Post by Emma “Emmz” Squalor on Feb 22, 2010 20:24:23 GMT -5
This was my birthday gift to Daniel Handler, and I am posting it here as well. For those of you who have already read it, I'm very glad you enjoyed it, and for those of you who haven't yet, I hope you do.
Doc: I've included your illustration in this post as well, but if for any reason you'd rather I didn't, let me know and I'll remove it. It just adds so much to the story that I didn't want to not include it.
Written by Emma Squalor and Dedicated to Daniel Handler[/center]
Characters: Esmé Squalor and Carmelita Spats, with a mention of Count Olaf and cameos by Fernald and Jerome Squalor.
Author’s Disclaimer: I do not own A Series of Unfortunate Events or any of its characters or places. They belong to Lemony Snicket a.k.a. Daniel Handler.
Rating: G
Genre: Drama
Story-Type: One-Shot
Summary: In order to cheer up Carmelita, Esmé performs a rare act of nobility.
~
It[/i] wasn’t being stuck inside a submarine that was getting underneath the skin of the fashionable villainess. It wasn’t the incessant complaints of the Snow Scouts as the hook-handed man had whipped them with the tagliatelle grande that was making her want to grind her teeth. It wasn’t even the look Olaf had given her outside the gas station that morning, after Carmelita had decided to embellish his car in silly-string that was causing Esmé Squalor to pout like a spoiled child.
No, it wasn’t any of these things. All of these things were superficial in comparison to the feelings of a woman whose external surface was equivalent to an icicle. In short, it was Esmé’s birthday, and yet Olaf hadn’t even bothered to get her a card.
She supposed his selfishness shouldn’t come as any real shock to her. After all, the only thing that man cared about—besides himself, of course—was that blasted sugar bowl. He didn’t care about being fashionable, or their newly adopted child, or…or her.
It had been a long time since anyone had cared about Esmé. Fernald had cared, but she’d pushed him away. Jerome had cared, but she hadn’t let him in. Her parents had cared, but they were dead. Who else did she have left besides herself?
In spite of her grim circumstances, Esmé had to smile. Smile because this was not where she’d pictured herself ending up thirty years following her arrival into the world. She wondered what her parents would think, to learn that their lovely daughter who’d once loved books and dressing up in her mother’s clothes had grown up to be the villainous girlfriend of a notorious criminal?
Esmé was forced out of her self-pitying state when the metal door of the storeroom suddenly creaked open and Carmelita was thrust inside. Esmé watched from where she sat perched on a small wooden crate as the red-haired child lashed out at the door with her foot.
“You can come out once you finally decide to behave,” came the voice of the hook-handed man, and Esmé heard the door lock from the other side. “Until then, brat, stay put.”
“You handicapped cakesniffer!” Carmelita shouted boldly. “You can’t keep me locked in here forever! Countie will—”
“Let you out?” Even though the door was shut tight, the hook-handed man’s laughter filtered stridently into the room. “Have you forgotten who gave me orders to lock you in here?”
“Then Esmé—”
“Carmelita?”
The abrupt voice caused Carmelita to jump before whirling around, her plaid skirt swaying in perfect unison with her movement. Her azure eyes locked immediately with Esmé’s sky-blue ones, and for the first time all day the villainess put forth a smile devoid of sarcasm.
“Esmé,” Carmelita said. “Esmé, what are you doing here?”
“I needed a quiet place to think.”
“Oh. I thought maybe Hooky stuck you in here, too.”
“He wouldn’t dare. He knows full well that I outrank him.” Esmé’s voice suddenly softened, as it so often did each time she spoke directly to Carmelita. “What about you, darling? What are you in here for?”
“Countie’s still mad on account of what I did to his car back at the gas station. He says I can come out once I’ve learned my place, whatever that means.” Turning toward the door, Carmelita tried the knob. When it didn’t budge, she glanced back over her shoulder at Esmé. “It looks like we’re gonna be in here for a while.”
“Then we might as well make the best of our situation,” Esmé suggested, and stood up from the crate.
“And do what?” Carmelita gazed uninterestedly around the empty room, with its groaning pipes and windows looking out into the black, bleak waters of the ocean. “Watch television?”
“Look over there, Carmy.” Raising her long, slender arm, Esmé used one red, long-nailed finger to indicate a far corner of the room. Soon enough, Carmelita’s eyes came to rest on the very object she’d first seen in the trunk of Olaf’s long, black automobile high atop Mount Fraught. The object in question was the villain’s disguise trunk, but of course she was unaware of what it contained. And so, being a child of just ten years old, she permitted her curiosity to lead her toward the item of her desire.
