The Empty Bottle

You know that pub down by the docks? The little shit-hole of a spot, tucked between a pair of warehouses and barely standing. Yeah. I loved that place. Best wine in town, it's true. Goddess, I miss it. I would go down there each night after my shift and taste just a bit of the luxury that others got. Oh it was, how would your lot put it? Marvelous? That's a big enough word for you, right? Yeah, I really did love that little pub.

I knew the owner, stuck up little bitch from years before. She'd been a flame for a while, till she decided that I was nothing but a lay about, bitch. Still, she had good taste in some finer things, and I found that I could forgive the ill temper and sudden loss of love, in exchange for drinking something other than the spit water that most others served in the docks. Can't tell you what I saw in her before, but guess that makes two of us, then. Still talk, but only about the local gossip, nothing personal anymore.

Ah, but you didn't come here to hear me talk your ear off about some dive in the docks, no, you came cause I got a story. Well its a true one, and though you're the first of you fuckers to listen, that doesn't mean I'll trust you. You are listening though, and you got your crystal-magic-thing, glowing. So that means I should tell you what happened.

I used to be a sailor, not the best out there but I did my job and got paid for it. I stayed away from the pirating life, though sometimes I thought I should've. Got kicked out for drinking too much, or being drunk too often. Couldn't tell you, seeing as how I was drunk through the dissmissal. They say I put up a fair arguement, though I had to do it sitting down and with my eyes closed, so there was that. The things you do while drunk...

When I finally sobered up, I was stuck outside in a town I didn't recognize around people who didn't speak my language. Bastards hadn't even considered the fact that it was a fucking death sentence, or maybe they did and I should hate them even more. With nothing to do and little more than spending money to my name, I did what any reasonable former crewman would do. I went to drink.

I found a small bar, nothing fancy or too run down. Simply, a bar. Its hard to describe it now, after so many years, my memory not being what it was and all. I remember thinking that the place was strange, but I couldn't place why. At the time, it never occured to me that it was the only place with signs I could read.

So I went inside and drank. I don't remember much of the interior. Dark. It felt dark. Anyway the room wasn't important, it was the person that really mattered. There, sitting across the table, was the biggest waste of a fucking man I'd ever seen. Poor mess of a thing. I swear, I nearly didn't give him a second look, but he was doing something strange. While everyone else in the room drank, this man merely stared into his. A deep thought in his face.

Being in a sour mood myself, I figured I'd take harbor with the one fellow that seemed to match, so I grabbed my drink and made my way over. He didn't react when I sat down, nor when I offered a greeting the first time. Instead he just sat there. Staring into the glass. I asked him what was wrong, and his turned to look me in the eyes, then simply said that he wished the bartender would fill his glass.

I want to make it clear, I wasn't drunk. In fact it was the first time I'd been sober in weeks, so I can tell you for certain that the mans glass was full. I pointed that out and he only shook his head and said that I didn't understand. I said that I did know, I knew perfectly well when a man had had too much to drink, and it was when he couldn't see the full glass before him. That was when he began to cry.

My father had been a hard man, and taught me to be one as well. He wasn't keen on talking much, a trait he wished I had taken, but when he spoke it was always something strict. Yet in all my years of knowing him, there was one memory I wouldn't forget. I saw my father cry, once. It was in secret, and I only saw it because I was curious, but he sat there one night, light by the dim fire, and cried to himself. It was a silent, steady crying. The type that comes from the realization that everything around you is doomed, and that nothing you do can ever truly save you from that fate.

This man, he cried those same tears as he reached for the glass and pulled it up to waiting lips. I saw the liquid flow out and into his mouth, but merely dissappear into a void of smoke and ash. He wept silently as he then placed it slowly back down to the table, then he pulled a bottle from within his jacket and readied to pour himself more. It was old, and covered in dust or dark coatings from age. It wasn't special, and shouldn't have drawn my attention so heavily, as it did.

Suddenly I found myself fixated on the bottle, on its contents and its purpose. How had this man, this poor soul, come across a bottle of fine wine such as that. It was impossible to tell the vintage or the contents, but when you've been around something like wine, or food, or art, you really can just tell by sight at times. Surely this man didn't deserve the bottle, not like I did. I had encountered such a run of bad luck, it would only be fair that I should have some treat at the end of it. Something to turn it around.

So I asked him what ailed him, and he spun me a tale of his woes between the tears. His wife had passed, his business had failed, and his family had abandoned him. All he had left was the damned bottle of wine he'd gotten as a gift from before it all fell apart. Now he held it like the last remnant of some famous piece, holding out hope that at some point the world would right itself around it.

