Chapter 9, Crazy Dewey and His Awesome Bachelor Pad. Oh! And Something About Storybook Endings
Disclaimer: Young hearts, run free, nothing is ours and will never be
A/N: Here's the last of tonight's merry threesome of chapters! I'd also like to ask that once done with this chapter you do read the closing note as there is a little surprise waiting for you there! Now, let's get going!
Dewey's crazed laughter drowned out Mr. Poe's heartbroken sobs.
"Now," he began menacingly, "I'll leave you to die. But you, my dear girl, are coming with me!"
With that, he lunged forward, grabbed Violet and leapt through the hole in the floor.
"VIOLET!" wailed Duncan as his beloved was swept off, screaming, across the lobby.
With the harpoon gun, now containing only one harpoon, in one hand and Violet in the other, Dewey was somehow flying across the room.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Chubs from where he and the others were sitting about, "I think that's Violet!"
"What the hell's going on?" wondered Isadora.
Dewey alighted on a narrow ledge in the domed ceiling where a panel slid aside and stayed open long enough for him to leap through before it sealed behind him.
Violet screamed as she hurtled through the darkness. The panel seemed to have opened up onto a
slide going down, and down, and down.
She finally crashed landed in a pool of foul smelling water.
Violet felt around in the pitch darkness to find Dewey. When she didn't catch him, she decided it would be a good time to try and escape.
Before she could even formulate a plan, though, light flooded the room.
She was in cavern, complete with mist, filthy lake and a Viking longship. The cavern was dimly lit by a series of faulty lightbulbs strung across the ceiling on wires.
Dewey was sitting at a small table in the center of the chamber, he looked at her invitingly and said, "Please, do sit down!"
Violet tentativly approached the little tea set and sat at the chair across from him.
She brought the subject down immeidiatly, "Why the bloody hell did you kidnap me?"
"Because I get rather lonely at night."
Violet, who had just begun to sip tea, spat it right out once he said that.
"EXCUSE ME?" she roared, "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN, 'I GET LONELY AT NIGHT'? I'M NOT DOING ANY DISGUSTING PORNO CRAP WITH YOU! I HAVE A MAN!"
Dewey qiueted down at once and set his little strawberry scone down, "You do, do you?"
"Yeah, I do."
"That boy who you kissed so stimulatingly back in the clock?"
"Yeah, Duncan. H-he means everything to me! I mean, aside from my weird brother and pyschopath sister, he's all I have! My parents died in a train wreck a few months ago and he's been the best friend anyone could ask for. He's a little strange sometimes but I like that about him, it gives him character. He's so nice, like a-a storybook prince!"
"Aren't you a little too grown-up to believe in storybook endings?" chided Dewey.
Violet got up and struck him upside the face, "Listen here, you:" she began as the orchestra wailed in accompinment.
STORYBOOK ENDINGS {From 'The Scarlet Pimpernell'}
{Note, throughout the song, Violet is triumphant and sexy, she parades about the cavern, inflicting pain on Dewey at every possible oppurtunity}
Violet: Listen to me, I beautiful dreams I can spin you. Dreams to linger within you. Close your eyes and we'll ride my carousel!
{she knees Dewey in the crotch}
I'll sing you stories of lovers whose love used to fill me! And of lovers who will be. For, you see love is one thing I do well!
{she punches Dewey in the gut}
Come, let's believe love can be just as sweet as it seems!
Let's live on dreams!
{She snaps the table cloth of off the table and wraps it around Dewey's neck}
In my dreams such beautiful lovers have found me!
Storybook lovers surround me!
Nothing is real, but I'm flying, sighing, where, where, where is my storybook ending?
Why does my golden pretending, leave me with nothing to hold but MY DREAMS?
{she kicks Dewey in the spine and wraps the table cloth around herself like a kimono}
Oh, is it only in dreams that we find our ideal love?
Are there lovers with real love?
If you know how to feel love, show me how.
