A.N.: This story is being posted as it is written unlike our other stories so just bear with it for updates. Usually the story is finished by the time we post this time we have to write it to. It will be up ASAP but probably not as quickly as our other stories…Thanks for giving this story a shot!! I know I suck at summaries….

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

The leak in the roof had been going on for three weeks. Usually by now they would have fixed it.

Drip.

248,673

Drip.

248,674

Drip.

248,675

He always counted the drips.

"I still have no idea why I'm on this damn island in this damn fortress." Mort said allowed.

"Because Shutter Island is for the criminally insane." The voice replied. It was always the same voice now. There used to be others, but they had all given up. It was just him now, well him and the voice.

"Exactly! I am not insane!"

"If you're not insane then who are you talking to?" Shooter always pointed out the obvious when Mort didn't want to hear it.

"YOU! But that doesn't mean anything. Your real they just can't see you."

"Why can't they see me?"

"You don't want them to, so they won't."

Footsteps clicked down the hallway growing louder as they approached patient number 68's cage. Mort stopped talking and relinquished his fight with Shooter for the moment, letting the pilgrim take over. The footsteps stopped outside Mort's cell and two quick rasps sounded on the thick Ward C door. "Hey, shut up in there! We have business to attend to here in the real world." The husky voice belonged to a guard named Tom he had been watching over these lunatics for far to long and the business he was referring to was probably a poker game he had set up at the end of the hall. "The leak is still in here warden." Shooter calmly replied with his unmasked southern accent. "Yeah and I bet its driving you CRAZY." Mort could hear the warden's eyes roll as he took control back from Shooter and the footsteps echoed down the stone hallway.

"Why do you even bother telling him about it?" A voice asked Mort. "You know he thinks were all just acting insane."

It was not the voice Mort had been expecting.

"Who the Fuck is that?!" Mort cursed. "You killed all the other voices. Put them out like a dim candle, I can't be growing more! That isn't the way it works!"

"How do you know how it works?" Shooter replied, mocking Mort. "Maybe I have the power to control just how crazy you are."

"No you don't. It doesn't work like that." Mort tried to convince himself that his words were true.

"Well I sure as hell had enough power to get you to kill your wife didn't I? Ted to?"

"No I didn't do that. I don't know who did that." Mort knew but he lied to himself anyway, even after all these years. Couldn't live with himself. Maybe that was why he killed the reporters that night. They just wouldn't listen to him, wouldn't let him lie anymore.

"No. Down here. I'm real. Patient 67, Teddy Daniels."

Mort looked firs down to the rusted drain in the center of his cell.

Drip. 248,684.

The water from the leaking ceiling rolled slowly without pressure, through the cracks in the stone and into the brown drain. His attention was then caught by a deep groove in the lower corner of the wall he was facing.

"I'm not sure why he thinks we would say we were crazy. It's not like anyone wants to be in this piss hole."

The voice again startled Mort but he took a step closer and sat down so that he was facing the crack. It was not big enough for Mort to see the face of 67.

"Well no one wants to be in here but he is right about one thing. We aren't all crazy. Some of us were falsely accused." Mort was not sure weather 67 was real or not. Shooter was probably just playing with his mind again. Shooter did that a lot, but there was no harm in playing along this time Mort thought. At least he would have some company other than the pilgrim.

"Falsely accused, yeah that's about why I'm in here. They say I killed my wife. But I know there wrong. She died in a fire with our children, I mean if I killed her, what happened to the kids. Their theory makes no sense at all, and the judge still sided with them. I was a faithful cop to our government, and this is how they treated me. There all corrupt, and mad, the whole lot of them."

"What did you say your name was?" Mort asked, changing the subject so as not to have to reveal his accusations. Truthfully he had not been paying attention the first time 67 told him.

"Teddy Daniels," Mort heard this name and shuttered. He knew Shooter was just playing games with him now. Teddy Daniels. Teddy. Ted. Amy's new lover. Ted.

There are no coincidences.

Ted who he had killed, just before he killed her. HER. Focus Mort.

"And what did you say yours was?"

"Mort Rainey, patient 68" He answered without thinking. Stupid. He knew who he was why was he saying it allowed to a voice inside of him.

Drip. 248,726.

"Listen Mort, there's only one thing I want in this world. To be free of this place. I wont be able to go back to my job I know that, but I can be close. I can observe, even quietly. I can watch society, anything but staring at these blank walls."

Footsteps down the hall made Teddy's voice drop to a whisper.

"I'm gonna' get out of here Mort. I'm gonna' find a way to leave this place and never return. There has to be a way."

Footsteps rounding the corner in the hall opposite of the Warden. Closer now.

"And Mort, I want you to go with me."

A heavy fist knocked on the door next to Mort's.

"Alright Teddy, time for your session with the Doctor."

A key turned in the lock and Mort could hear the clanking as the metal key ring was re-fastened to the guards' belt. A bolt that held the door in place was then slid over, revealing the cell with patient 67 inside. Chuck Aule, the guard that had been watching over Teddy for the last ten years, patted the mace hidden within his pocket instinctively. Holding on to both of Teddy's shoulders, Chuck lead the patient through the door and down the hall, as Mort listened in wonder to there retreating steps.