Shutter Island

by Dennis Lehane

Teddy shrugged. ‘The patients here, apparently, suffer a variety of delusions.’ ‘Schizophrenics?’ ‘I guess, yeah. You won’t find your everyday mongoloids in here in any case. Or some guy who’s afraid of sidewalk cracks, sleeps too much. Far as I could tell from the file, everyone here is, you know, really crazy.’

We were supposed to grow old together, Dolores. Have kids. Take walks under old trees. I wanted to watch the lines etch themselves into your flesh and know when each and every one of them appeared. Die together. Not this. Not this.

‘A transorbital lobotomy. Those are fun, Chuck. They zap you with electroshock and then they go in through your eye with, get this, an ice pick. I’m not kidding. No anesthesia. They poke around here and there and take a few nerve fibers out of your brain, and then that’s it, it’s over. Piece of cake.’