Squatting before the trunk, Carmelita laid her palms on her knees and peered with concentrated inquisitiveness at it. “It looks like a treasure chest—like the kind pirates have. Is there treasure inside?”
“Perhaps,” Esmé replied, her voice that of a mother whose child has just asked what the brightly colored parcels underneath the Christmas tree contain. “You’ll just have to open it and see for yourself.”
“I’ll bet it’s diamonds. And rubies.” Extending her hand, Carmelita placed her index finger and thumb against the latch at the front of the trunk. After flicking the latch upward, she placed both hands on the sides of the lid and pushed it forward. “And emeralds. And—”
But she never finished. The final word stuck in her throat and was quickly forgotten, her eyes scanning over the treasures that were neither diamond, nor ruby, nor emerald.
“Costumes!” she exclaimed. “These are way better than some dumb old rocks!”
Within moments, Esmé had made her way over to the trunk and was kneeling beside Carmelita. As the two of them sifted through the vast collection of disguises, memories of Esmé’s days as a noble individual filled her mind. She recalled how, as a small child, she’d enjoyed dressing up in her mother’s clothes. This was a consent granted to Esmé only on rainy days, when the dirt roads of Paltryville transformed into rivers of mud, making it impossible for children to ride their bicycles and for adults to drive their automobiles. But Esmé never minded. Unlike many children and adults, she had embraced rainy days. Embraced them because it meant being able to don the beautiful gowns left over from her mother’s first marriage to a wealthy man she had not loved. These gowns had been sealed in plastic covers and were stored in the far back of her parents’ closet. But every time it rained—and occasionally when Esmé was ill—her mother would remove a few of the gowns from their covers, so that her daughter could participate in a game of make-believe.
Esmé was getting ready to brush back some of the curls that had fallen past Carmelita’s shoulders, when the child let out a sudden squeal of delight. The sound startled Esmé, and her hand hovered briefly in the air, before lowering to lightly grip the rim of the trunk.
“They’re beeee-autiful!” Carmelita gushed, as she produced from the trunk a frilly pink tutu and a pair of fairy wings. Her azure eyes sparkled like sapphires, as she gazed upon the items she now held in her hands. “And pink just so happens to be my favorite color, too!”
“I thought they might appeal to you,” Esmé smiled. “Especially the tutu. And look.” Pushing some garments aside, she uncovered two more items: the first was a large pink crown, adorned with pale pink ribbons and pink flowers of a darker shade. The second item was a long, pink wand complete with a dazzling pink star at the top. “There are even a crown and wand. You can dress up as a fairy princess.”
Carmelita’s face took on a thoughtful expression. “Maybe. But I can’t be just any old fairy princess. If I’m gonna be anything, then I’ve gotta be the very best there ever was. Because I’m the cutest, prettiest, innest girl in the whole wide world!”
“Of course you are, darling.” Taking the crown from its spot inside the trunk, Esmé placed it in a suitable place of honor on Carmelita’s head. “But you’re right. If you really want to fit the definition of in, then you’re going to need more than just a crown, a wand, a tutu, and fairy wings.”
“What else is there?” asked Carmelita curiously.
“Well, let’s see what else is hiding in here,” Esmé suggested, and Carmelita watched her adopted mother begin to sort through the trunk once more. Eventually Esmé came across a stethoscope, a small plastic bag containing pink puffballs, and a pair of mismatched tap shoes. She thought a moment, and then smiled as an inspiration struck her.
“What?”
“Fairy princesses may be in,” Esmé said. “But so are tap-dancers and veterinarians. So instead of being just one thing, why not be a combination? That way, you’ll be three times as in.”
Carmelita grinned, showing her perfect, pearl-white teeth. “I like being three times as in. It’s very…smashing.”
Esmé smiled at the way her vocabulary appeared to be rubbing off on Carmelita. “You can wear this stethoscope.” She held up the object to indicate. “I know it’s a bit plain to look at now, but if we glue some of these pink puffballs onto it, then it will make a very in addition to your outfit. I’ll even do your makeup for you if you’d like. Do you still have that container of glittery eye-shadow and tube of pink lipstick I bought you at the drugstore last week?”
Carmelita nodded enthusiastically. Sliding her hand into the pocket of her skirt, she brought forth the items her adopted mother was inquiring about.
“What about you, Esmé?” Carmelita asked. “Aren’t you going to dress up, too?”
“I plan to later on. There’s an outfit I’ve been working on that’s just about finished. But for now, let’s focus on giving you a new and fabulous look. All right, darling?”
Carmelita beamed with excitement. “You bet!”
