"Open the chest with the key, and stab the heart. No-no-no-no. Don't stab the heart. The Dutchman needs a living heart, or there'll be no captain." – Wyvern, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
It was a rectangular box, slightly embossed in pattern but not too fancy. It was blunt at the edges yet its edges were not rounded but cornered. It was a rusty sort of brown, simple and unassuming. There was not a single dent nor hole save for the keyhole of which the key could never be found by mere mortals.
William Turner who was once a man and someone else stared at it through unseeing eyes. His head throbbed faintly but the discomfort aside, deciding instead to concentrate on the rather innocuous box. He brought a trembling hand to caress the lid as tears filled his eyes.
"Elizabeth..." he whispered, phantom pain knifing through him every few seconds, the space of which felt like individual heartbeats. He wanted to die, but he knew he could not. He was condemned to sail the seas for eternity but with Elizabeth dead...
He wanted to cry, feel the tears that were brimming in his eyes fall down his face, stinging his cheeks. That would be blissful, but it was another benefit of life that he was denied. In all essence, he was dead because one had to be dead to live forever. He still looked young; his eyes still sparkled with youth although it was dulled by too much suffering and unlike his crew, he was impervious to the affliction of sea creature appendages.
He had known that one day, Elizabeth Turner would be no more. He had hoped, although he only thought of this on lonely and dark days at sea, that Elizabeth would meet her end in the watery depths of the liquid he sailed. At least then, she could wander the sea endlessly with him, a couple dancing forever in an everlasting dance with the music of the ocean whispering.
But it was not to be. She died painlessly and in her sleep and as such, went with the wind up to the heavens above where she undoubtedly belonged. Will could almost hear her voice, smooth and sweet, whispering in his ear. For the past fifty years, he had only seen her and their son five times and each time, he had left a bit more of himself on the shore with them, left a bit more to die as the sun rose in all his magnificence the next day. Five times was too little for a boy to know his old man and as the years progressed, his son grew to be a respectable man whom Will was infinitely proud of. Then the sixth visit came, and this time, their son came alone.
He was in ill health, an elderly man of sixty, greeting a man who looked like a young, robust one ready to enlist stiffly but respectfully. It was an odd sight, a quiet and remarkably handsome young lad, walking down a narrow plank and embracing the elder as the latter greeted him as his father. He had told the former all that he needed to know, all that he never wanted to know or hear about.
Elizabeth was dead. It had been two years. Two years of loneliness that he had not noticed.
Will's knees buckled. He could not feel the exquisite pain of grief and that made it all the more terrifying. He could not feel the pain he wanted to feel. All he felt was a hollow emptiness resonating horribly within his empty soul.
He spent the rest of his one day of freedom sitting at the exact spot where Elizabeth and he had created the old man sitting before him, where he had seen his son for the first time and Elizabeth for the last, both silent as they watched the gulls dip and soar.
He now saw the sunset through the clean windows on his vessel. He had insisted that the Dutchman be kept in impeccable cleanliness for he needed some kind of resemblance to normality in his life. It was fruitless, of course. Life in death was still meaningless and without the glimmering light which was Elizabeth, worthless.
His right hand reached for a key hidden deep in the folds of his coat as his left ran gently down a silver blade encrusted with dried blood, the blood of Davy Jones.