Elaine Abery - Soul

Soul-less. He can always spot them. As if there were some sort of magnetic attraction. Magnets work both ways. They attract – and are attracted to – the item. He wondered which was the magnet – he or them?

They have a particular way of walking, way of holding themselves. Unwanted? Defiant? He searched for a word that best described them. Unwanted, unsure and defiant.

They wander late at night, collecting others like them as they go. Immediately, they become prey. That’s how he often finds them. He steps in between them and the prey-seeker, which could be policy, civilians, or someone with far more – to the ordinary person – nefarious purposes.

All the prey-seekers have the same result. They reinforce the unwanted “other” status.

Over time, he has come to know many of them. They bring their friends to him, old or new.

He knows their stories intimately. Similar but different. He tells them their lives have meaning. They matter. He interposes himself between them and those who victimise them; the police, the local residents turned vigilantes, and the others who seek mules, runners, new recruits.

He teaches them to be men. The purpose and reward in looking out for others and standing for what is right. He cries with them when he visits them – again – in overnight police detention. Tears of frustration that this young man is again manhandled into detention with no evidence, other than the hunch or “dob-in” of a local resident, refusing to make space to listen to them.

After all, where else can they go than the streets looking for something better, for purpose?

Home, for them, is empty, abandoned. No food in the cupboards. Except when it’s not. When it’s scary. The times their parent returns from the pokies. The black cloud precedes them those days. The kids can feel their parent returning long before their physical presence that brings with it sullen anger, loud screaming, breaking crockery,…

Many variations. One theme. Unsafe. Unwanted. Unwelcome.

The winning days are somehow worse. The smiles. The lavish gifts. The apologies. And… the waiting… for the crash and black cloud. Because the black cloud owns the “home”. The kids never feel welcome. Never wanted.

This all runs through his head as his local club offers $50,000 to sponsor his charity for his work with young men.

He will not allow them to pacify their black souls and purchase social license for their activities through him.

700 people take their lives each year due to gambling… that we know of. Then, there are the so-called “accidental” deaths sought out. The lost lives. The lost potential. The children whose childhoods are full of fear and feeling unwanted.

$32+billion each year sucked from peoples’ lives. Foodless kitchens of hungry children.

“No thanks. I can’t take your money. But if you want to help, you can remove your gambling machines.”