17. The Fever

Franklin Gibbs and his wife Flora go to Las Vegas because she won a slogan contest. He detests gambling, but his wife is excited about their vacation. In a casino, she puts a nickel in a slot machine and Franklin admonishes her for wasting money. She convinces him to let her pull the arm since she already put the money in, but wins nothing on the spin. Happy that his point was made, he implores her to go back to their room so they can get ready for dinner. As they walk, Franklin is given a silver dollar by a drunk man who makes him use it in a different machine that advertises a $10,000 jackpot.

He wins a few dollars and tells Flora that they should keep the winnings and not lose it back like other people. As they depart, Franklin believes he hears the slot machine calling his name in a monstrous-sounding voice.

Franklin continues to hear the voice as he tries to sleep. He gets out of bed, telling his wife he cannot keep "tainted" money, and that he is going to get rid of it by putting it back in the machine. Later, Flora goes to the casino and finds Franklin playing the machine obsessively. When Flora tries to coax him to stop, he declares that he has lost so much that he has to try to win some of it back. He becomes enraged when she presses him to leave; he declares that the machine is "inhuman," that it "teases you, [...] sucks you in." The casino workers watch and talk about him as he constantly plays and ignores his wife's pleas to go to bed. When Franklin puts his last dollar into the machine, it suddenly malfunctions and the reels will not spin. He loses his temper, knocks the machine over, and is taken screaming out of the casino.

Later in bed, Franklin tells Flora that it was about to pay off, but deliberately broke down so that it would not have to give him his money. He again hears the machine calling his name, then sees it coming down the hallway toward the couple's room and pursuing him. To his horror, its coin hopper is now covered by a hood etched with a large smile. Flora can neither see nor hear the machine as it backs Franklin up toward the window, until he crashes backwards through it and falls to his death.

The police stand over his body, noting that his wife had stated that he had not slept in 24 hours, and a casino manager comments that he has never seen anyone develop a gambling addiction so quickly and severely. Franklin's last dollar rolls across the pavement to stop by his outstretched hand, and the camera pans in the direction from which it came and there sits the slot machine, "smiling".