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A series of unfortunate events the bad beginning Sonic style Chapter 1:
The Bad Begging :
To Cream.
Dearest, Darling, Dead
If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Hedge youngsters. Tails, Amy and Sonic Hedge were intelligent children, and they were charming and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.
Their misfortune began one day at Briny Beach. The three Hedge children lived with their parents in an enormous mansion at the heart of a dirty and busy city, and occasionally their parents gave them permission to take a rickety trolley—the word "rickety," you may probably know, here means "unsteady" or "likely to collapse"—alone to the seashore, where they would spend the day as a sort of vacation as long as they were home for dinner. This particular morning it was gray and cloudy, which didn't bother the Hedge youngsters one bit. When it was hot and sunny, Briny Beach was crowded with tourists and it was impossible to find a good place to lay one's blanket. On gray and cloudy days, the Hedge's had the beach to themselves to do what they liked.
Miles 'Tails' Hedge, the eldest (adaupted), a yellow two tailed fox, loved to invent and to skip rocks. He was a minority of some fourteen-year-olds, he was left-handed and wore glasses, so the rocks skipped farther across the murky water when Tails used his left hand than when he used his right. As he skipped rocks, he was looking out at the horizon and thinking about an invention he wanted to build. Anyone who knew Tails well could tell he was thinking hard, because his bangs were tied in a ribbion, and his tails were alert. Tails had a real knack for inventing and building strange devices, so his brain was often filled with images of pulleys, levers, and gears, and he never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as his bangs. This morning he was thinking about how to construct a device that could retrieve a rock after you had skipped it into the ocean.
Amy Hedge, the middle child, a pink hedgehog, and the only girl, right handed, liked to examine creatures in tidepools. Amy was a little older than twelve and also wore glasses, which made her look intelligent. She was intelligent. The Hedge parents had an enormous library in their mansion, a room filled with thousands of books on nearly every subject. Being only twelve, Amy of course had not read all of the books in the Hedge library, but she had read a great many of them and had retained a lot of the information from her readings. She knew how to tell an alligator from a crocodile. She knew who killed Julius Caesar. And she knew much about the tiny, slimy animals found at Briny Beach , which she was examining now.
Sonic Hedge, the youngest, a blue hedgehog, liked to bite things, and to run. He was an infant, and very small for his age, scarcely larger than a boot. What he lacked in size, however, he made up for with the size and sharpness of his four teeth, and he didn't look like it but he was very fast, which was rare for people his age. Sonic was at an age where one mostly speaks in a series of unintelligible shrieks. Except when he used the few actual words in his vocabulary, like "bottle," "mommy," "run," "sport,"and "bite," most people had trouble understanding what it was that Sonic was saying. For instance, this morning he was saying "Gack!" over and over, which probably meant, "Look at that mysterious figure emerging from the fog!"
Sure enough, in the distance along the misty shore of Briny Beach there could be seen a tall figure striding toward the Hedge children. Sonic had already been staring and shrieking at the figure for some time when Amy looked up from the spiny crab she was examining, and saw it too. She reached over and touched Tails' arm, bringing him out of his inventing thoughts.
"Look at that," Amy said, and pointed toward the figure. It was drawing closer, and the children could see a few details. It was about the size of an adult hedgehog, with 2 spikes at the end of his head that were curly or round.
"What do you think it is?" Tails asked.
"I don't know," Amy said, squinting at it, "but it seems to be moving right toward us."
"We're alone on the beach," Tails said, a little nervously. "There's nobody else it could be moving toward." He felt the slender, smooth stone in his right hand, which he had been about to try to skip as far as he could. He had a sudden thought to throw it at the figure, because it seemed so frightening.
"It only seems scary," Amy said, as if reading her brother's thoughts, "because of all the mist."
This was true. As the figure reached them, the children saw with relief that it was not anybody frightening at all, but somebody they knew: Mr. Silver Poe. Mr. Silver Poe was a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Hedge's whom the children had met many times at dinner parties. One of the things Tails, Amy and Sonic really liked about their parents was that they didn't send their children away when they had company over, but allowed them to join the adults at the dinner table and participate in the conversation as long as they helped clear the table. The children remembered Mr. Silver Poe because he always had a cold and was constantly excusing himself from the table to have a fit of coughing in the next room.
Mr. Silver Poe took off his top hat, which had made his head look large and round in the fog, and stood for a moment, coughing loudly into a white handkerchief. Tails and Amy moved forward to shake his hand and say how do you do.
"How do you do?" said Tails.
"How do you do?" said Amy.
"Odo yow!" said Sonic.
