Dave was joined at the hip with the gambling app on his phone. But he didn’t crave the juice. The excitement. The jolt of a winning bet. In fact, it was the opposite. He was consumed with fear. Fear of losing. His every waking hour was dedicated to following his beloved sports teams. He had worshipped them since his boyhood. Watched every pitch, tackle and jump shot. On multiple TVs if necessary. A loss would send him into a swoon of melancholy so profound it bordered on suicidal. He couldn’t stop watching. It had gutted his career. Alienated his wife and two kids. But worse than the carnage caused by his nonstop watching was the desolation he felt after a loss.   

There seemed no remedy for these wild mood swings caused by his obsessive fandom. Highest of highs followed by lowest of lows. After all most teams roughly split their outcomes, even the most successful win seven out of ten. That makes for almost daily peaks and valleys.

Until his great state legalized gambling. And gambling apps. And he discovered right there on his phone the salve to his mania.

For he discovered above all he was a coward. Rather than feel the buzz, the excitement of a game, the chase for the high of a win, all he could feel was fear. Fear of a defeat. Crippling anxiety over the result. Gambling provided a way out. He could hedge his emotional exposure. Dave found that by betting AGAINST his beloved teams he could neutralize the crushing risk of a bad game result. Because every time his side went down it meant cash in his pocket. He never truly won, yet never truly lost. A coward’s paradise. Dave became every bit as addicted to this gambling as he had been to his fanatical team loyalty. Indeed, they were linked. This method seemed to offer Dave a soothing homeostasis.

But what about real life outside the ball games? Fears there started to eat Dave alive. What if something dire happened to him? His wife? His kids? How could he cope with those losses? Infinitely worse to bear than any setback his Yankees might suffer on the field. He was paralyzed with fear for his loved ones. Then it hit him. The same cure he used for his sporting fetish. A way to gamble to ensure any devastating mishap to a close soulmate could be offset. He found a way to bet against his family, so he was emotionally hedged. That kind of gambling is called life insurance. They live, you’re happy. They die, you’re rich. Balance. It let him sleep at night. All of his compulsions caged in neat little boxes. Addicted to sports. Addicted to gambling. Addicted to fear. But fully insured.

All went well with his twisted set up until…. His teams hit a winning streak. All of them at the same time. He was on cloud nine. As a fan. But he was hemorrhaging cash. His protective bets were all going against him. Again and again. It couldn’t last. But it did. As the playoff wins rolled in, the losing wagers piled up. He dare not stop betting. He couldn’t go into championship play unprotected. A lost game could destroy him. But the victories were bankrupting him.

When the money was gone Dave still craved daily game action to watch. And he needed cash to bet against those games to buffer his psyche. So, he turned away from the apps which offered cash-only prepaid transactions, turning to less savory elements who would float you some scratch to make a wager. With the caveat they would float you in the river if you were late on payback. Improbably but perhaps predictably Dave’s teams continued on a heater, racking up gambling losses and debts that put him in extreme personal danger. He realized he had left himself vulnerable to a situation like this, where his real-world troubles were something less than a family death. This loophole left him in distress without an accompanying payoff. As his debts mounted, he saw the clear solution.

Dave sat in his refurbished townhouse watching four games at once on his state-of-the-art 4K monitors. The house was otherwise eerily quiet. Empty. He looked out of the sumptuous bay window to the Maserati in the drive. The claims process had been an ordeal but ultimately the carrier was good to its name. Paid off. In spades. On all three policies. It was impossible to determine what had caused the family SUV to roll over and ignite. The manufacturer? The dealership who last serviced the fireball? Certainly, it wasn’t possible to pin blame on the true culprit. Dave. Who was too busy watching games to join the clan for that fateful last drive to the beach. On a rear axle he had compromised covertly.

Turns out Dave had been covered after all.

He sat alone in his lavish digs, his brain whirring with his compulsions. Watching. Rooting. Worrying. Betting. Suffering. Celebrating. Paying. Collecting.  When this money ran out, he had one final consolation. His own policy was still in place.

BIO:

Scott MacLeod is a father of two who writes in Central Florida. His work has appeared recently in Flash Fiction Magazine, Punk Noir, Rmag, Micromance, Free Flash Fiction, Westwords, Microzine, Dead Mule, Close to the Bone, Roi Faineant, Urban Pigs, Every Day Fiction, Wrong Turn Lit, JAKE, Underbelly Press, Bristol Noir, Havok, Witcraft, NFFD Write-In, Coffin Bell, 10 By 10 Flash, Frontier Tales, The Yard: Crime Blog, Yellow Mama, Short-story.me and Gumshoe, with more forthcoming. His Son of Ugly weekly flash newsletter can be found on: Substack at https://scottmacleod1.substack.com // Instagram @scottmacleod478 // http://www.facebook.com/scott.Macleod.334