“I used to enjoy doing this sort of thing with my mother,” Esmé continued, as she used the lipstick to stencil a heart around Carmelita’s left cheek. “Well, perhaps not the makeup part, considering how she didn’t approve of me using her cosmetics. But the dressing up part was something she always encouraged. Every time the weather was bad or I was stuck inside with a cold, she would always let me dress up in her clothes so that I wouldn’t be bored.”
Bored. The final word struck a familiarity in Esmé. As dull and boring as she’d found him to be, there were things Jerome Squalor had said that made a lot of sense. In particular during one conversation they’d shared, which had taken place shortly before they decided to adopt the three Baudelaire children. “‘A child’s love has the power to make up for decades of loneliness,’” Jerome had told Esmé, who was dead set against the idea of ever having children of her own. “‘Imagine for a moment your life being on the brink of despair, or that you’ve just gotten home after a terrible day at work. All you feel like doing is going to bed and pulling the covers up over your head. But before you can even make it through the front door, your son or daughter comes stampeding toward you and throws their arms around you. Before you know it, you feel the cause of your distress begin to fade like clouds after a storm. And the only reason you don’t wonder where those negative feelings went is because you can no longer remember what they were. That, my dear, is what makes children such a blessing.’”
For a moment Esmé was almost sorry she’d ever left Jerome, who underneath his dimwittedness was unremittingly wise. The villainess dropped the tube of lipstick she was using, letting it roll across the metal floor unnoticed. As difficult as it was to believe, behind her crimson smile, bizarre outfits, and villainous ways, there was a little girl crying out for love. Before she could stop herself, Esmé threw her arms around the child in front of her: perhaps it was to stop herself from having to recall her own lost childhood, which had ended prematurely at the tender age of twelve upon being separated from her parents; or perhaps it was to fill a void somewhere deep inside, which so many childless women experience at some point in their lives. Whatever it was, Esmé Squalor felt it now, and she needed something to cling to before she plummeted down, down into the abyss of her own loneliness.
She was suddenly aware of the sensation brought on by Carmelita’s arms as they slipped around her, and she made no effort to resist. It felt nice, being held like this, even if it was by someone who wasn’t Olaf, and even if it wasn’t the sort of affection the villainess was used to.
Maybe this wasn’t going to be such a lousy day after all. If Esmé was honest with herself, she might even say it was turning out to be a very smashing birthday indeed.
Doc: I've included your illustration in this post as well, but if for any reason you'd rather I didn't, let me know and I'll remove it. It just adds so much to the story that I didn't want to not include it.
~
Behind Her Crimson Smile
Written by Emma Squalor and Dedicated to Daniel Handler[/center]
Characters: Esmé Squalor and Carmelita Spats, with a mention of Count Olaf and cameos by Fernald and Jerome Squalor.
Author’s Disclaimer: I do not own A Series of Unfortunate Events or any of its characters or places. They belong to Lemony Snicket a.k.a. Daniel Handler.
Rating: G
Genre: Drama
Story-Type: One-Shot
Summary: In order to cheer up Carmelita, Esmé performs a rare act of nobility.
~
It[/i] wasn’t being stuck inside a submarine that was getting underneath the skin of the fashionable villainess. It wasn’t the incessant complaints of the Snow Scouts as the hook-handed man had whipped them with the tagliatelle grande that was making her want to grind her teeth. It wasn’t even the look Olaf had given her outside the gas station that morning, after Carmelita had decided to embellish his car in silly-string that was causing Esmé Squalor to pout like a spoiled child.
No, it wasn’t any of these things. All of these things were superficial in comparison to the feelings of a woman whose external surface was equivalent to an icicle. In short, it was Esmé’s birthday, and yet Olaf hadn’t even bothered to get her a card.
She supposed his selfishness shouldn’t come as any real shock to her. After all, the only thing that man cared about—besides himself, of course—was that blasted sugar bowl. He didn’t care about being fashionable, or their newly adopted child, or…or her.
It had been a long time since anyone had cared about Esmé. Fernald had cared, but she’d pushed him away. Jerome had cared, but she hadn’t let him in. Her parents had cared, but they were dead. Who else did she have left besides herself?
In spite of her grim circumstances, Esmé had to smile. Smile because this was not where she’d pictured herself ending up thirty years following her arrival into the world. She wondered what her parents would think, to learn that their lovely daughter who’d once loved books and dressing up in her mother’s clothes had grown up to be the villainous girlfriend of a notorious criminal?
Esmé was forced out of her self-pitying state when the metal door of the storeroom suddenly creaked open and Carmelita was thrust inside. Esmé watched from where she sat perched on a small wooden crate as the red-haired child lashed out at the door with her foot.
