|
Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 8, 2014 1:46:42 GMT -5
Snippet Two
After intermittent rests counting no more than a few seconds and about an hour of frantic running, Faraday had come to the light at the end of the tunnel. It was a red neon light which read "EXIT" and it flickered evenly with a low hum as it cast a ghostly glow on the metal door under it. He turned the large rusted handle and pulled down, slowly opening the door. With a last look back from whence he came, he walked out the door, which swung itself shut after him. He was facing a railed staircase hewn out of stone, which he surmised was winding upward to some surface aperture. Freedom. He laughed silently as he climbed the steps, checking back behind him every moment or so, as if his enemies might have followed him there. After fifteen minutes he reached the end of it. The two shelter doors creaked heavily as he thrust them open, bathing him in the evening breeze.
Breathing in relief and exhaustion, he collapsed next to a tree root at the edge of the voluminous forest next to the opening of the now closed passageway. Reuel Faraday had outrun his captors who seemed to think he knew where the sugar bowl was. He was miles away from them on the other side of the area. They had been led on wild goose chases before, a phrase which here means "deceived into thinking many times that the object they wished to acquire was in the keeping of someone whom their target knew professionally." Never had he once come across the real thing, though. He had helped with the placement of a decoy in a certain tea set containing valuable information crucial to a certain secret organization of which he was still not familiar with even though he had been a member since he had been a small child.
There was a woman who had taught him everything he knew, but she had disappeared from his life after he had learned everything he could from her. The most remarkable thing he remembered about her was her hair: dark, unkempt, and wavy like disheveled yarn. Theodora had been a most critical woman who had often spoken disapprovingly concerning her last student, but she had taken a liking to him. As it turned out, she hadn't liked his own first name either. Due to that, his gratitude towards her was enormous. He wondered where she was now, if she was even alive. He remembered her exasperated expression framed by her wild hair, and he realized he was missing her terribly. He had never told her, of course, of his deep and affectionate regard for her bordering on infatuation, part of which had been from apprentice to chaperone. He had had no wish to displease her nor derail their then work at hand for the organization they were part of. Another part was the fierce love and devotion of young man towards older woman in a way that seemed to evoke a beauty only found within the great unrequited poems of myth and legend.
She had marked him with her no-nonsense manner and agitated verve. She was his ideal and the lighthouse of his teenage years. She had kept him focused, and that was a reassurance in a world gone mad. Hence, he had never tired of hearing her suggestions and alternatives and critiques. He had trusted her alone out of everyone else in their organization. And I know for a fact, dear reader, that his trust in her had not been misplaced at all.
Shaking his head lightly, he gazed into the dark forest. A point of fire winked from within the wood, and Faraday tensed up. Rustling footsteps neared him as he realized who it was. "Are you who I think you are?" "I didn't realize this was a sad occasion." "Faraday." "Ivo. What news?" The lanky man nodded curtly, gripping an oil lantern. He was nearing middle age and his hairs were starting to grey. "Alexandra Radzinsky is having a right old fit with you escaping her clutches," he laughed. Ivo Hardrada had been on a secret mission in which he had infiltrated the ranks of the woman who had previously captured but had failed to keep Faraday. "Was it you who threw something out there while I was in that room?" A quick nod. "She seemed to think I knew where it was." "She has been known to jump to conclusions," Ivo mused. Faraday thought for a moment. Alexandra Radzinsky was indeed known to go off into rabid flights of vicious fancy whenever the sugar bowl was mentioned to her face. It was as if she had been primed for it. "That place where I was held contained a passageway which runs all the way to this very spot." Faraday was pacing slowly, still lost in thought. "Why hasn't she known of this? She never noticed until I was well under way escaping." Ivo scrunched his eyebrows. "She can't have planned for it, though. Her rage was real, or it seemed so to me." "Exactly. Her blind spot, when she is clinched all on the sugar bowl." Faraday stopped. "The place was very derelict, don't you think?" Ivo nodded.
If you have ever been somewhere in a building or an old museum, you might have been wondering what sort of purpose the building had before housing its current layout. A very long time before you were born there was a bookstore in the City where a wealthy man in a pinstripe suit took his young charge to every weekend with his two other charges in tow. The young charges are long gone, and their guardian was presumed dead in a devastating hotel fire which involved the young charges significantly. That bookstore was replaced by a shady café known to lace its root beer floats with high traces of wormwood with varying allergic reactions from its frequenters. As it so happens, dear reader, the place of Reuel Faraday's temporary capture had once been the residence of Alighiero Mallansohn.
|
|
|
Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 7, 2014 20:49:36 GMT -5
You are welcome, Dante.
