M a l i s k u

Hi guys
The title is created out of two words - mailing-list and sudoku.

M a l i s k u

Once upon a time, there was a small town with 24 houses where 24 people lived. They were called Alpha, Beta, Gamma, .. Psi, Omega. It was a small town.

They never made any enemies with each other. In fact, they were the best of friends. If anybody had to leave the town on any business, he would get very irritated. He would keep cursing until he got back to the town. He would feel a terrible longing to return to his friends, to party and to rejoice.

They hardly did any work other than partying. They never grew tired out of it - they seemingly had unending appetites for it.

A weird bunch of people, they were. They were totally inseparable. It was hard to talk of anybody without mentioning the entire bunch of 24.

One day, they discovered a new game. It was a pretty fun game. They called it "malisku". They put up a large wall in the centre of the village. Each one of them would then go and paste a paper on the wall - with a sentence written on the paper. They could do it every day. The goal was to make a story on the wall, a story in which each person would contribute.

The tricky part was that they would not meet each other or see each other. They stayed in their houses and stopped seeing anyone else. Life became different, but it was pretty much fun though. They would spend time attending other jobs. Or they would keep thinking about what they would write on the paper. Or they would plainly keep on sleeping.

The people grew accustomed to the wall. They liked it. It was filled up pretty enthusiastically too. An interesting story started to get built up. Sometimes the story had twists and sometimes it had none. But mostly, it went along.

In the paper slips, people soon began to identify the ones written by Epsilon.

They went like this,
"hee hee ha ha haha hahaa",
"heee heee hee hee >:-)",
"ha haha haa hhaa x-)"

One day, somebody pointed out that these messages made no sense. They were not contributing to the story. He said Epsilon should paste meaningful sentences instead. Somebody else said no. He said he liked the messages. These messages added to the humour part of the story, he said. Then life went on as usual with the wall.

But one day, something strange happened.

Delta found a paper slip on the door of his house. He was surprised. It was signed by Gamma. It said "Sigma is dead. I am sure of it. She has not come out of the house for days. I know it is against the rules - but I have been spying on her. She is dead ! "

Then Delta felt sad, he wanted to investigate. But he did not go speak with Gamma. It had been a long time since he did some speaking - he had lost the habit of it. Speaking felt strange. So he posted a paper slip on the house of Gamma. "Let's go find out. Let's tell others too ! "

The next day, there were two paper slips on the houses of Delta and Gamma.

"They were dead ! They were all dead !! I have seen them personally. They are as cold as bones."

"They are dead ! Dont know when they died. I could not move them an inch. They were as dead as stones"

Gamma had found a girl who was sitting on a table, writing something on the paper slip. But she was not a girl, she was a skeleton. The fingers did not move. The body was locked into a stillness when the girl died, when she died trying to write a message.

Delta had found a boy digging into the ground. In fact, the boy had shoveled up 25 feet of the ground. But then he died - standing as cold as a stone, with the shovel in his hand. Delta had found a skeleton holding a shovel.

Gamma had found a boy who was standing in front of a mirror. He had been looking into it continuously, and then he died there. Gamma had found a skeleton looking into the mirror.

But the wall continued to display new messages.

Beta wrote. "They went on a holiday."

Gamma wrote, "They were dead."

Delta wrote, "Yes, They were all dead."

Epsilon wrote, "Hee hee >:-)"

Alpha wrote, "So they moved into a hotel"

Beta wrote, "Was it nice ?"

Alpha wrote, "It was nice"

Epsilon wrote, "Ha ha hahaa"

Gamma wrote,"....."

Delta wrote, "....."

Alpha wrote, "And they moved out of the hotel"

Later that, Gamma and Delta never wrote on the wall. But Alpha and Beta kept on writing. And Epsilon kept on writing too.

But there was something in the town that happened.
They were all dead !