That Last Bottle

It was, you said, your very last, and that you could, without a doubt take it or leave it, any time at all. Just a cute habit, acquired in your youth and kept like an intelligent companion. When years of proper foods and medicines could not erase the fusel oils of spirits you made some stops, unscheduled ones, inside the institutions where they looked and probed, and frowned and preached. They were not schools, of course, not really, and no one could expect you to obtain new knowledge, even some of benefit to you in such a place, where fumes of formalin prevail. So, you were right, my friend, that bottle was your last.