Dreams and Delusions of Granduer,
a short short story
by Samuel L. VanGeison.

"Where am I?"
"In a boxing ring, you nitwit."
"Who are you?"
"I'm you. I'm the rational voice inside your head."
"What am I doing in a boxing ring?"
"Take one wild guess and two shots in the dark as to why, numbskull."
"Why would I be fighting?"
"Well the rent is 2 weeks overdue and the purse of this fight is two hundred dollars, or so the bartenders says."
"How did it come to this? I had such great plans for myself. I was going to be King of the World and not one person or one thing was going to stop me in my stride for victory. Nothing."
"Bud, right now isn't hardly the time for reflection on your mistakes. You have a mouthguard and boxing gloves on for a reason. Focus on the task at hand."
"Where's my manager? Shouldn't he be giving me this pep talk?"
"Well, currently, your manager/father is building a grand pyramid of shot glasses of Jack Daniel's past at the bar."
"It's the 14th round, right?"
"Good to hear that bull of an opponent of yours didn't completely beat the sense out of you. You'll need a miracle and a half to knock this guy out of commission."
"I still get paid, right, even if I lose? Fifty dollars, right?"
"Don't even think that way."
"Why not?"
"That's my job. Now, they're about to start the 14th round. Get focused, and knock the snot out of him. Ya hear me?"
"Yeah, I hear ya loud and clear."
"Do me a favor, will ya?"
"You mean us."
"Whatever. Just try avoid the guy's left hook, I'm getting a headache."
"Gotcha."

The bell sounds. The drunk spectators roar and shout in unintellible languages. The two fighters approach each other. The lights go out as the subway passes underneath their feet. The smacking sound of glove against flesh and bone pierces through the combination of the vulgar speech of those neanderthals and the all but distant rumblings of a subway train. The lights come back on, and a young man raises his gloves in victory as his opponent lies at his feet. Somewhere, amongst all the growling of the drunks who lost their bets, a pyramid was toppled as the manager ran towards his last hope. Two hundred dollars, he thought, that's a lot of JD. The bartender smiles as he hands over the all ten of those crisp twenty dollar bills. "Always bet on the underdog," he says," You always win big when you are down and out."

And the young man wakes up. All a dream. He's no longer the down and out underdog boxing for cash, throwing away his well-being so he can have a place to live. He was sleeping in his nice, comfy dorm room far away from poverty and empty stomachs. The campus clocktower tolls not once, but twice. Nope, he was just late for class.

A man once told me that if you're going to live life, live it to its fullest. A life unlived is a not life at all, he said to me, his deep blue eyes trembling as he took a sip from a glass of water held up by me. The world isn't fair, I say as I place the glass back onto the hospital tray. What do you expect it to be? It's been this way for about two thousand years. And as stubborn as it is, I doubt it's gonna change for just one man like me, he says. You can sit there complaining how crappy life is and waste away all those gifts and talents you've got. Get out there and live life. Put up one hell of fight before the bell tolls for you. There's no sense in living a life half-lived. This poem I read by this guy named Dylan Thomas or Thomas Dylan, whatever his name was I can't remember, but he talked about not going gentle into that good night. That's what I want you to do, son. Rage, rage against the dying of the light, that poet wrote, that's how you should live life, he says watching my every movement as he laid on the hospital bed.

I sit and stare at my desk, littered with books like Bird by Bird and Fight Club and a plethora of notebooks. Quotes and notes of encouragement are tacked to my bulletin board. Confucius and Ferris Bueller rooting me on to write.

It's funny how many notebooks you have when you write like me. It's not that I've gone through all the paper in them. It's just that I need to have a lot of notebooks for different ideas and stories. I have one for my thoughts. I have a small notebook for story ideas. I have a writing pad that I jot down the beginning of stories on. As the ideas and stories escalate, they move on to the bigger notebook, allowing more room for the thought to grow. Start small, build big.

There are times when I have to be totally secluded and isolated like a monk to write. I get too caught up with what's going on around me and it's hard to focus at the task at hand.

Then there are times when I have to surround and envelope myself in the hustle and bustle of life. You sometimes have to write through example and experience.

It has come to my understanding that many people, including myself, want me to succeed as a writer. Why? I don't know why they want me to, but I can tell why I want to. It is my way of life. It is how I like to live my life. I love to observe events happen and then turn them into fiction, a wonderous fiction at that.

But it comes and goes. There are endless hours where I just sit and stare, a lot like these, words evading my grasp.