No one in the crew really remembers a time when Jones wasn't what he is now. It's painful to admit he was a human once, with a normal face, body, emotions...

Well, I remember that time.

Then, we did our jobs--carrying souls across the sea.
Then, we all got along.
It was just another voyage to us.
A very long, tiresome voyage.

It wasn't very long before we started noticing a change in him. He lapsed into a depression, and suffered from bouts of anger. Well, we suffered. Jones has a cruel mind; he's invented ways of punishment no other man has ever dare try for fear of moral judgement. We went around battered, bruised, and bloodied.

Then the changes began.
We started...deteriorating. Like a sunken ship left abandoned at the bottom of the ocean. What becomes of that ship? It molds, encrusted with sea life, fragile. Jones had it the worst; and by 'worst' I mean physically. It hurt, changing. Jones didn't have a heart by this time, so he felt nothing.
Lucky bastard.
And the pain never stops, not until we're part of the ship. It's during that time we lose ourselves completely, physically, emotionally, mentally. It's a terrible process, one I've seen one too many times.

Except...neither Jones nor I seem to be changing much anymore. For me, I'm assuming Jones is somehow keeping me around. He must've learned some magic trick that enables him to control the rate of my changing. Either way, I'm fine with it. I'd choose staying like this over becoming part of the ship any day. As for Jones, the only reason I could think that'd be for him is because his transformation had gone much quicker than ours, as he was so drastically changed beforehand. So inhuman already.
He was, after all, the only one to have cut out his heart.

Oh, I remember that day. He stumbled out of his cabin, holding this bloody...thing is his hand, shirt soaked with blood, sobbing. "Tha pain," he moaned, "it's too much to bear!" One of the crew ran towards him, rum in one hand, strips of cloth in the other, with a needle in his teeth. But Jones threw him off with his free hand and instead roared for a chest.
"A chest?" I questioned.
"Yes, a chest!" He was furious.
So we brought him a chest. He threw the heart in it, commanding everyone to not touch it until he had disposed of it.

Only a fool would dare disobey him!