A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Ersatz Elevator by Lemony Snicket

red as they grew hotter and hotter and hotter, they felt the same itchy nervousness as they did when waiting for a trained medical professional. But at last the fire tongs were white-hot, and were ready for their welding appointment with the thick iron bars of the cage. Violet passed out an oven mitt to each of her siblings and then put the third one on her own hand to carefully remove each tong from the oven. "Hold them very, very carefully," she said, giving an ersatz welding torch to each of her siblings. "They're hot enough to melt metal, so just imagine what they could do if they touched us. But I'm sure we can manage." "It'll be tougher to go down this time," Klaus said, as he followed his sisters to the front door of the penthouse. He held his fire tong straight up, as if it were a regular torch instead of a welding one, and he kept his eye on the white-hot part so that it wouldn't brush up against anything or anybody. "We'll each have to keep one hand free to hold the torch. But I'm sure we can manage." "Zelestin," Sunny said, when the children reached the sliding doors of the ersatz elevator. She meant something along the lines of "It'll be terrifying to climb down that horrible passageway again," but after she said "Zelestin" she added the word "Enipy," which meant "But I'm sure we can manage," and the youngest Baudelaire was as sure as her siblings. The three children stood at the edge of the dark passageway, but they did not pause to gather their courage, as they had done before their first descent into the gaping shaft. Their welding torches were hot, as Violet had said, and going down would be tough, as Klaus had said, and the climb would be terrifying, as Sunny had said, but the siblings looked at one another and knew they could manage. The Quagmire triplets were counting on them, and the Baudelaire orphans were sure that this only hope would work after all.
    Chapter Nine
    One of the greatest myths in the world---and the phrase "greatest myths" is just a fancy way of saying "big fat lies"--is that troublesome things get less and less troublesome if you do them more and more. People say this myth when they are teaching children to ride bicycles, for instance, as though falling off a bicycle and skinning your knee is less troublesome the fourteenth time you do it than it is the first time. The truth is that troublesome things tend to remain troublesome no matter how many times you do them, and that you should avoid doing them unless they are absolutely urgent. Obviously, it was absolutely urgent for the Baudelaire orphans to take another three-hour climb down into the terrible darkness of the elevator shaft. The children knew that the Quagmire triplets were in grave danger, and that using Violet's invention to melt the bars of the cage was the only way that their friends could escape before Gunther hid them inside one of the items of the In Auction, and smuggled them out of the city. But I'm sorry to say that the absolute urgency of the Baudelaires' second climb did not make it any less troublesome. The passageway was still as dark as a bar of extra-dark chocolate sitting in a planetarium covered in a thick, black blanket, even with the tiny glow from the white-hot tips of the fire tongs, and the sensation of lowering themselves down the elevator shaft still felt like a descent into the hungry mouth of some terrible creature. With only the clink! of the last extension cord hitting the lock of the cage to guide them, the three siblings pulled themselves down the ersatz rope with one hand, and held out their welding torches with the other, and the trek down to the tiny, filthy room where the triplets were trapped was still not even one twenty-seventh O.K. But the dreadful repetition of the Baudelaires' troublesome climb was dwarfed in comparison with the sinister surprise they found at the bottom, a surprise so terrible that the three children simply refused to believe it. Violet reached the end of the final