She was already drunk when she stumbled across the bottle. At the bottom of the closet, shoved in the back beneath musty clothes, it sat unassuming and unremembered, a relic Kelly hadn’t known she owned.

It was covered in layers of dust and thick, oily grime.

Kelly sat on the floor of her bedroom, surrounded by the things she had, in a crazed stupor, torn from their moorings and flung aside. Books and discs were scattered, furniture upturned, paper shredded as she’d flailed about looking for one last drink.

It was a tiny bottle, surely an antique, a left over from some apothecary’s supply. What had resided in it was now reduced to a dark sludge that pooled and crawled as she tilted the glass toward the window.

She worked the disintegrating cork out of the glass neck and upended the bottle, collecting the congealed liquid in her palm. It smelled like rusty metal.

Can booze keep its potency over time?

One taste and then another, and soon Kelly’s mouth was aching. New teeth grew inside her gums.