The Ghoul in the Machine

The minute she opens her eyes and focuses, the image of the machine with its lights winking mischievously pushes its way forcefully into her consciousness. She shudders, half with imagined exhilaration, half with fear and slides down from the bed onto the floor, on her knees. “Today, whatever happens, I will not gamble. Please help me God”, she mutters, eyes fixed on the Crucifix above her bed.

She knows she should keep herself occupied and busies herself around the house, wiping tables which already gleam, sweeping floors with not a speck on them, and re-arranging clothes which, since yesterday, have been fastidiously folded in their drawers or hanging in the wardrobe. She tries to concentrate on the work, but the attempts to shut out the image of that mechanical demon with the flickering eyes whirring sweet nothings in her ears take too much effort and she often finds herself, broom in hand, staring vacantly in mid-task.

At times the urge to drop everything and fly to the shop becomes strongly physical, a welling emptiness in her chest, a thumping in her breast and forehead, and a tantalising tingling in her fingers. She strides to the phone instead, and calls Anna, like her a recovering gambler, unlike her able to stay away from the machines for close to four years now. For thirty minutes she pours out her feelings, her anger at herself, at the blasted machine, object of her love and hate, and at the damned bastards who opened the shop round the corner from her house, where nine days before, she had lost the new-found control over her life. 

It had lasted just over three months. When the gambling parlours had been unexpectedly closed down in the summer of 2009, she had at first felt strangely elated at the freedom from the shackles of the compulsion to hit the machines. All of two days later a friend had whispered in her ear about the ‘amusement’ machines in Cottonera.  There, she had gambled whatever she could beg or borrow.

She had stolen too, first raiding her children’s bank-accounts from the few thousands their father had left for them before he moved in with that floosy, loathing herself for doing so more than she hated the peroxide bitch who had wrested Mark away from her. She would of course replace the money one day, she had repeated to herself to mollify her conscience, knowing full well that would never happen. She had then schemed with a friend to steal handbags from churches, but had been arrested quite early on in her new career as thief. It would be her first time ever in court.

The only source of cash left had been Frans, the local loan-shark, who had kindly procured a couple of thousand Euros for her at a specially discounted rate of 10% - per month, of course. She now owed him more than €19,000 and lived in mortal terror of meeting him in the street, or worse still, of finding him on her doorstep to retrieve “his” money. He would doubtlessly have creative suggestions about how she could earn enough to pay him off in a few short months – under his muscularly benevolent protection.

Then in October of last year, a knock did come – but, when she had opened, it was not Frans is-Sellief’s menacing bulk which met her terrified glance, but two rather pleasant faces. They introduced themselves as social workers, and told her quietly and clearly that, unless she sorted herself out, the children would be taken in care since it was obvious from the fact that they were acting out at school and at times turning up without anything to eat, that they were at risk. She realised that all the neighbours knew about her gambling habit – and word had got through to the school which had in turn alerted Appoġġ.

The social workers had suggested Gamblers Anonymous and one evening she made her way to Floriana resigned to spending the next ninety minutes being preached to about the evils of gambling by condescending do-gooders.  Instead she had been greeted with unexpected warmth, and was soon listening with rapt attention to the stories of the other gamblers: familiar tales of deceptive wins and soaring debts, of lies and betrayal of family members, of suicides contemplated and attempted.

There were unfamiliar stories too: of courageous decisions to stop gambling, of the fellowship and camaraderie at Gamblers Anonymous helping members achieve extraordinary victories over the urge to gamble, of solemn promises never to approach the machines any more broken before they were uttered, and of impossibly tangled webs of problems and difficulties gradually unwoven. 

For the next three months she did not set foot in that dingy Paola parlour, attending meetings, reading the literature and talking daily on the phone with her new-found friends instead. The children sensed something was different about her and were becoming less anxious by the day, as food became less scarce and their mother was no longer preoccupied solely with acquiring money to play the machines. There were even suggestions of a new-found self-esteem in their demeanour, as their mother began to care enough to help them with their school-work.

Then, she discovered that the florist’s round the corner had, virtually overnight, been transformed into a gambling parlour with 8 shining monsters, their colourful lights seductively signalling their availability. The knowledge that those machines were there, a mere three minutes’ walk away, pounded incessantly, obsessively into her thinking and, try as she might, she could not shake off the urge this triggered. Within two days, she was gobbling up the machines’ delights, oblivious to all consequences, hitting them with wild abandon and revelling in the exhiliration only they could arouse in her.

Only when she had bet her last eurocent could she drag herself away home to her children agitatedly awaiting her return. The wild euphoria had given way to a desperate emotional trough as she was confronted with her frailty when facing the monster. Waves of self-pity swamped her and horrible thoughts about a final solution to her problems probed her mind. Providence intervened in the shape of a phone-call from Anna, her GA sponsor, which helped her regain enough composure to realise that she owed it to herself and to her children to try again.

This is where she is now: fearful, tearful and jittery, veering between uncertain optimism and a dark foreboding. The struggle within is practically unceasing, the images of the monsters round the corner beckoning with a force which almost physically threatens to propel her through the door into their waiting jaws.  Except when she’s on the phone with Anna or her other GA companions, she suffers alone, wondering whatever  possessed the authorities to subject her and her family to this torture by giving the go-ahead to the resuscitation of those monsters of doom and destruction.