I coulda been a contender.*

Mafia: a murder mystery game played by a group of 6 or more people. Usually roles are decided by drawing a specified card (i.e. the Ace means you are a detective and the Jack means you are a mafia, regular card means civilian). The bigger the group, the more detectives and mafia you have. There is a narrator who conducts the game, instructing everyone in the group to close their eyes, then having the mafia awake to kill someone. Once that is done and the mafia's eyes are closed the narrator has the detective(s) awake and point to someone they think is the mafia, if the detective is right, the narrator nods their head. Then, everyone is "woken up", the narrator announces who is dead and the "townspeople" try to figure out who dunnit, the detective tries to steer them in the right direction without revealing that they are the detective (cause the mafia will kill the detective if they know).

Last night, instead of playing Frisbee, we got together to play games. Mafia has recently become a group favorite. So last night we began to play but the group was pretty small and we never made it past one round. Some people thought we should have two mafia, but others felt that if we had two the game would end too quickly (like it wasn't already ending quickly...) So we decided to give it a shot. We also added on one or two more players. So the game did get batter.

The stories that the narrators came up with were great! Once we were in a crack house, once on a cruise, when I was narrator we were at Dairy Queen (I don't remember how that came up, I think Drew said he wanted ice-cream) and the dastardly Dairy Queen employees were taking out the customers. Poor Kathryn, she had a rough night. On the cruise she found a dead body and pretty much in all others she died. She was chopped into pieces on our train ride (I am pretty sure we were going to Hogwarts but no one confirmed or denied that), she got pushed through the railing of the Eiffel Tower (therefore she was in pieces). I always swore to avenge her, and usually we found the mafia pretty quickly (not because of my skills, mostly because of other people's). I was mafia once and my partner in crime was Nick. Nick's first action as mafia was to order a hit on my sister! I looked at him and shook my head 'no' but he nodded and since he is Italian and really could be part of the mafia I conceded and instructed the narrator to kill my sister...

Brittany was the detective and she was adamant that Nick was the mafia. There were only a few of us playing at this point and all of them raised their hands to vote Nick as the mafia, so I quickly raised my hand too...Orin's reluctance to vote for Brittany in the round before was how I figured out that he was a mafia too, I couldn't give myself away like that. Brittany and Nick went back and forth for a while discussing arguing the matter. Brittany admitted to the group that she was the detective and gave a very detailed account of how she questioned the narrator about Nick's guilt and it had been confirmed. The evidence was damning. I couldn't save Nick, the best I could do was go on and try to win the game for the mafia. In the heat of the moment, when Nick realized it was a lost cause, he said, "If I'm the mafia then Jessica is the other one!" and pointed at me.

...you dirty rat.

Everyone was thrown off by it, what kind of mafia turns on the other person like that?! He's a canary. Some people were like, "Where did that come from?" and Nick stood by his accusation that I was the other mafia and he was selling me out because I was so quick to raise my hand against him. Everyone voted Nick off and we all closed our eyes. I knew I was going down, no matter who I killed it was over, I had one chance. When Orin told the mafia to open their eyes I pointed at the people on either side of me. It's against the rules to kill two people at once, but this was my last chance - the game had been ruined anyway might as well make it interesting. Orin seemed to agree. I closed my eyes, Brittany opened hers and likely pointed at me to verify that I was the other mafia. When we all opened our eyes Orin told the story of how both Michelle and Cam were taken down, there was an uproar from the crowd that two people had been killed, I said I knew I was going out and I was going to go out big...I ADMITTED that I was the killer. And then the most amazing thing happened...two of the players still didn't think that I was the other mafia...that would have been genius for Nick to point at a civilian and say that they were the other mafia as his dying words...but unfortunately Nick's accusation was a crime of passion not an intricate plot to win the game. I almost got away with it too...but it reminded them that I had confessed to being the killer. Kathryn was shocked.

I killed my sister for that guy and he gave me up in a heartbeat...

Then in a different round when I was just a civilian, we were trying to figure out who the mafia were. For a moment I wondered if it was Kathryn, she had that kind of smile when I asked and I thought how horrible it would be to have to accuse my sister and how much worse if I was wrong. Nick was trying to get me to vote for Brittany, but I didn't want to vote with him and then him end up being Mafia...I was still bitter. When he realized he couldn't get me to vote with him and that people might vote him off, he turned the mafia against me. The very person he was just accusing helped him to vote me off. He said that he didn't think I was mafia, but he could tell I wouldn't vote with him and he had to do what he had to do to stay alive...when the mafia struck again - they killed him. So much for staying alive.