Ah, but my prince, if you can't be as sweet as you seem, I'd rather dream.
{she spins Dewey around the cavern}
Come and wake me!
Come be the love I can hold now.
Storybook love leaves me cold now.
Show me the way to stop dreaming.
There is only one perfect storybook ending!
That is the end of pretending!
That is the moment I say, LOVE ME NOW!
{she sings in French}
Et sur mon manege, l'amour toujours est chantant.
De mes reves, c'est le commencement.
Et j'espere une fin heureuse.
Mais la fin de l'histoire ne vient pas tres doucement.
Pour l'histoire, il faut faire semblant.
Certes je n'embrasse que mes reves.
Seuls mes reves!
{Dewey collapses in an unconscious heap}
THE CURTAN FALLS, BUT WE'VE GOT A BIT OF A WAYS TO GO
"What are we going to do?" cried Carmelita hysterically, looking up at the hole in the ceiling beyond which her old love was trapped.
"Dunky's up there!"
"Oh, poor Sir!" moaned Charles, wringing his hands like the patsy he was.
The party of four left the wreckege of the lobby and began mounting the stairs to the clock's trapdoor, hoping to save those that were trapped inside.
"I have a plan, dear girl and...thing." Chubs assured Carmelita and Charles, "We will find a way."
"We're here!" Announced Isadora, indeed, they were now facing the ladder to the clock.
Chubs scaled it and pushed the trapdoor with quite a good deal of grunting.
"It won't budge." he said grimly, "It must be blocked very securely."
Charles started hopping up and down in a state of incredible panic, "Oh, what a catastrophe! An apostrophe! A-a..."
Isadora slapped him, "Get ahold of yourself!"
"Isadora is right." said Chubs, "I suggest we go to bed. The snow has stopped falling. If all goes well, by tomorrow a plow shall come to get us out of here."
They looked at each other, and descended the stairs.
In the Clock, hysteria was reaching a breaking point. Flo and Tocuna were slapping each other, Enya was playing the world's smallest violin, Sir was monologuing to himself and Duncan was writing a dying statement with a crayon and an old Kleenex.
Esme was staring at Olaf and imploring him to 'Do something, you ass!' every ten minutes and Olaf himself was conversing with Reggie and Fernald in hushed tones. Mr. Poe was still cradling Martha's body and blubbering like a baby.
Suddenly, there was a great shuddering and a heavy metal sheet closed over the hole in the floor, leaving them in total darkness.
"What happened?" asked Tocuna in shock. "I think we've been sealed off!" replied Flo.
"It's that damn Plot Twist!" roared Olaf, "He's unleased a..."
"A Plot Twist?" suggested Fernald drily, Olaf slapped him.
"WE'LL DIE IN THE DARK!" wailed Enya, dropping to its knees.
"Calm down!" Duncan tried to placate his fellow prisoners, "We must have order. First order of business, who eats whom?"
"The banker's got the most meat on him." noted Reggie.
"Yes! Let's eat him first!" said Sir, hungrily.
"NO!" Mr. Poe cried, "I'm not good for eating! My meat is too tough due to years of nasal congistion!"
To emphasize his point, he broke into another coughing fit.
"Then," began Esme, "We must eat the maid's corpse!"
"NEVER!" said Mr. Poe, "You're not setting a hand on Martha. NONE OF YOU!"
The resulting chaos, though rather humorous to describe, can easily be skipped because I want to get back to Violet's side of the story.
Violet looked up from the her tea at the sound of a distant clang. Spinning on her heel she saw Dewey standing in a niche behind and curtan and fiddling with some levers and dials.
"What are you doing?" she asked peevishly, striding into the niche with him. Aside from a dashboard covered in little levers, switches and knobs, there were little security monitors that displayed black and white recordings of every room in the Hotel Plot Twist.
Dewey turned to her and gave a small cry before he remembered who she was, "Oh! I've just made sure none of our little captives can escape." He gestured to one of the monitors and Violet saw that it dipicted the people in the Clock sealed in utter darkness.
