimus. Well, let's see how this will go," said Klaus.