"Don Quixote: The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha"

In the town of Dustville, nestled somewhere between forgotten highways and tumbleweed trails, lived a man named Elliot Crane. Elliot was no ordinary man—at least, not in his own mind. By day, he worked at the town library, restocking dog-eared romance novels and cleaning ancient microfilm readers. But by night, he became Sir Ellion the Bold, defender of the virtuous, slayer of tyranny, and wielder of a mighty blade (which was, in truth, an old fencing foil from a high school play).

Elliot was in his late fifties, thin as a lamppost, with a nose that could part clouds and a head crowned with wiry grey hair. His armor was a patched leather jacket over a pair of motorcycle boots and some mismatched sports pads. His noble steed? A rusted-out mountain bike, repainted silver, christened Steelwind.

What sparked Elliot’s transformation was a stack of forgotten fantasy novels and a complete box set of Arthurian legends donated to the library. Night after night, he consumed tales of knights, quests, and sorcery until reality began to bend under the weight of fiction. He saw shadows in the alley as goblins, and teenagers with Bluetooth speakers as invading barbarians. To Elliot, Dustville was no longer a sleepy, dust-covered town—it was a cursed land in need of salvation.

His loyal squire came in the form of Marcus “Marky” Flores, a chubby 14-year-old who fixed bicycles and dreamed of becoming a YouTuber. Marky found Elliot’s madness amusing and agreed to follow him on his "quests" in exchange for snacks, stories, and the promise of being featured in the grand epics Sir Ellion claimed he was writing in secret.

One evening, Elliot declared that an evil sorcerer had taken residence in the abandoned wind turbine outside town. To the rest of Dustville, it was a broken green energy project, a monument to wasted tax dollars. But to Elliot, it was the Tower of Varnak, a malevolent edifice poisoning the skies and enslaving the townsfolk with its invisible curses (which looked suspiciously like poor Wi-Fi and a strange hum).

Wearing a colander on his head and a pizza box as a shield, Elliot rode Steelwind toward the tower, with Marky wobbling behind on his scooter, recording everything on his phone.

“Marky, do not fear!” Elliot cried. “Today, we vanquish the wind demon and restore light to Dustville!”

“Sir Ellion, are you sure we’re not just trespassing?” Marky asked, glancing nervously at the barbed wire fence.

Elliot didn’t answer. He stood tall, brandished his foil like Excalibur, and charged.

What followed was less a battle and more a slow-motion crash. Steelwind’s front tire hit a rock. Elliot flew over the handlebars, tumbling into a tumbleweed bush with the grace of a falling broomstick. Marky rushed to help, torn between concern and the urge to laugh hysterically.

“You alright, Sir Ellion?”

Elliot sat up, bruised but grinning. “The beast is wounded! It has struck me in desperation!”

Later that evening, Elliot’s bruises were bandaged, and his heroic tale was retold in the town diner—loudly, to the bemusement of the waitresses and truckers. Marky uploaded the video under the title “Local Knight Fights Windmill – Epic Fail!” It got 200,000 views in two days.

Despite the attention, Elliot was undeterred. He believed the video proved that their cause had an audience—that tales of chivalry were still needed in the modern world. “The people yearn for justice,” he told Marky. “They just don’t know it yet.”

And so, the adventures continued. Elliot tried to liberate a gas station from “bandits” (they were customers in a long line), demanded trial by combat from a traffic officer (who was very patient), and once tried to rescue a mannequin he mistook for an imprisoned princess.

The townsfolk, amused and occasionally alarmed, learned to humor Elliot. Some rolled their eyes, others cheered him on, and a few, surprisingly, began to help. The barista at the café gifted him a cloak (actually a promotional curtain), and a mechanic offered to fix Steelwind for free. Children asked him to “knight” their teddy bears. Marky’s videos turned Elliot into a cult internet figure: The Last Knight of Dustville.

But one day, Marky found Elliot sitting quietly behind the library, staring at the setting sun. He looked older, tired, and perhaps—for the first time—aware of the world around him.

“Marky,” Elliot said, his voice softer than usual, “do you think I’ve done anything that matters?”

Marky sat beside him, pulling out his phone. “Well, you’ve got 2.1 million followers now, so... yeah. But even if you didn’t, you made people laugh. You made them believe in something. That’s kinda rare.”

Elliot smiled. “Perhaps that is enough.”

The next morning, Elliot donned his armor once more, mounted Steelwind, and declared his final quest: to find the lost kingdom beyond the horizon. He pedaled west, the rising sun glinting off his colander helmet, as Marky filmed and waved goodbye.

No one knows exactly where Elliot went. Some say he returned to the real world. Others claim he rides still, a ghost of gallantry in a cynical age.

But in Dustville, they remember him fondly—the man who fought windmills, befriended a squire, and reminded them all that dreaming, however foolish, can be a kind of courage