Snippet One.
Reuel Faraday was a young man who hated his name. His first name, to be precise. He assumed he had been named such after a prominent friend of his family, not that he knew much about them. Faraday, who liked to be called "Dan" or "Daniel" instead of "Reuel", was an orphan from a very early age. It had been when he was around four or five or six years into his life that his home had gone up in flames, taking his parents with it, or so he had been told. Young Faraday had been taken in by the Humes: Charlie and Elizabeth. What Faraday did know of his family was that they were practically a line of "geniuses" in whichever field they individually decided to work in. He had heard of an uncle named Daniel Faraday from his surrogate parents, an uncle who had died before he had been born, and he wished he was named after him instead, as they had spoken of him very highly. His uncle seemed to have been a fêted physicist, being the youngest Professor tenured at his Alma Mater. As fortune would have it, Daniel was Reuel Faraday's middle name as stated on the birth certificate produced after much questioning about the circumstances of his own birth. It was this reverence for his uncle that he carried throughout his days.
Reuel Daniel Faraday was currently being questioned by a barrage of dark suits in a darkened and squalid room lit overhead by a creaking, antique yellow lamp. If you have ever been interrogated, dear reader, it is not a very pleasant experience. You might be concerned of what might happen to you next once you have finished answering the questions of very scary and menacing men, or you might be worried whether one of them might suddenly lunge and spill that steaming cup of coffee onto your person in order to make you talk, or you might be worried whether your loved ones had known you were being interrogated and thought less of you because if it, or if they were pained by a pointless verbal dance due to your innocence which they had proved sometime before and which would have rendered any following interrogations of your non-existent guilt moot by definition. I can inform you that young Faraday, however apprehensive he might have been in that forbidding moment, would not go to prison and he would not be put on trial to be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Instesd, he would manage to escape with his life. And his interrogators were not, as one might normally think, the police department. "We will not ask you again, Faraday. Where. Is. The. Sugar. Bowl!?" screeched the tall and smartly dressed woman who seemed to be their ringleader. Faraday, staring sardonically into her blazing eyes, refused. "Couldn't tell you. Even if I knew." His voice was quiet, yet firm. "You won't?" the woman hissed. Her eyebrows raged and her nostrils flared. She had the shadow of impending doom on her shadowed face. Faraday considered her and tilted his head in nonchalance. They endured a battle of stares lasting several seconds up to a minute before she slapped him with a yell and led her retinue out of the room. "You will give up your secrets, Faraday, even if we have to kill you!" "Good luck with that." Reuel Daniel Faraday, his face smarting from the slap, was planning his escape that very moment. If you have ever made an escape plan, then you would know that a good one requires a thorough knowledge of the environment in which you are held captive. In this case his slovenly captors were not very organized despite their leader's angry insistence upon competence. It is a wonder to me how she ever ended up with her current henchpeople, as it was to Faraday as he sat there thinking. What they had overlooked in their incompetence, but what he had caught notice of, was an opening in the concrete floor almost analogous to the surrounding finish. It seemed to him like a grate of sorts. Beyond the shut door he could hear the sounds of argument. The woman was screeching madly as she shot down each word of her minions with her biting fury. He knew there would not be much time before she returned to deal with him herself, and he did not want to be in that position. Luckily one of the others had thrown something, it seemed, and she went back to her shouting, giving him more time to loosen the trapdoor, revealing a musty vertical passageway down. Gingerly, he began to climb down the rusted rungs and started to replace the tile above him as the door to the room burst open with a yell of "FARADAY!" He was caught off guard, let the tile land on the entrance with a sharp clack, and fell the rest of the way down the passageway, hitting the floor of a long and damp tunnel with a thump. He could dimly hear commotion far above him as he lay sprawled in momentary pain, though he had broken no bones. As he rose, he panted slightly. He realized that if he wished to escape he would have to run for it along the tunnel until he was far far away from his enemies. Hearing clanging footfalls from the vertical shaft he had just fallen from, he began to run for his very life.