"Fine, thank you," said Mr. Silver Poe, but he looked very sad. For a few seconds nobody said anything, and the children wondered what Mr. Silver Poe was doing there at Briny Beach , when he should have been at the bank in the city, where he worked. He was not dressed for the beach.
"It's a nice day," Tails said finally, making conversation. Sonic made a noise that sounded like an angry bird, and Amy picked him up and held him.
"Yes, it is a nice day," Mr. Silver Poe said absently, staring out at the empty beach. "I'm afraid I have some very bad news for you children."
The three Hedge siblings looked at him. Tails', with some embarrassment, felt the stone in his right hand and was glad he had not thrown it at Mr. Silver Poe.
"Your parents," Mr. Silver Poe said, "have perished in a terrible fire."
The children didn't say anything.
"They perished," Mr. Silver Poe said, "in a fire that destroyed the entire house. I'm very, very sorry to tell you this, my dears."
Tails took his eyes off Mr. Silver Poe and stared out at the ocean. Mr. Silver Poe had never called the Hedge children "my dears" before. He understood the words he was saying but thought he must be joking, playing a terrible joke on him and his brother and sister.
"'Perished,'" Mr. Silver Poe said, "means 'killed.'"
"We know what the word 'perished' means," Amy said, crossly. She did know what the word "perished" meant, but he was still having trouble understanding exactly what it was that Mr. Silver Poe had said. It seemed to him that Mr. Silver Poe must somehow have misspoken.
"The fire department arrived, of course," Mr. Silver Poe said, "but they were too late. The entire house was engulfed in fire. It burned to the ground. "
Amy pictured all the books in the library, going up in flames. Now she'd never read all of them.
Mr. Silver Poe coughed several times into his handkerchief before continuing. "I was sent to retrieve you here, and to take you to my home, where you'll stay for some time while we figure things out. I am the executor of your parents' estate. That means I will be handling their enormous fortune and figuring out where you children will go. When Violet comes of age, the fortune will be yours, but the bank will take charge of it until you are old enough."
Although he said he was the executor, Tails felt like Mr. Silver Poe was the executioner. He had simply walked down the beach to them and changed their lives forever.
"Come with me," Mr. Silver Poe said, and held out his hand. In order to take it, Tails had to drop the stone she was holding. Amy took Tails' other hand, and Sonic took Amy's other hand, and in that manner the three Hedge children—the Hedge orphans, now—were led away from the beach and from their previous lives .

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

A series of unfortunate events the bad beginning Sonic style Chapter 1:
The Bad Begging :
To Cream.
Dearest, Darling, Dead
If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Hedge youngsters. Tails, Amy and Sonic Hedge were intelligent children, and they were charming and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.
Their misfortune began one day at Briny Beach. The three Hedge children lived with their parents in an enormous mansion at the heart of a dirty and busy city, and occasionally their parents gave them permission to take a rickety trolley—the word "rickety," you may probably know, here means "unsteady" or "likely to collapse"—alone to the seashore, where they would spend the day as a sort of vacation as long as they were home for dinner. This particular morning it was gray and cloudy, which didn't bother the Hedge youngsters one bit. When it was hot and sunny, Briny Beach was crowded with tourists and it was impossible to find a good place to lay one's blanket. On gray and cloudy days, the Hedge's had the beach to themselves to do what they liked.
Miles 'Tails' Hedge, the eldest (adaupted), a yellow two tailed fox, loved to invent and to skip rocks. He was a minority of some fourteen-year-olds, he was left-handed and wore glasses, so the rocks skipped farther across the murky water when Tails used his left hand than when he used his right. As he skipped rocks, he was looking out at the horizon and thinking about an invention he wanted to build. Anyone who knew Tails well could tell he was thinking hard, because his bangs were tied in a ribbion, and his tails were alert. Tails had a real knack for inventing and building strange devices, so his brain was often filled with images of pulleys, levers, and gears, and he never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as his bangs. This morning he was thinking about how to construct a device that could retrieve a rock after you had skipped it into the ocean.
Amy Hedge, the middle child, a pink hedgehog, and the only girl, right handed, liked to examine creatures in tidepools. Amy was a little older than twelve and also wore glasses, which made her look intelligent. She was intelligent. The Hedge parents had an enormous library in their mansion, a room filled with thousands of books on nearly every subject. Being only twelve, Amy of course had not read all of the books in the Hedge library, but she had read a great many of them and had retained a lot of the information from her readings. She knew how to tell an alligator from a crocodile. She knew who killed Julius Caesar. And she knew much about the tiny, slimy animals found at Briny Beach , which she was examining now.
