Drowning for Love
I guess I must have passed out at some point. When I wake back up (can
the dead wake up? I guess they can - I did) I feel oddly warm. And even
stranger, I feel dry. Sitting up with a start, I realize that I'm in a
bed. Looking around me, I see walls made of rough wooden planks. I
quickly stand, and as soon as I've recovered from the lightheadedness,
I stride from the room.
What I see as soon as I walk through the door to the room stops me in
my tracks. Monsters. I see monsters. And they are staring at me.
Slowly, one stretches out its long tentacle, grasping me around the
waist. I open my mouth to scream, but still, no sound comes out.
The tentacled monster plops me down in an empty chair and pulls it up
to the table. I look around frantically. Aside from the tentacled
monster, there is a beautiful woman with green hair, an odd half-bird
half-woman creature, and one creature with his back to me. All I can
see is the back of his head and his broad shoulders.
Then, slowly, he turns to me and begins to speak.
Well, ahoy there, matey. My name be Davy Jones. This here's my ship you
be ridin' in. Welcome to my parts of the water, boy.
You look right scared there. Don't be. I know our motley crew looks
quite the fright, but we're hospitable, friendly people once you get to
know us.
Don't believe me, do yeh, boy? Well, I guess that means yeh've heard a
story or two about the creepie ickies that swim the ocean's depths
then? They're all codswallow, I'll tell yeh that now.
Oh! Still a little sceptical, eh? I'll prove it to yeh! Sit back, boy,
and let me tell you my story.
----
Like I said, name's Davy Jones. Sailin' is my profession. Well...was,
anyway. Now I just rot here at the bottom of the sea. Thought I'd love
nothin' more than to spend the rest of all eternity on the ocean. Boy,
was I wrong.
I did love sailin', though. When I was but a wee boy, they discovered I
was damn near blind. Coudn't see a lick past the end of my nose. Had to
wear glasses thicker than your thumb, and heavier than a newborn baby.
It was enough to give a man a headache and his friends something to
laugh about forever.
Because of those damn glasses, I was always a klutz. Always bumpin'
into walls and people all the time. Not on the boat, though. When I got
on a ship, I didn't get seasick like most people. No, see, I was used
to my world pitching and rolling before my eyes on land, so when I got
on a boat, it made sense, and I was prepared to let my body rock back
and forth with the waves' motion, and not lose a beat or skip a step.
So I signed up to be on the crew of a merchant's ship. Left behind a
beautiful girl on the shore, I did. Long brown hair blowin' in the
wind, tears streaking her face as she waved goodbye to me...I can still
see her there. Gave me a packet of letters to read, said I should open
one each day I was gone, so I wouldn't forget her. She even bought me a
brand new locker to keep them in. What a gal.
Work on the ship was hard. Up at dawn, heavy work all day, barely any
rations to get us by, and sleeping on the hardest cots yeh've ever seen
at night. But the letters from my sweet gal got me by. Matter of fact,
I came to be known for them. Each night, the boys would gather round me
cot, and wait for me to read the letter and tell them about it. I think
it helped them forget the harsh realities of life on the sea almost as
well as it did for me. I think a few of them even fell in love with my
gal.
Especially one fella, by the name of Ruthgers. I'd often catch him
staring longingly at me letter well after we'd stopped discussing it.
Even saw him pokin' round me locker a few times.
That's what he'd been doin', the day I caught him. Matter of fact, he
actually managed to pry off its lock, and had his filthy fingers all
over me letters. Had already opened a fair number of them by the time I
caught him.
Well, I'll admit it, I right lost it. He grabbed up the locker of
letters and ran off. So I started to chase him all around the ship, up
and down the decks. And then, for the first time, me sea legs betrayed
me. In all the commotion, me glasses flew off, and I was blind as the
day I was born again. Well, next thing I knew, I tripped and fell into
Ruthgers, throwing him, me, and the locker over the side of the ship
and into the sea.
Well, they managed to get Ruthgers back on the ship, but me, I drowned.
Passed out in the cold water, and woke up here, same as you did, I
suppose. Next thing I know, I hear rumors (from other drowned sailers
that sank this way) that Ruthgers told everyone that I'd tried to
murder him, all for the sake of "Davy Jones's Locker."
So yeh see, boy, I ain't a monster. I'm just a blind sailor that got a
bad rap.
-----
His story finished, Davy Jones slowly turned back away from me, his
eyes closing with the pain of what had happened to him. And me? I relax
more in my chair and turn to the monster to my left, ready to hear
their story of why they're not so bad.
--------
Author's Note: I decided to show Davy Jones as just a simple guy who
had bad luck. Because most references to Davy Jones are primarily
references to "Davy Jones's Locker" with no real story surrounding it,
I had to rely on my imagination for the majority of the story.. For the
most part, until
Pirates of the Carribean, most people my age had just heard about him
passingly, if that.
The story of Davy Jones is very murky and mysterious, with every sailor
believing something different. Some people believe that Davy Jones is a
Devil, and some believe that he is a saint. One thing that everyone
seems to believe across the board is that he now resides somewhere at
the bottom of the ocean, waiting for lost sailors to sink to his
depths. However, the appearance of his dwealing place is another point
of contention for people, as some see it as a watery prison, and some
see it as a lush, green paradise.
My initial idea about how Davy Jones was simply a near-sighted sailor
came from the Wikipedia
article
about Davy Jones. In the
article, it offers suggestions about where the legend of Davy Jones's
Locker might have come
from, and one suggestion was a particularly poor-sighted sailor. That
was the most interesting idea of his origin, in my opinion, so it's
what I ran with.
I chose to do my whole storybook about creatures that had gotten a bad
rap in the same style as the book The Stinky Cheese Man. In
this book of retold fairy tales, the normal "villans" of stories tend
to have just been misunderstood. I like the idea of giving a story
another side and another element. I also love stories about villans and
"the underdog."
So I hope that my story has helped you look at Davy Jones from a
different angle! I personally like the idea that he was just a man so
in love with a girl that he would do anything to get her letters back.
I'm also glad he has friends at the bottom of the sea...it seems like
it'd get pretty lonely down there!
My
Storybook
Bibliography
Story Title: Davy
Jones.
Website Name:
Wikipedia