“You can come out once you finally decide to behave,” came the voice of the hook-handed man, and Esmé heard the door lock from the other side. “Until then, brat, stay put.”
“You handicapped cakesniffer!” Carmelita shouted boldly. “You can’t keep me locked in here forever! Countie will—”
“Let you out?” Even though the door was shut tight, the hook-handed man’s laughter filtered stridently into the room. “Have you forgotten who gave me orders to lock you in here?”
“Then Esmé—”
“Carmelita?”
The abrupt voice caused Carmelita to jump before whirling around, her plaid skirt swaying in perfect unison with her movement. Her azure eyes locked immediately with Esmé’s sky-blue ones, and for the first time all day the villainess put forth a smile devoid of sarcasm.
“Esmé,” Carmelita said. “Esmé, what are you doing here?”
“I needed a quiet place to think.”
“Oh. I thought maybe Hooky stuck you in here, too.”
“He wouldn’t dare. He knows full well that I outrank him.” Esmé’s voice suddenly softened, as it so often did each time she spoke directly to Carmelita. “What about you, darling? What are you in here for?”
“Countie’s still mad on account of what I did to his car back at the gas station. He says I can come out once I’ve learned my place, whatever that means.” Turning toward the door, Carmelita tried the knob. When it didn’t budge, she glanced back over her shoulder at Esmé. “It looks like we’re gonna be in here for a while.”
“Then we might as well make the best of our situation,” Esmé suggested, and stood up from the crate.
“And do what?” Carmelita gazed uninterestedly around the empty room, with its groaning pipes and windows looking out into the black, bleak waters of the ocean. “Watch television?”
“Look over there, Carmy.” Raising her long, slender arm, Esmé used one red, long-nailed finger to indicate a far corner of the room. Soon enough, Carmelita’s eyes came to rest on the very object she’d first seen in the trunk of Olaf’s long, black automobile high atop Mount Fraught. The object in question was the villain’s disguise trunk, but of course she was unaware of what it contained. And so, being a child of just ten years old, she permitted her curiosity to lead her toward the item of her desire.
Squatting before the trunk, Carmelita laid her palms on her knees and peered with concentrated inquisitiveness at it. “It looks like a treasure chest—like the kind pirates have. Is there treasure inside?”
“Perhaps,” Esmé replied, her voice that of a mother whose child has just asked what the brightly colored parcels underneath the Christmas tree contain. “You’ll just have to open it and see for yourself.”
“I’ll bet it’s diamonds. And rubies.” Extending her hand, Carmelita placed her index finger and thumb against the latch at the front of the trunk. After flicking the latch upward, she placed both hands on the sides of the lid and pushed it forward. “And emeralds. And—”
But she never finished. The final word stuck in her throat and was quickly forgotten, her eyes scanning over the treasures that were neither diamond, nor ruby, nor emerald.
“Costumes!” she exclaimed. “These are way better than some dumb old rocks!”
Within moments, Esmé had made her way over to the trunk and was kneeling beside Carmelita. As the two of them sifted through the vast collection of disguises, memories of Esmé’s days as a noble individual filled her mind. She recalled how, as a small child, she’d enjoyed dressing up in her mother’s clothes. This was a consent granted to Esmé only on rainy days, when the dirt roads of Paltryville transformed into rivers of mud, making it impossible for children to ride their bicycles and for adults to drive their automobiles. But Esmé never minded. Unlike many children and adults, she had embraced rainy days. Embraced them because it meant being able to don the beautiful gowns left over from her mother’s first marriage to a wealthy man she had not loved. These gowns had been sealed in plastic covers and were stored in the far back of her parents’ closet. But every time it rained—and occasionally when Esmé was ill—her mother would remove a few of the gowns from their covers, so that her daughter could participate in a game of make-believe.
Esmé was getting ready to brush back some of the curls that had fallen past Carmelita’s shoulders, when the child let out a sudden squeal of delight. The sound startled Esmé, and her hand hovered briefly in the air, before lowering to lightly grip the rim of the trunk.
“They’re beeee-autiful!” Carmelita gushed, as she produced from the trunk a frilly pink tutu and a pair of fairy wings. Her azure eyes sparkled like sapphires, as she gazed upon the items she now held in her hands. “And pink just so happens to be my favorite color, too!”
“I thought they might appeal to you,” Esmé smiled. “Especially the tutu. And look.” Pushing some garments aside, she uncovered two more items: the first was a large pink crown, adorned with pale pink ribbons and pink flowers of a darker shade. The second item was a long, pink wand complete with a dazzling pink star at the top. “There are even a crown and wand. You can dress up as a fairy princess.”