Sonic Hedge, the youngest, a blue hedgehog, liked to bite things, and to run. He was an infant, and very small for his age, scarcely larger than a boot. What he lacked in size, however, he made up for with the size and sharpness of his four teeth, and he didn't look like it but he was very fast, which was rare for people his age. Sonic was at an age where one mostly speaks in a series of unintelligible shrieks. Except when he used the few actual words in his vocabulary, like "bottle," "mommy," "run," "sport,"and "bite," most people had trouble understanding what it was that Sonic was saying. For instance, this morning he was saying "Gack!" over and over, which probably meant, "Look at that mysterious figure emerging from the fog!"
Sure enough, in the distance along the misty shore of Briny Beach there could be seen a tall figure striding toward the Hedge children. Sonic had already been staring and shrieking at the figure for some time when Amy looked up from the spiny crab she was examining, and saw it too. She reached over and touched Tails' arm, bringing him out of his inventing thoughts.
"Look at that," Amy said, and pointed toward the figure. It was drawing closer, and the children could see a few details. It was about the size of an adult hedgehog, with 2 spikes at the end of his head that were curly or round.
"What do you think it is?" Tails asked.
"I don't know," Amy said, squinting at it, "but it seems to be moving right toward us."
"We're alone on the beach," Tails said, a little nervously. "There's nobody else it could be moving toward." He felt the slender, smooth stone in his right hand, which he had been about to try to skip as far as he could. He had a sudden thought to throw it at the figure, because it seemed so frightening.
"It only seems scary," Amy said, as if reading her brother's thoughts, "because of all the mist."
This was true. As the figure reached them, the children saw with relief that it was not anybody frightening at all, but somebody they knew: Mr. Silver Poe. Mr. Silver Poe was a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Hedge's whom the children had met many times at dinner parties. One of the things Tails, Amy and Sonic really liked about their parents was that they didn't send their children away when they had company over, but allowed them to join the adults at the dinner table and participate in the conversation as long as they helped clear the table. The children remembered Mr. Silver Poe because he always had a cold and was constantly excusing himself from the table to have a fit of coughing in the next room.
Mr. Silver Poe took off his top hat, which had made his head look large and round in the fog, and stood for a moment, coughing loudly into a white handkerchief. Tails and Amy moved forward to shake his hand and say how do you do.
"How do you do?" said Tails.
"How do you do?" said Amy.
"Odo yow!" said Sonic.
"Fine, thank you," said Mr. Silver Poe, but he looked very sad. For a few seconds nobody said anything, and the children wondered what Mr. Silver Poe was doing there at Briny Beach , when he should have been at the bank in the city, where he worked. He was not dressed for the beach.
"It's a nice day," Tails said finally, making conversation. Sonic made a noise that sounded like an angry bird, and Amy picked him up and held him.
"Yes, it is a nice day," Mr. Silver Poe said absently, staring out at the empty beach. "I'm afraid I have some very bad news for you children."
The three Hedge siblings looked at him. Tails', with some embarrassment, felt the stone in his right hand and was glad he had not thrown it at Mr. Silver Poe.
"Your parents," Mr. Silver Poe said, "have perished in a terrible fire."
The children didn't say anything.
"They perished," Mr. Silver Poe said, "in a fire that destroyed the entire house. I'm very, very sorry to tell you this, my dears."
Tails took his eyes off Mr. Silver Poe and stared out at the ocean. Mr. Silver Poe had never called the Hedge children "my dears" before. He understood the words he was saying but thought he must be joking, playing a terrible joke on him and his brother and sister.
"'Perished,'" Mr. Silver Poe said, "means 'killed.'"
"We know what the word 'perished' means," Amy said, crossly. She did know what the word "perished" meant, but he was still having trouble understanding exactly what it was that Mr. Silver Poe had said. It seemed to him that Mr. Silver Poe must somehow have misspoken.
"The fire department arrived, of course," Mr. Silver Poe said, "but they were too late. The entire house was engulfed in fire. It burned to the ground. "
Amy pictured all the books in the library, going up in flames. Now she'd never read all of them.
Mr. Silver Poe coughed several times into his handkerchief before continuing. "I was sent to retrieve you here, and to take you to my home, where you'll stay for some time while we figure things out. I am the executor of your parents' estate. That means I will be handling their enormous fortune and figuring out where you children will go. When Violet comes of age, the fortune will be yours, but the bank will take charge of it until you are old enough."
Although he said he was the executor, Tails felt like Mr. Silver Poe was the executioner. He had simply walked down the beach to them and changed their lives forever.
"Come with me," Mr. Silver Poe said, and held out his hand. In order to take it, Tails had to drop the stone she was holding. Amy took Tails' other hand, and Sonic took Amy's other hand, and in that manner the three Hedge children—the Hedge orphans, now—were led away from the beach and from their previous lives .