The music. Vengeful notes topple one onto the other, a haunting melody, swift, dark, furious: a defiant funeral dirge for all that I used to be.

Wrathful chords ricochet off the hull's creaking sides, drowning out the locket's quiet song, smothering the misery of the present in fury toward the past. The organ's melody bears all the rage of the stormy sea. Regrets and grief lose their way to the abyss of my soul, left behind as the music overwhelms them. I feel nothing but the jarring notes' vibrations through my living corpse.

This is what I've come to: human flesh reduced to the pallid, oozy hide of some unclean beast; foul tendrils banging my agony out onto sullied keys; a jagged scar sealing off the void cavity of my breast.

I know that the song spills out even now from my cabin's shadows, providing the ghastly anthem of another rueful day upon my vessel; the vicious notes fill the open sea for miles in all directions. Stay away; stay away, they beg.

They succeed.

But I play for no ears save my own as I but trade one cause of misery for another. I play to forget and to remember. Once a man, a captain to be reckoned with; yet a captain, now a monster.

To play is to cling to the last shreds of my humanity; not to play, to renounce the man still lurking within this creature. It pains me- but I have always been a masochist. It pains me- but it pains me more to keep my anguish silent.

The music. I remain more than a monster.

The music. This man will not be overcome.