|
|
|
Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 7, 2014 15:07:02 GMT -5
It's nothing.
|
|
|
Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 7, 2014 13:51:48 GMT -5
Thank you, as always. I've been thinking that my other work here has stalled into oblivion and I wished to infuse new blood into my universe by actually writing a story. It's in the same universe as the "Commonplace Notebook" series but I feel I want to provide another voice into the matter, one not as privy to the great secrets until he finds them or realizes them as he goes as opposed to a retrospective bookkeeping. I also wonder how I will be able to portray the future. I have been inspired lately by Mister M's plot arc. My arc is going to be different from his, obviously. I, too, am interested in time travel. I have a lot of ideas in my head and I need to plot them out.
|
|
|
Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 7, 2014 1:22:10 GMT -5
Journal of Harlan St. Just
Month the Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Day the Third
I am presently returning from my year long absence in the Kierkegaard Mountains during which I resided with a community of scientific researchers led by Professor Alighiero Mallansohn, affectionately called Dante by his research team due to his prominent first name and his profound grasp of the Italian language due to his formative childhood in that country, having been raised on his namesake's greatest work. While there I received a letter which I was sharply admonished to never open or read while I was sojourning there. Only now on my return journey am I able to reveal its contents and the ramifications it entails. If you are familiar with the life story of Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, then you would understand that he had a knowledgeable grasp on subjects "beyond the pale" both as mathematician and philosopher. His work The Looking Glass is evidence of his talent of simplifying the abstract and unknown phenomena of life into much more palatable concepts so as to be generally understood by a more eager and trusting audience. It is on this color (but not very much of it) that I begin my long and harrowing explication of just what I had gotten myself into when I chose to leave. It concerns a secret organization, which until the investigation of one Lemony Snicket (himself a life-long member of that organization), had remained shrouded in ever shifting mist, a phrase which here means "was a terribly confusing matter for everyone involved until they decided to quit the newspaper in a huff and go to the nearest café to gulp root beer floats down in order to drown away their newspaper-less occupations." That newspaper was The Daily Punctilio and the reporters who had quit in exasperation had been the only souls of life in an increasingly freezing cadaver of pointlessness. Their editor-in-chief, Astor Julienne, also the founder, was a cultured man and a very passionate upholder of literary democracy and the importance of the recording and preservation of knowledge down to the finest detail. Unfortunately, he had passed before the aforementioned reporters had quit, and only under the disappointing patronage of Eleanora Poe who was as oblivious as her brother. Indeed, you could trust a young girl to run The Daily Punctilio better than her. And that is not the least of it: Julienne's daughter, one Geraldine, had taken position as a reporter no sooner than his death. To return to the point, as it were, after a long tangent: DON'T PANIC, dear reader. In my reflections I have realized many things and these realizations have also generated more and more clarity and more and more quality of a thing unknown, which not even those who would seem to know even know, and probably never will. There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are even conceived of in their philosophies. Fighting fire with fire is but one divisor in the great tables of values. There they were, concerned with setting and putting out fires when it is what they never even realized: that the world may also end in ice. This is how everything changed, and not for the better. This is what the letter showed me as it all came tumbling down into a final convergence within the devisings of my mind. The City, which had been my home for most of my life, was forever changed, and the letter in my shaking hands only proves to me that even the slightest and most minuscule amount of counted time whether by seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and even years, contains many possibilities and room for grave differences. And it is one difference that can make for a long series of unfortunate events; events whose effects will not cancel out until long after the damage is done. And it is the bad beginning of such that I leave for you, in the midst of a very sad occasion.
|
|
|
Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 14, 2013 14:49:49 GMT -5
The poem was "adapted" from "There's No Place Like London" from Sweeney Todd. I wasn't consciously thinking of alluding to the penthouse on 667 Dark Avenue.
|
|
|
Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 14, 2013 11:28:58 GMT -5
From the commonplace book of E. R.
