Shutter Island

by Dennis Lehane

You surfaced without a history, then spent the blinks and yawns reassembling your past, shuffling the shards into chronological order before fortifying yourself for the present.

“Vincent Gryce,

THE LAW OF 4 I AM 47 THEY WERE 80 +YOU ARE 3 WE ARE 4 BUT WHO IS 67?

The idea is to obfuscate. Confuse the listener until they believe out of exhaustion more than any sense of truth.

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.

Chuck nodded. “I’ve never left. I’m never going to leave. I mean, look at my hands, boss.”

“If you keep steering your current course, it’s not a matter of if. It’s a matter of when.”

How much violence, Marshal, do you think a man can carry before it breaks him?”

See, the fury of its own self-destruction creates an entirely new monster.

You get it? Do you? The bigger the breakdown, then the bigger the destruction of self, then the more potent it becomes.

Chuck pulled the paper free and Teddy could see him the day of their arrival handing over his gun to the guard in a fumble of motion, having trouble with the holster snap. Not something your average marshal had trouble with. Kind of thing, in point of fact, that got you killed on the job.