Carmelita’s face took on a thoughtful expression. “Maybe. But I can’t be just any old fairy princess. If I’m gonna be anything, then I’ve gotta be the very best there ever was. Because I’m the cutest, prettiest, innest girl in the whole wide world!”
“Of course you are, darling.” Taking the crown from its spot inside the trunk, Esmé placed it in a suitable place of honor on Carmelita’s head. “But you’re right. If you really want to fit the definition of in, then you’re going to need more than just a crown, a wand, a tutu, and fairy wings.”
“What else is there?” asked Carmelita curiously.
“Well, let’s see what else is hiding in here,” Esmé suggested, and Carmelita watched her adopted mother begin to sort through the trunk once more. Eventually Esmé came across a stethoscope, a small plastic bag containing pink puffballs, and a pair of mismatched tap shoes. She thought a moment, and then smiled as an inspiration struck her.
“What?”
“Fairy princesses may be in,” Esmé said. “But so are tap-dancers and veterinarians. So instead of being just one thing, why not be a combination? That way, you’ll be three times as in.”
Carmelita grinned, showing her perfect, pearl-white teeth. “I like being three times as in. It’s very…smashing.”
Esmé smiled at the way her vocabulary appeared to be rubbing off on Carmelita. “You can wear this stethoscope.” She held up the object to indicate. “I know it’s a bit plain to look at now, but if we glue some of these pink puffballs onto it, then it will make a very in addition to your outfit. I’ll even do your makeup for you if you’d like. Do you still have that container of glittery eye-shadow and tube of pink lipstick I bought you at the drugstore last week?”
Carmelita nodded enthusiastically. Sliding her hand into the pocket of her skirt, she brought forth the items her adopted mother was inquiring about.
“What about you, Esmé?” Carmelita asked. “Aren’t you going to dress up, too?”
“I plan to later on. There’s an outfit I’ve been working on that’s just about finished. But for now, let’s focus on giving you a new and fabulous look. All right, darling?”
Carmelita beamed with excitement. “You bet!”
“I used to enjoy doing this sort of thing with my mother,” Esmé continued, as she used the lipstick to stencil a heart around Carmelita’s left cheek. “Well, perhaps not the makeup part, considering how she didn’t approve of me using her cosmetics. But the dressing up part was something she always encouraged. Every time the weather was bad or I was stuck inside with a cold, she would always let me dress up in her clothes so that I wouldn’t be bored.”
Bored. The final word struck a familiarity in Esmé. As dull and boring as she’d found him to be, there were things Jerome Squalor had said that made a lot of sense. In particular during one conversation they’d shared, which had taken place shortly before they decided to adopt the three Baudelaire children. “‘A child’s love has the power to make up for decades of loneliness,’” Jerome had told Esmé, who was dead set against the idea of ever having children of her own. “‘Imagine for a moment your life being on the brink of despair, or that you’ve just gotten home after a terrible day at work. All you feel like doing is going to bed and pulling the covers up over your head. But before you can even make it through the front door, your son or daughter comes stampeding toward you and throws their arms around you. Before you know it, you feel the cause of your distress begin to fade like clouds after a storm. And the only reason you don’t wonder where those negative feelings went is because you can no longer remember what they were. That, my dear, is what makes children such a blessing.’”
For a moment Esmé was almost sorry she’d ever left Jerome, who underneath his dimwittedness was unremittingly wise. The villainess dropped the tube of lipstick she was using, letting it roll across the metal floor unnoticed. As difficult as it was to believe, behind her crimson smile, bizarre outfits, and villainous ways, there was a little girl crying out for love. Before she could stop herself, Esmé threw her arms around the child in front of her: perhaps it was to stop herself from having to recall her own lost childhood, which had ended prematurely at the tender age of twelve upon being separated from her parents; or perhaps it was to fill a void somewhere deep inside, which so many childless women experience at some point in their lives. Whatever it was, Esmé Squalor felt it now, and she needed something to cling to before she plummeted down, down into the abyss of her own loneliness.
She was suddenly aware of the sensation brought on by Carmelita’s arms as they slipped around her, and she made no effort to resist. It felt nice, being held like this, even if it was by someone who wasn’t Olaf, and even if it wasn’t the sort of affection the villainess was used to.
Maybe this wasn’t going to be such a lousy day after all. If Esmé was honest with herself, she might even say it was turning out to be a very smashing birthday indeed.
~The End~
[/b][/i]~
~Drawn by Dilustro / Orwell~
~Drawn by Dilustro / Orwell~