[Battle Square was for fighting, not very long ago. With the skin peeled off, Battle Square is still for fighting, although it's unrecognizable as what it was: a twisting, winding street, the kind hewn in by old buildings pressed together by the development of a modern city. A neighborhood left behind, homey and inviting, except for the way the apartments with their friendly balconies merge into a tunnel ceiling overhead. That, and the lack of a single living soul to be seen.]

[Except Mista. And you. There's life in him again now that he's out of the staircase, grim determination despite the occasional ooze of tar from his parted lips or the corners of his eyes. Something about him goes alert at a particular twist of the road as he sees something, or smells something. Some kind of sense-memory.]

Careful, [he says, more a movement of his lips than a truly audible sound, and holds out an arm to the side. Protective, but tense, too.]

[PURPLE HAZE; GORE + BODY HORROR + ANIMAL DEATH. The smell of ozone. A grayish-purple fog down a side alley. Mista almost kicks you away from the mouth of it. You see a shadowy figure, something strange and surging and wrong, slick spit dropping from between sewn-up lips. It groans, gristles, screams. The sound of something cracking. The sound of something bubbling. Mista's on your tail, running with eyes so white the whites show all around, as birds fall out of the sky around you. Sizzling and necrotic, bubbling, dead (hopefully) or at the very least dying. Something eating them alive from the inside out. The haze follows you out of the alleyway, angry and shrieking. You should keep running.]

[METALLICA, GORE (GEN, NAILS) + BODY HORROR. It's like licking a car battery. All around you, metal; metal on your tongue, in your veins, under your nails. Under your nails — nails pressing out from under your nails, pushing them up and up until off they pop, ripping out and clattering on the floor, enough nails to build a birdhouse. You haven't bled yet, but already you feel lightheaded; whatever it is, it's using your blood, using you to rip you apart from the inside out. Beside you, Mista coughs out black and red as a razor black slices through his cheek from the inside out.]

[KING CRIMSON, UNREALITY + DISSOCIATION. You are walking up the street, ever on a slight incline. Then you are several steps forward from where you last remember being. Like time has skipped. Like someone has moved everything forward and only you forgot. You look at Mista, alarmed, heart in your throat, and he's got a hand over his mouth like he's going to be sick and the other latches tight around your wrist because what the hell is going to happen to you if he lets you go. Time skips again. You're several steps forward. Mista is no longer holding onto your wrist. You've moved ahead, and something is holding him back. He says something that sounds almost, almost, like The Devil.]

[VOODOO CHILD, BODY HORROR. This one is easy. Right? Almost calm. Even Mista doesn't look that worried. So maybe it'll be okay. Something skitters across your path, not human or animal or anything even remotely recognizable. It looks at you and, with one (hand? paw?), lashes out, hitting you somewhere — arm, chest, leg. Doesn't matter. Wherever it struck, a mouth forms, not painful but a perfect replica of your real one. And what does it say? Your most shameful secret, in a wretched twisting version of your own voice.]