"Why did you do that?" she wondered in rising irritation, "Like you said, even if they tried to escape through the hole then they would have fallen to their deaths!"
"One can never be too careful." Dewey shrugged, "Sit down, dear girl and we will have a conversation."
They once again sat at the tea set and Dewey began a rather long-winded speech that, though it is very dull to read, reveals much information that you will need to know to advance in the story. If you find it advisable, you may get a snack or massage your feet before we begin Dewey's monologue.
Are you ready? Good!
DEWEY'S MONOLOGUE
"From my earliset youth I discovered that my nature was a mass of contradictions. My brothers and I lived in relative peace in a little cottage in the countryside.
One day I heard a noise outside the window. The noise was this, 'Hello. Please leave a message after the tone'.
Indeed, this sound quite puzzled me, so I responded, 'Excuse me, I don't quite understand what you were saying.'
I regretted that immeidiatly after I said it. There was a great shattering sound and someone through a dictionary through the window. Men clad in black coats and hats jumped through all of the windows and broke down the door. They snatched me from the kitchen, Frank from the bathroom and Ernest from the couch where he was watching 'Everybody Loves Raymond' on TBS.
The men carried my brothers and I away from the house. None of us ever saw our parents again.
They brought us to a place high in the Dandruff Mountains where there was a huge walled complex that was their headquarters.
Once we were there, they introduced themselves as ZYK and our training began.
Life in that organization was hard and dull. We slept with a menagerie of other bland and boring children in filthy dormitories. We ate disgusting mash and unsweetened tea for meals. Whenever someone asked for sugar, one of the elder members would take out a bamboo post and beat that person while shouting, 'TEA SHOULD BE AS BITTER AS WORMWOOD AND AS SHARP AS A TWO-EDGED SWORD!'
We were taught strange things: how to write coded messages and how to kill a man with superior vocabulary. It was hell.
I soon lost interest in my brothers and let them run off on their own pursuits. I became rather taken with one of my classmates, Kit Snicket. She was beautiful and intelligent and for a few days it seemed we would be together forever.
But then came Olaf.
Olaf was as filthy and odiferous then as he is now. I don't think he ever was clean or innocent. His parents had been killed in a mad poison darts incident at the opera when he was fourteen. He was never a chatty type but Kit liked him. She liked him more then me. They had meals together and took walks in the snow on the weekends. She soon forgot about me and cast me into obscurity! Whenever I tried to talk to her, Olaf was always there. She was never without him and, in time, he realized that I had affections for her.
Well, Olaf didn't like that one bit. He terrorized me to no end with his gaggle of lackys. He went after my brothers too, thinking that by harming one of us he would send us all of us down. Ernest sided with him immediatly like the smart aleck he was! He knew better then to pick a fight with someone as influential as Olaf was; he had an even greater hold on us children then the adults did. Frank was bullied the hardest, unlike me he had a strange tendency to retreat inside himself whenever he was in danger. He himself never fully recovered from the strain of those times.
I tried my best to resist the harrasment but I gave in every once in a while.
Things progressed in this way for some time. We graduated and became official members of that blasted organization!
Olaf's job was to study locomotives, Kit's was to study re-runs of CSI, Ernest's was to organize group meetings and assist the lesser staff, Frank was so distraught by this point that all he was good for was flushing toilets, and that is just what he did. Kit's brothers, Jacques and Lemony were chroniclers. They held a post in the mysterious ZYK Archives which was home to some of the most tantalizing secrets in the world. I worked alongside the Snicket brothers, sorting the various files into their proper aisles.
There was one part of the Archives where not even the Snickets were allowed to go: the confidential archives which held comprehensive records of the most crucial events in the history of the universe that only the most senior members of ZYK were aloud to see. Those senior members are all dead now, of course. The confedential archives were all contained in a single manila envelope kept rolled up at the bottom of a file cabinet that was locked so securely that not even the sturdiest of conventianal explosives could get inside.
