you're too young & eager to love

This seemed so much better when I was hand writing it at work. Oh well.
I was going to extend it once I typed it out, but, as usual, length is my adversary.

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Jones is forced to order the Kraken’s death. A man with the black spot hurls himself onto white sand, and the tentacled beast follows. A suicide mission. And although Jones is half a world away, contained to The Dutchman and riptides, his body hardens. He lets out a cry of rage and hurricane strength, working the water stained keys of his organ. The Kraken had been his – a creature of mythical proportions, as old and as heartless as himself.

(This is after Jones has, finally, gained the illusive Sparrow. Swallowed by all those razor teeth, down to the Locker. But it’s an empty consolation now – his heart and chest has been unearthed and his fate controlled by the brittle demands of a British Lord.)

Then she appears, like she does sometimes. To taunt, or plea, or gaze in silence. To ease his pain while tormenting him. Jones isn’t sure if his mind creates her, calling her forth, or if she is real. A black mouthed Caribbean beauty, the fabric of her skirts worn by river salt and the worship of a thousand pricking insects. The Dutchman heaves, all the living parts of the condemned ship stretching to reach her. There are crabs on the floor – they scuttle towards her feet, their limbs matching the claws of the pendant around her neck.

Even on this side of the horizon, he can hear the abandoned souls crying. Lost on the sea current, waiting to be ferried. They are only ever this loud when she is near, resurrecting his need to betray. The ship groans again, and the Captain turns his back while Tia Dalma smiles knowingly, sadly. He is the only thing aboard The Dutchman stoic enough to not yield to her. Not twice.

I've been marathoning Pirates of the Caribbean films. As a result, I attempted to get into the mindset of Davy Jones. Et, voila, this is that attempt.

I was originally going for a dream sequence, but I think a man without a heart lacks the ability to dream. So, this is probably a ... desire? Stray, hopeful image? I don't know. Whatever. Also, I realized upon finishing that Jones does sleep, since they show a scene of him catching a cat nap in the movie, but I'm ignoring that too.

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“Tia Dalma.”

The name does not matter. It is only a trifle.

She is the grease grin of oil, the freedom scent of sea salt. Her fingers are dirtier than he remembers, but then he is not a man predisposed to remembering. A tentacle closest to his jaw curls up, disgusted by the possibility. She shifts upon her voodoo throne, amused, peering upward with all the inquisitive nature of a child. If she is surprised at his appearance here, at this river’s end, it does not show.

Hardened, he is. As unfeeling as the barnacles that have attached themselves to his figure. He lacks fingers; there are sullied, thick tentacles where his left hand should be, an over-sized and menacing claw as the right. Jones is not a fickle minded man and, unlike Sparrow, he is well aware of what he wants. As unattainable now as the horizon or the foreign scape of land.

There is music. Light. Familiar. The fireflies in her shack seem to be fluttering in time with the tune. He can play that song too, on an organ, on a ship as deformed as his crew.

“You be changed.” She says, turning her dark eyes away, holding a locket in her palm. Her other hand is busy, fiddling with the preserved remains of crustaceans.

He grunts, an animalistic noise. Ocean smog and fine tobacco smoke. He would say the same about her, confined to this dusky skinned body, her voice Jamaican slurred and rum-fine. It used to sound like the waves, like a hurricane. Jones does not get the chance. She is already fading, distorting, and there is no Caribbean river lined by body-painted savages.

There is only the ocean.
Only tattered sails and an impenetrable locker.

Jones requires very little – he does not sleep but rocks with the rhythm of The Dutchman. Somewhere, far away from the sea, there is a heart locked within a chest. It skips a beat, but Jones can’t feel it.