After the breakfast disaster, Count Olaf has the Hook-Handed Man to catch salmon for Sunny to prepare instead. Though the White-Faced Women do attempt to stand up with her, suggesting that someone else cook instead, especially if there isn’t a fire. Then a couple of menacing figures show up on Mount Fraught to tell Olaf that they burned the V.F.D. headquarters at the Valley of Four Drafts. Yet, at least all the volunteers had already left. These two are so mysterious that Lemony Snicket refers to them as “the man with a beard but no hair and the woman with hair but no beard.” Esme complains about Sunny’s service which the woman sympathizes with since she had her own infant servant before the schism as well as how much trouble the Baudelaire parents caused the two mysterious figures. Count Olaf tells the two figures that he and his associates burned down the Caligari Carnival over evidence of a hidden souvenir. Impressed, the mysterious figures give him the rest of the Snicket File as a reward and Esme a green cigarette. So the newcomers, Olaf, and Esme go into the tent while Sunny makes lox from the Hook-Handed Man’s salmon.

The song I chose here was Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” which was written by his wife June Carter. The original version obviously pertains to love and an all-consuming passion depending on how you interpret it. In this version, I have the Count Olaf and the mysterious newcomers discuss the fires they started. Of course, given that a lot of fires happen in A Series of Unfortunate Events, parodying this song is long overdue.

“Ring of Fire” (ASOUE Version)”

Man with Beard and No Hair:
V.F.D. is up in flames
Volunteers are all away
We made it all a pyre
And we set a ring of fire

Woman with Hair and No Beard:
It went into a burnin’ ring of fire
It went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire, the ring of fire

It went into a burnin’ ring of fire
It went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire, the ring of fire

Count Olaf:
There was a hidden souvenir
At a carnival not far from here
We set the fair on fire
Oh, and the fire went wild

It went into a burnin’ ring of fire
It went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire, the ring of fire

It went into a burnin’ ring of fire
It went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire, the ring of fire

And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire, the ring of fire
The ring of fire, the ring of fire
The ring of fire