There was a writer and his muse, and she was beautiful, There was a writer and his muse, Elle était son raison et son joie And she was beautiful, and she was elegant And he was….in love
On a dreary summer's day My heart was broken Un injurieux flâneur du mal He set a deadly trap for her And so she was marked down by fate And there was silence on the stage And she would fall I'm lost I'm cold And she was so beautiful.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————
My Dearest J.,
K. has left me to myself for the time being, a phrase which here means "I am now able to write this missive to you without the fear of someone breathing down my neck and berating me for imitating the explanatory style of our Vetted Favorite Diction professor." I have read the script to the play in which you will star. You will be marvelous, Madame, as only a devoted and heartfelt admirer can write these words, the words I write to you. I trust C. is doing well in her directorship and your fellow actors are at the top of their form. K. is coming back, as I hear the demanding footsteps clattering already beyond the door to the room I am in, a phrase which here means "she has caught me red handed in the act of letter writing." Fortunately the hallway is a very long one, so I have time to bid you goodbye, Madame. The world is quiet here.
With all my beating heart,
E.
P.S. Je t'adore. P.P.S. Is it alright if I change my last name to yours? P.P.P.S. Anything for you, Madame.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Theatre Program for The Subjective Flâneur
CAST OF CHARACTERS AND THEIR PORTRAYERS:
Catherine Chopin — Jasmine French Virginia Rimbaud — Élise Beauséant Arthur Vladimir — Ichabod Beauséant
This is the only torn remnant of the program I could find littered about in an abandoned trash incinerator. The name of my love is at the forefront of my thoughts, a mirage of something that is not there. Even now I pine for her, so long after her unbearable death. I will always be her darling. - E.R.
|
|
|
Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 12, 2013 10:59:26 GMT -5
Glad you like it. I'm still thinking about what to include next.
|
|
|
Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 10, 2013 15:40:04 GMT -5
Thank you, Dante. I've been working on a college essay recently and have just finished it, if you were curious about my absence.
|
|
|
Post by Jacques Snicket on Oct 31, 2013 11:34:40 GMT -5
Dear Dairy,
There is nothing more thrilling than being with her. She is my mentor, my instructress, my guide, my comfort, my most dearest friend. She is the only one in whom I can confide myself, a phrase which here means "open my heart and soul to a woman whom I love very much." I realize that being in love with one's former chaperone is extremely rare in our organization with my being a mere sixteen years of age and her being old enough to be my aunt, but compared to the mysteries surrounding the Bombinating Beast and L.'s involvement thereof my circumstances are far more fathomable, and hence grounded in far more reasonable requisites. She is my lighthouse in the midst of a stormy sea, my safe place in the midst of an unsafe world, my only harmony that exists in the midst of the discord afflicting us all, my only good dream in a reality of nightmares, my only warmth in the midst of the cold, my only joy in a land of despair, my only reassurance in a quagmire of fear. Yet I am afraid, deathly afraid, a phrase which here means "very worried that unpleasant circumstances will swoop in and snatch away my happiness, my life." I am afraid that I will never again hear her absent-mindedly talk to me while in the middle of writing polished letters, rehearsing for her plays, trying on elegant clothes, coats and necklaces and various finery disguises for our missions together and apart, telling tales of her own experiences and recollections, gazing up at the stars together, decoding coded messages together, setting up Verbal Fridge Dialogues together, writing poetry together, researching unfortunate events together, among other things that two very much in love volunteers such as ourselves do together. I am afraid that I will never again be able to see her worn yet beautiful warm smile, hear her call me "darling", feel the touch of her hand, be the target of her welcome advice, or be the receiving end of her love. I am afraid that something terrible will happen to us, whether our separation will be one of brevity or eternity, I am very afraid. The crickets are unusually loud this evening.
The world is not as quiet here as I would like,
E.
|
|
|
Post by Jacques Snicket on Oct 30, 2013 14:52:20 GMT -5
@dante: Glad you find it interesting. Have you read the whole thread yet? Hermes: Don't worry. E is somewhere between 16 and 17 here.
|
|
|
Post by Jacques Snicket on Oct 29, 2013 15:41:43 GMT -5
THE DAILY PUNCTILIO "All The News In Fits Of Print"
O B I T U A R Y
Vivacious Fxxxxx Deceased
By: Jacques Snicket
Early last afternoon near Dark Avenue, heiress and actress Jasmine Fxxxxx, aged 44, was found dead resting on a park bench due to what seems to have been an extremely severe heat stroke, along with a creased issue of yesterday morning's edition of this paper found sprawled upon the concrete under the bench. She is survived by her close friend Céline Beauséant who is also a dramatist at the Blanche DuBois Theatre based here in the City, and a group of well-read literary connoisseurs with whom she was greatly associated with in the past years. J////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
This past issue was already torn by the time I had discovered it inside a vase within an alcove of Veblen Hall, ripped in half like my heart. - E.R.
