In the grey conference room in the grey building there were twelve men and twelve vodka bottles. Outside it was snowing and inside it was warm.
For some it was their first bottle of the meeting, and for others the second. Eleven had a ukuporka pej do dna, a heavy foil cap, broken on the table beside them. The twelfth had a screwcap.
Next to each man and his bottle was a glass, just a little bigger than a shot glass. It was out of this glass that the men drank. They tipped it back again and again, until they’d finished the bottle.
It wasn’t just traditional (to finish an opened bottle), it was logical. The sun rose and the sun set, and an opened bottle of vodka needed to be finished. Facts of life. That’s why eleven of the twelve bottles had foil caps. They weren’t in need of anything else.
Viktor was though. He’d been East, out America way, where he’d met Keith. Keith was a spotty software engineer who’d taught him that half a vodka bottle was actually, indeed, better than a full bottle, and had blacked out in doing so. He’d woken up the next morning in a small cell.
Viktor bailed him out, feeling fresh as a daisy.
His family were suspicious of the changes they could see in Viktor when he returned.
Still, nothing was formally said and so when his dad died, Viktor took over the family vodka business, the second biggest in the region. He set about modernising and introduced the new, American style of lid.
It didn’t go down well though, and quickly the company shrunk until it was only the fifth largest in the region.
Now, if you knew anything about provincial post Soviet vodka production, then you probably just recoiled in shock. Companies don’t just grow, or shrink. At least, not out of proportion to the others. In fact, a fastidious, honourable equilibrium is maintained by local accounting practices. So to break free of all of that, even in a downwards direction, was quite impressive.
But why? Well, for the simple reason that sales had dropped. Their loyal customers had found that their loyalty didn’t extend as far as a lidded bottle. It was blasphemous and illogical and they’d rather forget about the whole, unhonourable affair. This happened in all areas, apart from the company’s traditional strongholds far inland. No one else distributed so far inland.
It wasn’t just a drop in sales, though. It was a decreased margin. Their bottle manufacturers didn’t produce lids, nor did any business within a five hundred kilometre radius. And so they’d had to import the lids across the Sea of Japan from Sapporo. That didn’t come cheap, as you probably know.
Sergei watched as his Uncle slowly frittered away his inheritance. He was only nineteen but he was sharp and ambitious and angry that this was happening to him and his family’s name.
He reached under the table for his second bottle. He placed it on the table, next to his first, and in one motion smoothly removed and crumpled the foil cap. He knew that he would have to finish the bottle, but then again he also had to breathe. With his left he poured a shot into the little glass he corralled with his right, and drank it.
Crack.
The silence was broken. Sergei stood up without saying anything. The 9x18mm Makarov in his hand was smoking.
No one was shocked by the shockingly loud sound. Not the building, not the men, not Sergei. Some of the men lazily examined the red hole in Viktor’s forehead out of curiosity. Everyone knew that the uncle’s days had been numbered, and well, that was all there was to it.
A little something did flitter on the faces of each man however when Viktor reached out to unscrew the lid of his vodka bottle. He expertly unscrewed it with his left hand, and poured a shot with his right.
He rose, little glass in hand. Blood trickled down his back, but he hadn’t seemed to notice. He lazily walked over to the window, and studied his reflection. The hole, he noted, was equidistant between his eyes and trimmed hairline. It was quite big actually, now that he thought about it. There was also an odd feeling at the back of his head, in a similar position, head speaking, to the hole in his forehead. He even felt confident enough to suppose that perhaps it wasn’t two holes, but a single tunnel.
He sunk back into his seat, more confident in the situation, and pleasingly unaffected by the tunnel through his brain. Sergei studied his gun and moved his head from side to side, trying to find his hearing. Viktor apologised. He was sorry for the unprofessionalism of stopping a board meeting so abruptly. As he was saying, the numbers looked good, the projections were solid. Of course they were, he’d written them. But still, it was an important thing to say at an important meeting. And he knew that some doubted the direction he was taking the company. Some didn’t believe in a lidded vodka bottle. He knew that. But he also knew that man was made to drink vodka as he saw fit. He’d seen the future in that place called San Francisco, and liberty for man lay just around the corner. It almost accidentally amounted to something of a fervent speech.
Only Sergei stood, unamused. He’d seen the undoctored figures, and he knew that when buyers didn’t finish a bottle in one sitting, they bought less. He knew that the screw cap destroyed three quarters of the margin on each bottle. And he knew in his heart that a vodka bottle only exists in two states, as surely as the sun rises in the East.
Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack
He fired the rest of the barrel into his uncle’s forehead.
The bullets were placed such that the single tunnel became multiple tunnels, and then eventually a single tunnel once more, albeit much larger.
The tunnel through his head was less subtle this time. Still, he reached out to his vodka bottle and unscrewed the cap. He grabbed his small glass, which shrunk away with horror at the room’s attention, and filled it roughly. He threw it back into his throat and slowly repeated the process twice more. He then took his screw lid and started to twist it back onto the top of his bottle. But before the rifles took, he slumped forward dead, like a sleepy drunk. His head hit the table, and eventually followed his body to the floor where it settled.
The lid followed, filled with melancholy, knowing its days were numbered. It wasn’t a sad melancholy particularly because the land was actually very cold and distinctively unwelcoming to lids, but still.
These days the sad fall and dramatic rise of Primorsky’s second largest vodka company is taught in the most prestigious business schools. Students turn up hungover.
Research, they say.
*Thank you for reading! I wrote this last year, inspired by the a surprisingly good book called Owls Of The Eastern Ice. Highly recommend. Couldn’t believe vodka bottles actually didn’t have lids so I wrote this silly little thing. Being last year’s work I look at it now and think that’s rough and weird and horrible, but hey, fuck it. Right?