I killed him. Drowned him later that night. I don't feel too bad about it, he was practically dead as it was, and we did much worse to much better when I was a sailor. Still, when I held that bottle in my hand, I felt such a rush of joy that I would have killed him a hundred times over to experience it again. it was exuberance that I'd never felt before, and I wondered if perhaps I had taken the wrong line of work for so long.

No, that was merely a passing trend, for as the morning rose the next day an inquiry was made as to the man dissapearance, and I was the chief suspect. None had seen anyone else aprroach him, and he was apparently a regular at the strange little dive. They knew him well enough to know how things had gone, and that some strange bloke coming along was likely the cause.

I didn't hide the body as well as I should have, fuckin idiot I was at the time. So wrapped up in the joy of acquiring a fine bottle of wine, that I didn't even think about what I was doing. Something in me just wanted that Bottle so badly, that I'd do anything to get it, and I did, and then they took it. Those bastard guards, they took everything from me again, including the bottle.

I was arrested and sentenced to ten years. Ten fucking years! For the death of some fucking miser that little to none cared for aside from the money he would spend! Well, They kept me from my prize for ten years, and everyday I thought of it and what I could have when I returned to the world. I spent each night thinking about that bottle, about what it would taste like and what it would feel like. I became so obssessed with it, that regular food and drink started to lose flavor. To this day, I can't remember what an egg tastes like. A fucking egg, and I don't know what its like anymore. Sure I know what it feels like to eat one, but its just... mush.

When they released me, ten years later, I was handed back the bottle I had craved for so long. Yet, something in the moment felt off, and I couldn't bring myself to drink it. I had waited ten years to be released, and had spent so much time in the prison of a ship before. If I was to celebrate, I would need something to celebrate first. I took what money I had left, not much, and went to gamble.

By the next morning I had redeemed more money than I'd ever held in my life, opened a bank account in my name, purchased a home, and started a business. It was incredible! It was as if life was finally turning my way, everything was finally becoming what I had wanted. Yet it still didn't feel like enough. I didn't have enough to celebrate yet, not for the bottle I had killed over.

Two years into the business of trading and selling, and I had amassed a small fortune and found myself the prospect of a wife. Life had continued to bless me in all endevours, and I had made a habit of being forcibly removed from gambling dens for the prospect of being too forntunate at cards. Things were good, but still not enough for the bottle to be opened. Twelve years, a fortune, a wife, a company, and yet I still had more to do, further to go.

I had children, two, a boy and a girl, and raised them with all the wonders of wealth that could be afforded. My wife wanted for nothing and no one, and I suffered neither pain nor even hangover from my nights of debauchery. Finally, things felt that they were good enough that my bottle, my prize and pride, could be opened and enjoyed with my love. On our fifth wedding anniversary, we opened the bottle beneath the moon and basked in its resplendent flavours.

My son died the next day. Tragic accident they said, no way of predicting that it would happen. He was run down by a pair of carriages that were spooked by a nearby performer. His body was mangled and torn to bits, it was almost impossible to be sure that it was our boy lying there, except for the clothing. He wore my sons favorite outfit. We held a funeral and made short work of it.

I didn't know what to do then. I had lost my son, my only heir, my boy. I felt crushed, and defeated. I wept. My wife and daughter joined me, but they felt like strangers now. People who had no idea what was unfolding, how could they understand? No one could, because deep down I knew, it was my fault he was dead. I couldn't say why, but I knew it in my heart.

I took to drinking more and more as the days went on, finding more comfort in the bottle than in flesh or company. My business began to falter, my wife grew distant, my daughter dissappeared. One year later and I had lost nearly everything I had earned. I was empty, I felt like a shell. I wandered the streets each night, bottle in my jacket, searching for something to take the edge off, and knowing that the only taste I wanted was from the bottle,

I'd had my suspicions at that point, that the bottle was the cause of it all. I tried shattering it, but it never could stay broken for long. I burned it, shot it, lost it, buried it, anything you can think of except give it away. Why would I have? Why would I give up MY bottle to some strangers, I barely told my wife about it except for the night we drank from it.

They found her dead some time later, having taken her own life. She claimed that something had possessed her and taken her joy from the world. She could neither taste nor really feel, and found that without either, life meant little to her. I knew it was the bottle as soon as I read the note, becuase it was what I was suffering. She'd tasted the bottle with me that night, and her life had fallen apart, much like mine.

I don't know what more there is it say. Are you sure you can break this curse without killing me?

— Johann Lamprey of Juella. Father, Husband, Murderer