Outside business, Kit was growing ever closer to Olaf. I tried my damndest to get her attention and one day something sparked. Kit and I kissed under the locker room.
Olaf found out about this in time and I think that that was when he lost it completly. He began to plot on how to overthrow ZYK. I was sometimes fortunate enough to have a glimpse at his notes which he hid in his pink 'Sweet Secrets' Diary. The notes were all done in an untidy scrawl; he had a list of enemies on the first page. Needless to say, I was number one on the list.
By the time we were all eighteen, I had formulated a plan to escape ZYK and take the most compelling of its information with me. The plan was this: I was to break into the confidential archives and steal that envelope that contained all of it and take it off with me so I could start a new life.
I didn't know it at the time, but Olaf was making similar plans with the use of his locomotive knowledge.
And then, on November 16th of that year, I snuck, in the dead of night, into the archives and picked the lock of the confidential section with a pick I had made with a curling iron, a pencil and several wads of gum.
After I got inside, I took the manila envelope and hid it in a large chamber pot that I had brought with me. I fastened it shut with a heavy lid that I attached with steel latches.
My plan seemed perfect, all I had to do now was escape. But then, as I was leaving the archives, Lemony Snicket caught me.
'What is that chamber pot in your hands?' he asked, before reminding me, 'Chamber pot, is a word which here means: a recipticle for holding fecal waste that is being held by Dewey Plot Twist.'
I was about to reply with some cleverly thought up lie but then Olaf launched his most devious scheme at long last.
He had used his advanced knowledge of trains to design a locomotive on top of Maunt Fickle-Nickle, the highest peak in the Dandruff Mountains and had routed it to an electrical cable running under the ground, through the headquarters. He planned to run down the whole place with that train and kill as many of us as he pleased.
It began with a low rumbling sound, growing steadly louder by the second. Then, things began to vibrate until the very walls of the archives were shaking, sending files and portfolios tumbling to the floor.
Lemony and I looked around in shock as dust began to rain from the ceiling and the shelves tumbled to the ground.
Finally, the train tore through the outer walls of the headquarters. In all of the buildings, people woke up and made for the exit.
Lemony and I dashed into the courtyard as the train ripped through the movie theater and out the back wall. That doesn't sound so bad, of course, but the real damage was caused by aftershock. The headquarters' foundations had weakend when the train came through and the buildings that were still standing also collapsed.
I dropped the chamber pot in shock and it rolled down the court.
That's when Lemony realized, 'The confidential archives are in the chamber pot!' he called over the roar of the crumbling buildings.
A man, rather rotund, came across the chamber pot and picked it up, but the cobblestones he was standing on split and he tripped as the chamber pot landed in the swervy stream, to end up in the sea.
Countless members of the organization I hated so fiercely were killed in the subsequent collapse of the headquarters, but Lemony and I managed to make it to a cave across from the wreck. Also in the cave were Jacques, Kit, my Siblings as well as various others of the few survivors.
We watched in awestruck silence as the train barreled off of a cliff and the enormous dust cloud cleared, revealing the ruins of the ZYK headquarters.
After that day, Olaf dissapeared and ZYK had gone from an all powerful, life sucking organization to a sniveling collection of a few obnoxiously intelligent people.
Kit was one of the few who remained loyal to them. She resumed her life of reviewing CSI re-runs and eventually turned into the penniless wretch she is today.
Jacques Snicket moved to the the Asshat Village of Blackbirds and continued to make observations for ZYK.
Lemony was forever resentful. He knew that I was the reason the confidential archives were gone and spent the rest of his years chroniciling every little event that happened it the hopes of recovering the Chamber Pot.
My brothers and I moved to Dirty Bastard. Frank was still loyal to ZYK, Ernest and I, not so much.
After trying fruitlessly to find our parents, Ernest decided to use the skills he had learned in ZYK to build the Hotel Plot Twist using money that he got on loan from the Bank of Bastard. He never repaid that money, but he had the Bank shut down eventually so it was no concern to him.
