The grasshopper

I'm a security guard, or really just a guard, since my job is to watch the door of the sanitarium and occasionally help the doctor restrain patients when they get violent. It’s not like I’m armed or know a lot about self-defense, just the basics. Luckily, there aren’t many days when I have to see any action, but when it happens, it’s terrifying.
You might think it’s just about patients getting aggressive and showing the strength of three men, and sure, that’s scary, but it’s nothing compared to the worst experience I’ve had on this job.

No one believes me when I tell this story, which is why I don’t like talking about it. But there are days when I remember, and I start wondering: is the grasshopper in my head, or in someone else’s? Or maybe, after seeing so many people with mental problems, I started getting sick too.

One day they brought in a young man in a straitjacket, completely out cold. They told me to keep an eye on him in case he got aggressive while the doctor asked him questions. We had to wait a while for him to wake up, and we knew the exact moment he did, because out of nowhere, he started laughing. It was a mocking kind of laugh, like he was messing with someone.
I’ll never forget the look on his face: eyes wide open and a smile that wrinkled his whole face, stretching it to the limit like an old face on a young body.

The doctor started asking him questions, and the guy rarely answered directly. Instead, he kept saying he had stolen that body, and that he had already stolen several others. The doctor just humored him and kept jotting things down. My coworker, the one we called “Santa” because of how he laughed, tried to help the guy understand what he was supposed to answer. I guess he thought the guy didn’t understand the questions, which is why he gave random answers, like saying he was the naked guy running in that viral Facebook video, or that he took over the body of a delivery driver and stole merchandise, or that he was the one who beat someone to death and hid the body in a vacant lot.

The weird thing is, those things really did happen. I’d seen the naked video the day before, the delivery truck story was on the news, and the thing about the body came out a month after that day. That’s when I started to doubt, because he gave a lot of specific details. But the doctor didn’t believe him, after all, everything he said could’ve been a coincidence.

The guy got mad and started yelling that we were nothing but toys to him and that we knew nothing about the mind. The doctor, sounding skeptical, asked him to explain how the mind works, according to him. And the guy started talking really fast, I didn’t think it was even possible to talk like that. He seemed possessed.

The doctor seemed to catch more of it and said, “So you’re saying you jump from head to head, like a grasshopper?”
I don’t know if he meant to lighten the mood or mock the guy, but we all burst out laughing, all of us except the guy, who screamed, furious, “You’ll see your grasshopper now!!” Then he started speaking really fast again, but now there were no recognizable English words. He was speaking in tongues, like he was talking backwards.

He delivered his demonic speech while staring at Santa, and suddenly Santa froze. His eyes went wide, then rolled back, his mouth started moving like he was whispering something, and then he collapsed to the floor, unconscious. The guy passed out too.
The doctor and I just stood there, stunned and silent.

About five or ten seconds passed, and then Santa started laughing, but it wasn’t his usual laugh. He normally laughs like Santa Claus. This time it was a mocking, devilish laugh. Suddenly he stood up and looked at us with a huge grin and wide-open eyes and said, “See? The Grasshopper just jumped.”

I don’t know how I managed to move with how scared I was, but I lunged at my possessed coworker and put him in a chokehold, trying to make him pass out before he could hurt the doctor. While I was choking him, he kept saying, “We’re not alone, there’s someone else in this room watching us. You’re not locking me up!”

Then he started whispering that demonic speech to me, and I felt like my eyes were starting to roll back. More than ten seconds had gone by, long enough that he should’ve passed out, but instead, I was the one starting to lose consciousness.

I began to feel warm, and then I felt something in the back of my neck, like an itch I desperately wanted to scratch, something digging around. The feeling moved up like a worm crawling into my brain. It gave me a horrible headache, and my ears were ringing like there was loud music or chatter right next to me.

I don’t remember what I said, but I know I was moving my mouth. I think the same thing happened to me that happened to Santa. The last thing I remember was feeling like I was in a movie, I was seeing through my own eyes, but I couldn’t control my body. All I could hear through the ringing was a mocking laugh… I think it was mine.

I woke up a while later, lying on the floor of the doctor’s office. The doctor was asking me questions, where we were, what my name was, his name, the date, and at first, I didn’t remember anything. It felt like I had just woken up from a really nice dream. That’s supposedly how people feel when they faint or have seizures.

The doctor told me that after I passed out, the Grasshopper took control of me, and then of him, and from there, we don’t really know what happened. All we know is that the office was left in complete chaos. Thank God we were all okay, even the guy in the straitjacket.

Turns out he was just a very normal, calm young man. He didn’t have any issues beyond that single episode of “madness.” On the desk, there was a sheet of paper with random letters scribbled down in a hurry. No one knew who wrote it, and no one remembered doing it, most likely it was the Grasshopper while he was controlling someone.

y o t y m e b l l i w d l r o w r u o y d n a e m o t s g n o l e b d n i m r u o y w o n e p a c s e e m g n i p l e h r o f s k n a h t s u g n i h c t a w e n o e h t e r e w u o y

Many will call us crazy. They’ll say it was just a case of mass hysteria, but I don’t believe that. The Grasshopper is real. And I still live in fear that someone might look at me again with those wide eyes and that mocking grin.

There’s no doubt in my mind, it was the worst experience of my job, and of my life. After that, Santa quit. I honestly don’t know how I’m still working there.