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789 checks

His sleeve slides up and, for a moment, you see the hint of tattoos, black and dense.

A smeared pattern, with streaked edges. You can rule out natural irritants.

Something about 'Poor Maurito' and 'devil women.'

You feel warmth radiating from the inside. Something in there is fermenting.

Expired coffee, greasy condiment residue. Typewriter ink. Chemically processed wood pulp.

The bitter scent of rotting vegetable matter fills your nasal cavities. Saliva pools in the corners of your mouth.

The slime stings your bare skin. It feels like it will never wash off.

High pitched squeaks and the scrabbling of claws from within the tubes, it is a rat maze.

You can hear snatches of drumbeat, but you don't know where it's coming from.

Please don't imagine that. Definitely don't be tempted to drink it, either.

Swaying lantern lights, fried meat, thick smoke.

Bruised and swollen clouds gather overhead.

The slightest of shivers passes through him.

'Tell me what to do...'

You can feel every contour of the joint.

Look at all these lights. Twinkling, colourful. Lights are where the eyes want to go.

What's that? An odd etching noise coming from somewhere else in the sprawl. Familiar, somehow.

A soft hissing noise accompanies the steady beat of its cooling pumps. Sounds like a human body, amplified.

As the minutes pass, you catch yourself scanning the surroundings. Lamp posts, trash cans, flower planters...

People float by in the distance, trams rattle overhead, but all you care about is how your spine seems to be rippling with ease.

Hush as it falls.

She winks at you.

The bomb vibrates happily in your hands.

Your lips move, muscle memory. You know this song. You know the next line...

You feel chalk dust settle over you.

You hear the clear sound of a drum from upstairs. Something replied.

Droplets of rain break in to party with the dust.

Moonlight peers in to see what you're doing.

You glimpse the sky through a concrete frame, grey teeth with a grey maw.

Smells like blood.

A few seconds later, you hear it crash.

He decorates the word 'song' with a wiggle of his fingertips.

Dark firelights and digital snow dance behind your eyelids. Within your breast, a thrum stirs stray metal -- a deep bassline, plucking strings of pectoral muscle.

Faintly, a round of offended cooing from the rafters.

Thump, thump, thump -- your arteries, or a bassline? It's hard to tell the difference, but something thrums through your body, a vibration from deep within the walls.

Under your fingertips, cellophane wrapping gives way to cardstock.

A seagull shits nearby, white splatter across cement.

But no. Your friend is dead, and you're standing here like a pillock, burning your lungs on a soggy cigarette.

The smell of Luzian tobacco wafts up your nose.

The smell of cola floats through the open crack in the window. A passing aero-tram hums above, unseen.

The bullet nuzzles your aorta. Your heartbeat flutters.

Taste: Woody, bland. The laser printing gives a slight tang.

It is back to being a regular chair, with no hint of the existential terror it once supported.

Taste: Sharp, almost acidic. Unusual paper type, probably very bad for you to consume.

A smell of fresh plastic and aluminium coating, still contained within the transparent hemisphere, rises to your nostrils.

Etched jaggedly into the plastic: 'FUK MUSIC'.

You see the glint of a silver medallion around her neck as she moves to give you a view of the selection behind the bar.

Notes of industrial turpentine and sour pear.

Somewhat bland. Not recently brewed. Overall: serviceable.

789 skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual - Page 8 of 16