Bottle, Part I

The grizzly bear climbed into a bottle and never came out again. He wasn't an alcoholic or anything of the sort, he just wanted to climb inside a bottle and never return to the real world. He hated alcohol, which confused everyone given that he purposely climbed into a bottle of wine.

He tried to explain this choice by saying that wine didn't look like beer which looked like piss which he did not want to splash around in. Anything that didn't resemble beer was good, he stressed. Though his hatred wasn't directed at just beer but at alcohol in general.

"Alcohol is what's wrong with this country," he would roar, "and the birds. Especially those falcons! Goddamn winged bastards."

His ornithophobia was one of the "many valid" reasons for climbing into the bottle. His relatives all knew he was full of it but they just wanted him out of the way. So much was their contentment that it never crossed their minds to visit him, or even allow themselves to think of such a thing. Then again, they were business bears. Crappy ones at that. Their neighbors on the other hand, were financial geniuses, and bulls. Unfortunately, they had no interest in playing the stock market.

"And perpetuate a stereotype associated with my species?" they snorted. "No thanks!"

This caused much dismay to their other neighbors: an assortment of foxes, fowls, fish, and various other creatures, except for apes. They were on their own planet. Sort of.

All this and more the bear pondered from time to time from behind tinted glass.

He was oblivious to the effects of his exile.

"Am I hallucinating? Am I drunk? Is this space dementia?" echoed not only inside the confinement of the bottle but within the caverns of his recently cleaned-out mind; he caved after the first few hours and drank himself stupid.