*Tear stains dot the document*
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
To My Kind Editor,
I am writing you from within the abandoned shack in the Finite Forest where I once met with my associates many years ago, a phrase which here means "very long before the Baudelaire family was tragically and irrevocably rent apart by the fire that destroyed their home." Tomorrow at sunset there will be a taxi waiting for you at the crossroads of Rarely Ridden Road and Lousy Lane. Go into the taxi and give the cab driver the card I have inserted along with this letter. Once you have been driven to your destination, the driver shall hand you a package containing observations of the plight of Duncan, Isadora and Quigley Quagmire and their involvement with the Baudelaires which have been documented by myself while on their trail, compiled by one of my associates who has recently been taking to wearing various outfits relating to whichever historical eras he has been interested in.
With all due respect,
Lemony Snicket
Lemony Snicket
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
From the commonplace book of V. Monteverdi
Day. Twelve o'clock in the aftermoon. Very humid. Not many people at the park. Woman in a coat walking to one of the benches, holding the newspaper in her hands. I am unsettled, for I feel that the one who gave her the paper is not who she thought he was, aiming to bring her harm. I recall the state that E. has been in the past few weeks, worried and concerned as if something dreadful were about to happen. No doubt he will be grieved to know of the inevitable sudden and suspicious death of his former chaperone and fellow volunteer. The world may be quiet, but the dark is just as menacing.
|
|
|
Post by Jacques Snicket on Oct 29, 2013 12:01:43 GMT -5
Thank you, Dante.
|
|
|
Post by Jacques Snicket on Oct 29, 2013 10:30:38 GMT -5
I'm back again after a very very long absence. I was inspired by reading the YASOUE series by Tiago Squalor to continue this.
L.,
I have escaped at last, a phrase which here means "found a way to elude my enemies once more and left their dreary hideaway known as the Bach Cathedral in northern Europe towards an associate of mine with a motorboat down to the west end of the local river." I apologize greatly for my long absence as I had been caught by a band of several Finnish Pirates while on my way to retrieve an important piece of research pertaining to xxxxxxxxxx, but I have escaped the clutches of my ravenous enemies and am now with the aforementioned associate, S., aboard his motorboat. It is my utmost wish to inquire of you as to the state of the city from which a number of our fellow volunteers have had to leave following the xxxxxxxxxxxx, the day that changed everything. I am also curious as to the whereabouts of the Baudelaires and your niece, as I know you have been researching the unfortunate events that have befallen them ever since that terrible morning on Briny Beach. I feel, as you no doubt do, that their series of unfortunate events might have been prevented and B. would still be living, just as I have long felt that the unfortunate events that have happened to me would be reversed, and J. would never have died alone on that park bench after receiving a misleading message from one we supposed an ally. Just as B. has posthumously driven you onto your investigations, J. has posthumously driven me onto mine and out of my comfortable adolescence. It seems we are alike, each driven by our love to carry on. It is steadily nearing dusk here and with the approaching storm clouds I wish only that this missive finds its way to you, and that my many questions are answered.
The world is quiet here,
E. R.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Dear Dairy,
It has come to my attention that E. and J. have begun a tryst, a phrase which here means "two of our fellow associates are in love even though it is unheard of in our organization for a young teenage boy to be with a woman old enough to nearly be his mother yet young enough to not be his grandmother." Regardless, it is fortunate in these dark times that love is still able to bring our dear comrades together, even if secrecy is their safe place away from prying eyes and deep frowns and biting reprimands. As I sit here drinking my root bear float in the Toscanini Café I notice that J. S. has left me a message detailing the floor plans for the Hotel Denouement he had acquired some time ago. If the legends are true, it means that the third Denouement triplet is alive and well, and not dead.
With all due respect,
B. B.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
FROM: J.S. TO: XXXXXXXX
I KNOW WHERE THE SUGAR BOWL IS STOP. IT IS AT XXX DARK AVENUE STOP. FRANÇOIS SQUALOR KNOWS SOMETHING STOP.
|
|
|
Post by Jacques Snicket on Dec 1, 2012 14:34:53 GMT -5
I'm not sure about that, even your democrats are too right wing. I agree. The left in America is almost invisible.
|
|