Disclaimer: All characters belong to some bloke who called it first.
Just Bad Luck
"So," said Jacques, "We meet again."
"Yes," agreed Lemony, his hat tipping forward ever so slightly.
They stood like that for ten whole minutes. They stood there, two metres apart, without a word passing between them. They stood there, facing each other, without once making eye contact.
Eventually the tension became so thick Lemony drew out a knife to get himself a slice. He had not had breakfast and was quite hungry.
"What are you doing?" asked Jacques sharply. He suddenly felt very unprepared for this rendezvous.
"I'm very hungry," Lemony replied honestly, "I was in quite a hurry this morning and did not have time to eat." He lifted his head and stared into the eyes of his so called brother. "You understand what I'm saying, right?" he smiled sadistically.
Jacques opened his mouth in horror as he watched his brother step forward, knife raised.
Lemony, oblivious to his brother's reactions, began slicing through the air. Slowly, with precision, Lemony cut himself a neat slice of "pie".
Jacques continued to stare, but his expression had returned to one of incredulity. He tried to remember if it was this bad last time, and decided: no. Had his brother, then, really reached the point of no return and become an outside thinking sort of man?
Yes, Jacques decided, he certainly had. Since the day Beatrice died, Lemony had suddenly turned into a combination of Braveheart and Hannibal Lector, fearlessly preaching the "ultimate truth" and defending "the real people", while at the same time cowering from reality.
This was one of those times. Lemony put his knife pack into his pocket with one hand, while the other, Jacques noticed, was holding "something". Lemony brought it to where his mouth would have been, had Jacques been able to see through the wide rim of his hat.
"Lemony," said Jacques.
"So, brother," mumbled Lemony cheerfully through a mouthful of 'pie', "How have you been?"
Jacques didn't bother faking a smile like he used to. "I've been fine, Lemony, how about you?"
Under his big hat, Lemony's throat contracted as he swallowed 'pie'. "I've been rather busy," he said, "The orphan business has just sky rocketed. It's really speeding out of control."
"Lemony, what have you been up to?" Jacques asked carefully, trying not to sound imperious.
"What do you mean brother?" replied Lemony, "I've told you all about the orphan business."
"You're not talking about Olaf's children, are you?" said Jacques sharply.
"Olaf doesn't have children!" yelled Lemony, throwing his 'pie' on the ground. "Olaf killed his children! But he wasn't satisfied with murder, oh no! He had to go and steal Beatrice's children!" Then, as if the meaning of what he'd said had only just sunk in, Lemony started to panic.
"Beatrice's children, Beatrice's children," he muttered under his breath, "I've got to find Beatrice's children!"
He walked around blindly, looking for the children in impossible places.
"What have you done to Olaf's children?" Jacques demanded.
Lemony ignored him and began pacing.
Jacques grabbed his shoulders to stop him moving. "Tell me what you've done to Olaf's children!" he ordered. Lemony looked up at him again, but his face was blank. So were his eyes. Jacques saw neither pupil nor iris in Lemony's very blank eyes.
"What have you done to Olaf's children?" Jacques shouted, shaking him. He was really beginning to get worried now. Whenever Lemony showed only the whites of his eyes it meant he'd done something terrible. "Tell me where Violet, Klaus and Sunny are!"
Lemony didn't reply. Jacques shook him harder. Lemony's eyes rolled in their sockets. Iris, no iris, iris, no iris, iris, no iris…Jacques counted thirteen blanks. Lemony had done something unforgivable.
His pupil's suddenly landed on Jacques and dilated two hundred percent.
"They're not here," he whispered.
Jacques stared back into the darkness of the enlarged pupils and did something his mother would never approve of. He struck Lemony hard across the head.
Lemony fell onto the ground. Jacques did not wait to see if he got up again. Instead he turned on his heal and walked away.
He had to find the Baudelaires, especially Olaf. Lemony could have done anything to them. (He had once dangled Sunny from a bird cage while verbally abusing Olaf for being a bad father.) Jacques only hoped he wasn't too late. He broke into a run.
Suddenly he felt a prickling on the back of his neck, like someone was following him. He tried to ignore it, but it got worse. The prickling grew stronger and spread out, until it reached the front of his neck.
Jacques realised that he wasn't imagining it at all. As he was running, a pair of hands had somehow wrapped themselves firmly around his throat.
Jacques tugged at the hands, trying to pry them off. It was futile. There was only one pair of hands in the world that strong. They were baby soft and they belonged to his brother.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jacques saw Lemony's hatless head and colourless eyes. It was the last image to ever print itself in his mind.
Jacques was lying on the ground with his eyes closed, and two members of the Council of Elders were pulling a white sheet over him, as if they were tucking him in for a nap.
Lemony read over the freshly written words. Twice. "Oh poor Jacques!" he cried out, "Not you too!" He sat down on the corpse of his brother and continued to write.
&&
If you thought that was bad…guess what? We're studying modernist short stories at the moment! No plot, no problem! Just make it as confusing as possible so your future audience can make a million different interpretations! Oh boy, don't we all love modernism.