Death Mask

  The sour stench of death drafts through the humid air and hangs there like a rotten balloon. The source crunches under my feet; a raccoon skull stares its eyeless stare up at me with its death-mask, white teeth jutting from its mouth, its matted fur clinging to the bone like a sickly mold. No salt air or cool sea breeze permeates the dense wood.  The ocean was miles away.  Just stagnant lakes that sat like cesspools dripping with life - snakes, mosquitoes, gators, catfish - an almost prehistoric landscape with scaly and slippery and sucking creatures. It was as if the modern veil was torn away like a scab and all that was left was a lens into an older, more dangerous Earth. But a more exciting Earth nonetheless. An Earth with lands yet unconquered, caves to be explored, woods to raze and settle, seas to sail. A Dirty South Heart of Darkness.  
   There are no seas to sail here, just fetid lakes, brown like tea, full of tangled vine and muddy banks. And the sun, no shortage of it here, the burning orb hanging low over the tree line like the eye of some cruel fire god. Spanish moss hangs in long wisps from the cypress trees like cobwebs from skeletal fingers. The trees leer at you like they're alive, like they could move if they wanted to. Everything is flat, and wet, and hostile. You'd half expect to see Conan trudging through the murk with his axe in hand, searching for some swamp beast to slay for it's hide. He'd rule from his Oaken throne, an alligator-skin cloak draping his shoulders, a moss laurel at his head, piles of bass and bluegill to feed his tribes. A wretched raccoon skull dangles from his neck and speaks for him. It speaks of death, in death's tongue, and all who meet its dead gaze can do nothing but cry "the horror, the horror."