Ernest was chief manager, I was assitant manager and Frank flushed toilets just as he had always done.
It seemed that we were finally happy. That is, until Lemony Snicket, now ruler of Snicket Land, reared his ugly and mysterious head.
He sent Ernest a letter, imploring him that, 'For the good of all noble and intelligent people, force your heathen, a word which here means 'Dewey Plot Twist', brother to reveal the location of the Chamber Pot in which he has hidden the confidential archives of ZYK.'
Ernest of course, didn't know what the hell Lemony was talking about. The only ones who knew what was in the chamber pot were myself and Snicket himself. But Ernest was never one to take chances.
Little did they know that I already had the Chamber Pot!
I had performed extensive research on the currents of the Swervy Stream and had predicited exactly where it would wash ashore once the ocean's tides let it go.
I found it on a beach in Majorica, a little Spanish Island. The lid was still securely latched and the contents undamaged by the water.
I had hidden my plunder where no one ever thinks to look: in my underwear drawer.
But once Ernest recieved Lemony's letter I knew my time had run out.
Frank and Ernest cornered me and questioned me as to wherabouts of the Chamber Pot but I told them nothing.
They searched my room, searched the whole damn hotel but they found nothing. I had hidden the the recipticle under my assitant manager's cap, the second place where they would never think to look.
Enraged, Ernest locked me up down here, in this cavern. He thought being confined to the dark and damp would force me to reveal the secret. But it didn't work.
I actually quite liked my new home and used it to my advantage. I hid the Chamber Pot within and used the security monitiors of my own creation to spy on whomever I wished in the hotel above me.
Things progressed in this way for some time until just a few months ago when Kit Snicket reentered my life.
She entered through a tunnel she had dug herself, with the aid of a giant drilling machine.
She had wanted to warn me about Olaf coming to stay in his search for the Chamber Pot. I don't think she knew I had it. She just wanted an excuse to see me again.
We made love that night and she left, distraught and pregnant, as Lemony Snicket would say. You probably didn't notice her pregancy, considering all she wears is a baggy garbage bag; it would've hidden her baby bump.
Anyway, once I knew of Olaf's planned stay, I decided to make the most of it by killing him and everyone else who wanted the Chamber Pot.
The day came and you and those children arrived on Kit's orders. Along with you there were those three teachers, whom Olaf had inadvertantly lured on the trail of the Chamber Pot. There was Sir and his assitant who have been searching for the secret within the Chamber Pot for years. And of course, there were my brothers, who had wanted it since Lemony Snicket sent the letter to Ernest.
I've killed most of them already and now all I have to do is kill the rest!"
END OF INCREDIBLY LONG AND TEDIOUS MONOLOGUE
By this point, Violet was half-asleep with her face in the plate of scones.
"Girl!" Dewey tried to wake her, "Girl? Wake up, dammit!"
"Y-yeah, I heard you." stammered Violet before going to sleep.
"Honestly, I thought having a captive would be fun!" said Dewey, striding off to his bed.
A/N: Another long chapter! Well, it was long only because of Dewey's monologue. It was very hard to make that serious and mildly funny at the same time, so I hope it was satisfying!
If you're curious know about the actual government and politics of Snicket Land, you'll have to wait until Book 4, in which more will be explained about the environment of the story as well as the characters in it.
Now for that surprise: you may remember how I once asked you all how a serious murder mystery fic would appeal to you? I recieved several PM's as well as some reviews speaking in the affirmitave and we'd like to annouce that, as of last week, Mount Rancour is sterling on the Harper's Island archive.
You don't actual have to have seen the source material to understand this fic, as it uses orginal characters and setting in a way similar to the original show.
I'll be posting updates weekly, as with this story, and after I put these chapters up, I'll post chapter two to MR. Feel free to check it out if you want a mystery fix!
Update Coming Next Friday!:)