JUST A GAME

“Dude! Let’s play MAFIA!!” yelled Vinit, breaking the mundane silence. All the heads turned towards him curiously. We were bored. We had to kill the next four hours till we reached our college, and no one could sleep. After the umpteenth round of dumb charades, any other game was welcome.

“See, listen to me carefully. one of us will conduct the game. There will be two phases, nightfall and daybreak. During night fall, the conductor will select a pair of mafia and an angel, and inform them separately. The rest of them will be villagers. The mafia gets to kill a villager during nightfall and the angel gets to guess one person to be the mafia. During daybreak, the conductor will announce the name of the dead villager, and whether the angel guessed the correct person or not. But the conductor will not say who the angel is. And during daybreak, the villagers get to discuss and kill out one person who could be the mafia. It is up to the people to talk and convince one another that they are innocent and not be killed. if you are smart, and you can manipulate others, you win. its all about working together and against us at the same time. So there will be a death every daybreak, a death every nightfall. The rounds will continue till either all mafia die, or all villagers die. Get it?”

We blinked. “You’ve given us a lot to process here” said Shobha. “Hey! I’ve played this one before. Guys, listen…” started Ram, and carefully explained how mafia was played, with a lot of emotion and examples. By the end of the hour, half of us were confident we understood the game, and took twenty minutes to convince the other half that it was simple enough. And then we started the game, with Vinit conducting. There were three mafias, an angel and 12 villagers. The first game ended in five minutes. We had no idea what to do. There was random shouting and some of them started voting people out just for the fun of it. Vinit and Ram stepped up, went through the whole game again, and pleaded us to be sports and play it properly. They promised it would be fun. And it was. The game kept getting more interesting as we started to get the hang of it. We reached the hostel, moved inside, dumped our bags and continued playing. We played all through the night till we became extremely tired and could not play anymore. We were getting obsessed with mafia. It became an after-class tradition. Every day we would play till it became dark and the warden drew the girls away to their hostels. More and more people started joining in. After a month of mafia, when it started to get a little boring, Vinit came up with yet another idea. “Let’s play mafia in real time” he exclaimed.

“You’ve lost it” I said. He came up to me,” No, listen. We’ll play mafia with the real nightfall and daybreak. I will chose the mafia and the angel and text them in the night. We will have a meeting once every three days during lunch where the voting will happen. To make it more interesting, the mafia will secretly, in their own way notify the person they wish to eliminate, who will announce themselves in the next meeting. This way we are playing it all the time, for a long time and still not wasting all of our time!” It did sound good. So we started playing mafia in real time. It was taking over our lives. No one could sleep at night. We were curious as to who the mafia were, or who will be eliminated the next day. The meetings were extremely intense. The fights and arguments were getting really serious. We loved it though. The curiosity was really exciting. In most of the games, halfway through the game I was able to get a picture of who the mafia were. It was getting really predictable, until the last game.

These set of guys were extremely secretive. I couldn’t get even a clue as to who the mafia were. When i did start thinking a person was a mafia, that person would end up eliminated. These guys were as brilliant as they were terrifying. They had very unique methods of announcing their killings. every move was well planned and took everyone by surprise. I was a villager, but I couldn’t trust anyone else. Vinit was out of town for a week, but we decided to carry on with the game. Vijay, who was eliminated before, filled in for Vinit. The angel was already eliminated. There were ten people left, out of whom three were mafia. there were only three rounds left. That’s when things started getting out of hand.

With a meeting the next day, I was lying wide awake in my bed, wondering if I would be eliminated next. That was when I heard a huge cry from down the corridor. Struck by surprise, it took me a minute to gather myself and run out of the room in the direction of the voice. There was another cry, this time louder and sounding even more painful. I realised it was from the floor below. As I ran towards the voice, I was joined by three more of my friends. “It’s Rishabh!” claimed one of them as we sped up the stairs to see his room open. We went in to find Rishabh on the floor, unconscious with bruises all over his face. We looked up to see huge bold letters on his wall.

YOU’RE DEAD

- M

I was shocked. This was not what I expected. I did not know where this was going, but i really dint want it all to carry on this way. With Vinit gone, we had no idea who the mafia were. He had not replied yet. The next meeting happened.

” This is too much. We have to stop this. Whoever did this please own up. We know you did this just for the game, and we will not tell anyone. We will let this go” said Vijay. Silence. “If no one is willing to come forward, let us please end this. We don’t want more people getting beaten up anymore. The game is off”. People started booing. Navneeth, one of the remaining villagers stood up and said, “Let’s finish the remaining 3 rounds man. I’m sure whoever did this had a tiny lapse of judgement. Let us believe this won’t happen again and finish what we started”. Others seemed to agree. Though I was terrified by whatever that was going to happen next, deep down, I did want to finish this. And like everyone, I did want to find out who the mafia were. “In that case” continued Vijay, “we do need to vote someone out today. But since Vinit is not here, and we will not know if we have voted out the mafia, I guess we will have to wait till he replies”. “I volunteer to be voted out” said Navneeth. all the heads turned towards him in surprise. “This game is too much for me to handle anymore. I am a villager. If I am voted out there will be eight of you left. By the next nightfall, the mafia will eliminate the other person. So by the next meeting you can reach an end. Come on guys. Just let me go”. I was surprised. I started “but you just made us continue the game. Trying to chicken out are you?” but before I finished there was a collective yes from the rest of them. His way meant the game would end sooner, and that’s what all of us wanted. Before I knew it, Navneeth was out, and the next meeting was decided to be three days from then.

This was all so suspicious. How could the others not see what Navneeth did? It was staring us right in the face. He made sure the game continued, and made sure he was not involved in any of this? Just then there was a knock on my door. I opened it to see Shobha standing there shivering. “What happened Shobha? What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I…its N…Na….” she stumbled.

I pulled her in, made her sit and gave her a glass of water. “Calm down and tell me clearly. What happened?”

She burst out “It’s Navneeth! He beat up Rishabh! He is one of the mafia! That is why he convinced all of us to continue the game. And he thought, if he withdrew from the game, no one would suscept him. But he knew I noticed what he did. So he came to my room. He had a gun in his hand… and.. And…”

There was something wrong with Navneeth, “why did he vote out? who is he protecting? And what did he say?”

“He said ‘We know you are onto me. You, and that nosy Guru. We are coming for you. Your precious little rules don’t limit us anymore. We are the mafia!It is high time you realised this. my volunteering to leave was a necessary sacrifice. The real eliminations have begun!’ ” she trailed off, her voice trembling with fear.

I was terrified! “You and me? He had a gun? He has taken this too seriously!” I said. “We’ve got to stop this! Did he say ‘they’? Who was he talking about? Did he tell you Shobha?”

“Y… Y yes. It was him, and R R… Ram” she said, still trembling.

“and?”

“And he said something about a g…g…girl…”

“The other mafia is a girl? There were only two girls as far as I remember… but…” I wondered.

“But Rita got eliminated just before Rishabh!” said a voice from behind.

Startled, I turned behind to see Navneeth glaring at me, an evil grin on his face.

That’s when it dawned on me. “That leaves….”

“Shobha”

I felt a blinding pain throughout my body from behind as my whole world faded to darkness.