Two weeks passed and it happened again. Grandpa refused to take his pills, and then he started hallucinating again. Last week he punched a hole in the wall because he claims that he saw “clowns through the wall.” His schizophrenia has taken over his soul. When we were little, we used to sit on grandpa’s lap, and he would read me and my twin sister a book. Our favorite was the “Hungry Caterpillar.” He wouldn’t even dare to read it to us now because he doesn’t even know his own family.

Yesterday he called me by my mother’s name, and he called my sister; Courtney by my father’s name. To say the least, he’s changed a lot. He’s turned into a crazy old man who doesn’t know his right from his left. He used to be my best friend, and now he’s just a man that doesn’t know me. It doesn’t matter if he knew my name anyway; he’d just think he was seeing something else. Today, Courtney and I were playing our usual game of hide and go seek. Last week, I hid in the bath tub, but she found me within five minutes. I needed a new spot to make sure she wouldn’t find me, I hid under the rug. I curled up under the rug into a fetal position. I wasn’t making any noise, but I couldn’t help but scream when I laid eyes on the biggest spider I have ever seen.

I tried pulling the rug straight off of me, but I couldn’t find the end of the rug. I jumped out of fetal position and crawled out of the rug away from the spider. As I started crying, I heard my sister crying and screaming. Courtney never ever cried, so I knew something wasn’t right. I tried running out under the rug, but Grandpa started hitting me with a chair. Courtney was trying to hold him back, but he got so destructive and whipped the chair again and again. It felt like a twenty pound brick had just dropped down on my back.

I screamed for Courtney’s help to get me out of the rug, but she was too busy trying to hold Grandpa back from whipping me with his old wooden chair. My head came out of the rug first; Grandpa slashed my right leg with his chair again. I had never felt such pain before. Courtney grabbed my hand and pulled me up from under the rug. I had rug burns, and slashes all over my body from Grandpa. My leg looked like it had been attacked from a shark, and grandpa didn’t even care one bit.

I looked at him with extreme disappointment and said, “Grandpa why did you hit me with a chair? “ He gave me a weird look and answered, “I caught the shark.” I had no idea what that meant, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t know either. Grandpa was dangerous, he needed to be put into a home before he seriously injured me. I was hurt, but I knew I’d be okay. However, Grandpa could end up really hurting someone one day. It’s just an accident waiting to happen.

My mom came to pick Courtney and I up from Grandpa‘s house. Mama looked at me all bruised up. We all knew it was time for Grandpa to go into an assisted living home. One month after the incident, we moved Gramps to this new home where he would be checked on every ten minutes by nurses. Everything was going smoothly until Grandpa saw something under the rug. He claims it was a monster, but we all know with Grandpa's "imagination", anything's possible.

I sat with Gramps as I opened his applesauce for him. My mom was sitting on his hospital bed and holding his hand. Courtney was in the corner playing on the ipad. I told Gramps to eat his applesauce and he picked up and through it down at the rug. Then he looked at me and said, "Monsters hate applause." Then, Grandpa looked at my sister and asked where he was. I knew Grandpa was really loosing it when he said that. Maybe he also had demsia because I swear he used to be brilliant. When he was twenty-two, he won jeopardy. When he was thirty, he was able to solve a Rubik’s cube in forty seconds. And now he's sixty three and doesn't even know his own grandchildren.

Every time we looked at Grandpa, we realize how precious time is and how quickly it goes away. One moment you have a mind and then the next moment is taken over by aging. I looked at him and squeezed his hand, and he looked me right in the eyes. I thought he was going to say something sweet about how he loves me, but that didn't happen. Instead, he decided to tell me that he thought my eyes were made of fire. Then he asked me where I got my scars from. I told him that they were from him hitting me with a chair. He laughed and told me that I deserved it. I took my hand away and my mom yelled at Grandpa. Then we left the nursing home because things got to awkward.

Four weeks had passed, and we went to visit Grandpa again. This time, Courtney and I went without mom because we only lived a block away from the nursing home. I gave him his trail mix and held his hand. Courtney was sitting on the corner of the hospital bed looking for something to do. They had puppy's visiting the patients in the nursing home, and one golden lab puppy walked right into Grandpa's room. It was the cutest puppy I had ever seen, it's paws were so big, and it's body was so little. The puppy's little ears were flopping around everywhere. Grandpa dipped his finger into his fruit punch and lifted the puppy up on his bed. Gramps took the little puppy and put a dot of fruit punch on the little puppy's forehead. He hinted it up on his head and started singing "Circle of Life" from the Lion King.
Courtney and I started bursting out laughing.

Nurses came in and saw Gramps lifting the puppy on his head singing. All the nurses were running to get more nurses. Before we knew it, there was at least twenty nurses watching Gramps play with the puppy. After a hour, we had to give the puppy back to the nurses, but I was so happy to see Grandpa smiling again. We left the nursing home in good spirits and returned the morning after.

This was a day to remember, It was October 13th and weird things had been happening all day. First a boy in class told me he liked my eyebrows. Then, I found a blue spider in my shower this morning. And after that, I saw a dog dressed up as a hot dog. I was starting to think that I was hallucinating just like Grandpa. After school, I walked over to the nursing home to check on him. When I went into his room, I walked over and sat on the corner of his bed. I looked at him, and he had bruises and slashes all over him. I asked him what happened and he told me that the monster that hurt me hurt him too. I was so confused, they weren't just bruises, Grandpa seriously looked like a zombie. His arms were bloody with open wounds. The nurse had wrapped them up several times, but he kept unraveling the bandages.

Grandpa needed some serious help; he was harming himself because he thought that monsters were attacking him. He took the large vase of flowers next to him and slammed them on the ground. I tried to hold him back but he was picking up everything in his apartment and breaking it. He started screaming that he got the monsters, I ran out of the room and tried to get a nurse. When I came back with the nurse, Grandpa was missing. The nursing home called my mom and 911; everyone was running around looking for him. We looked all day, we went back to his old house and no signs of him anywhere. We went all over town, and even had to file a police report, but no one saw any signs of him.

A week had passed, and no one had seen Grandpa anywhere. Fox news came to our house and asked to interview me. I agreed and told the viewers to keep an eye out for an old man with open wounds who screams about monsters. You would think that since he screams everywhere he goes; it'd be easy to find him. It was not easy, no one could find him. Courtney and I spent countless hours putting up posters all over town. Then on October 24th, we finally got a call from the police station. The police said a strange man from a costume party found him after Grandpa screamed at him. The man was dressed up for a Halloween party, but Gramps must've thought he was the monster that he was looking for.

We were all relieved to have Gramps safe back in the nursing home. Then we found out that Grandpa was digging his way to China with a wooden spoon. After that, there was no sign of monsters from him ever again. Grandpa's new hallucination is fairies. He claimed he saw one every time he closed his eyes. I was happy to have my Grandpa back with a smiling face whether it was a hallucination or real.