Read Online A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Slippery Slope by Lemony Snicket - Free Book Online Page A

this eye so the authorities would not recognize him, so the children were always uncovering it from behind his ridiculous disguises, and the Baudelaires had begun seeing the eye in other places, such as at the office of an evil hypnotist, on the side of a carnival tent, on Esme Squalor's purse, and on a necklace owned by a mysterious fortune-teller. It was almost as if this eye had replaced the eyes of their parents, but instead of keeping watch over the children and making sure that they were safe from harm, this eye merely gave them a blank stare, as if it did not care about the children's troubles, or could do nothing about them. If you looked very closely, you could find the letters V.F.D. half-hidden in the eye, and this reminded Sunny of all the sinister secrets that surrounded the three siblings, and how far they were from understanding the web of mystery in which they found themselves. But it is hard to think about mysteries and secrets first thing in the morning, particularly if someone is yelling at you, and Sunny turned her attention to what her captor was saying. "You'll be doing all the cooking and cleaning for us, orphan," Count Olaf said, "and you can start by making us breakfast. We have a big day ahead of us, and a good breakfast will give me and my troupe the energy we need to perform unspeakable crimes." "Plakna?" Sunny asked, which meant "How am I supposed to cook breakfast on the top of a freezing mountain?" but Count Olaf just gave her a nasty smile. "Too bad your brain isn't as big as your teeth, you little monkey," he said. "You're talking nonsense, as usual." Sunny sighed, frustrated that there was no one on top of the Mortmain Mountains who understood what she was trying to say. "Translo," she said, which meant "Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean that it's nonsense." "There you go, babbling again," Olaf said, and tossed Sunny the car keys. "Get the groceries out of the trunk of the car and get to work." Sunny suddenly thought of something that might cheer her up a little bit. "Sneakitawc," she said, which was her way of saying "Of course, because you don't understand me, I can say anything I want to you, and you'll have no idea what I'm talking about." "I'm getting quite tired of your ridiculous speech impediment," Count Olaf said. "Brummel," Sunny said, which meant "In my opinion, you desperately need a bath, and your clothing is a shambles." "Be quiet this instant," Olaf ordered. "Busheney," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of, "You're an evil man with no concern whatsoever for other people." "Shut up!" Count Olaf roared. "Shut up and get cooking!" Sunny got out of the casserole dish and stood up, looking down at the snowy ground so the villain would not see she was smiling. It is not nice to tease people, of course, but the youngest Baudelaire felt that it was all right to enjoy a joke at the expense of such a murderous and evil man, and she walked to Olaf's car with a spring in her step, a phrase which here means "in a surprisingly cheerful manner considering she was in the clutches of a ruthless villain on top of a mountain so cold that even the nearby waterfall was frozen solid." But when Sunny Baudelaire opened the trunk of the car her smile faded. Under normal circumstances, it is not safe to keep groceries in the trunk of a car for an extended period of time, because some foods will spoil without being refrigerated. But Sunny saw that the temperatures of the Mortmain Mountains had caused the groceries to become over-refrigerated. A thin layer of frost covered every item, and Sunny had to crawl inside and wipe the frost off with her bare hands to see what she might make for the troupe. There was a variety of well-chilled food that Olaf had stolen from the carnival, but none of it seemed like the makings of a good breakfast. There was a bag of coffee beans beneath a harpoon gun and a frozen hunk of spinach, but there was no way to grind the