The Cunning Count Olaf Composition Contest

Honorable Mention- Mary Elise Gerlach
Age 9
Indian Harbour Beach, FL

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Dear Count Omar, 

Because you’re my brother, I know I can trust you to help catch those absurd orphans and their cash. 

To catch them I designed a new play called, The Perfect Pumpkin. I will send the cheapskate, Mr. Poe, three free tickets for Violet, Sunny, and Klaus. So he will drop them off before the play starts. By the time he arrives to pick them up, my plan will be in action. I will have to change my name. It will be Oca Fulton. Those dreadful dorks will definitely recognize my voice, so I will be curtain man. The reason I am writing you is because I need you to be an actor playing my part. 

Now we need to talk of how to get the Quagmires. In addition to the grape juice spill that Esme’s harpoon made on the hot-air balloon home at the Village of Fowl Devotees, it also created a slow gas leak. Therefore, they shall be landing in Vatrongalaf Fire Designation. The bald man and the one who looks like neither a man nor a woman will be handing out play tickets. If the Quagmires don’t recognize them we can get them into a theater with no problems. If they do recognize them, we will have to go with Plan B. 

The play has a Halloween theme. It is about a girl and her mom and dad. The girl and mom will be played by the powder faced people, and the dad will be played by the hook-handed hooligan man. They go to a store and the shopkeeper (played by you) sells them pumpkin seeds. After a year, the pumpkins have grown to the size of your big fat head. But one is too crooked, one has a dent, and one is too skinny. The girl will not  use anything but a perfect pumpkin, and the family is in dispair – a word which here means they will have to spend a lot of money finding a pumpkin that makes her happy. The sorcerer Schmitlot comes. By this time the Quagmires will be escorted to the theatre by the one who looks neither like a man nor woman, so the bald man can play the sorcerer. He will use magic to make the pumpkins perfect. 

Now getting the poison to the orphans is the hard part. You’re probably wondering how we’re going to do that, eh? This is my poisonous plan! 

The point is that the play will just give us a way to get near the orphans, so capturing them will be easier. Esme, in disguise, will hand out pumpkin pie at the end of the play. She will put one drop of poison in the hapless handyman’s pie, two drops for the Quagmires, and three drops for the bumbling, bratty, brainless Baudelaires. That will make them do anything moi tells them to for the next four years – enough time to get the Baudelaire fortune. 

Once they are poisoned they will go help serve the pumpkin pie so nobody will suspect anything. After everyone else has left, I will keep those creepy, crazy kids as captives. And the Baudelaire fortune and the Quagmire sapphires will be mine! 

After I get rich, we will split the money. The largest amount (after I get my share) will go to whoever is the biggest help. We will also divide the children. The same dividing rules apply to the children as to the money – the largest one will go to whoever helped the most. 

Your sly sibling,

Count Olaf 

Letter 2: 

Dear Count Omar,

I can’t believe that my perfect, prime, prodigious plan didn’t come through!!!!!!! I was soooooooo close!!! You will help me get those orphans if it’s the last thing you do!!!!

Count Olaf