Stories by Will Mayo

Leaving It All Behind

By

Will Mayo

One long gone day back in 1864, my great grandmother, then all of nine years old, fled the burning of her hometown of Atlanta, Georgia by General William Tecumseh Sherman of the forces of the American Union. From the hillside where she stood, she saw flames shooting through the air, torchlit processions of soldiers herding men, women and children in chains through the dusty streets, and cattle, chickens, and horses running loose as outlaws cheered them on. She saw churches, tabernacles, and schools collapsing and falling to the ground. And she saw bankers make their way out of the city, cash in hand, as slaves burned in agony behind them among the fires of freedom. Then at last she heard her mother call out behind her:

“Come along now, Miss Nettie, before them Yankees come here next.”

She then turned around. And she never ever looked back.

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To Bed!

By

Will Mayo

"Go to sleep," my mother said. "You have nothing to worry about."

"But what," I replied fearfully. "What if I wake up?"

Silently, she walked away, closed the door. The night came on, the shadows swept in, and I fell asleep before the dawn.

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Being Somebody

by

Will Mayo

"You!" the girl said to me. "You could have been somebody! Look at you! What happened to you?"

I gave no answer, eased back into the streets. Back to becoming. It seemed the best that I could do.

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Dying Days Written In Amber

by

Will Mayo

My grandmother was a bit of an aristocrat in some ways though surely not in others. When, at last, one by one, her servants departed her there in her antebellum mansion she fell apart. Things crept up. The laundry room flooded, the walls cracked with mold, much else besides. She simply could not handle the little things of life. But, Lord, she could tell a story! There, in her house of ruin she retreated to her sewing circles, her little dinners with the preachers and storekeepers of the village until, riddled with strokes, it all fell awry. I think I'm a lot like her in some ways. I never could handle the day to day things of life. My parents protected me into their elder years and, together, we all got by until things came apart. But as, one by one, people would come to visit me in my shadowy rooms I would entertain them with my stories into the dying day...

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A MOST CURIOUS DREAM

By

Will Mayo

But then it seems that I just had the most curious dream. It seems that I was sitting here at my computer when suddenly I closed my eyes and found myself in something of a combination of church and dance hall. It was more than twice as large as the house (heck, make that more than twice as large as the town) with maître d's and clowns in top hats and tails that wandered the aisles and strange colors that drifted up to a cathedral ceiling that rubbed up against the sky. All as I drifted in and out of my clothes (all manner of clothes, all manner of no clothes) and my father came back from the dead to help me out with my computer (he really didn't have a clue about computers) and happy faces greeted me on every side. I would've stayed there forever if my brother hadn't called. I enjoyed my stay.


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Transformation

by

Will Mayo

Hmm. I just had another dream. I was walking towards a house I last lived in over 40 years ago past something like a centaur standing in front of it. Only he wasn't really a centaur. That is, he wasn't a man formed of a horse. Instead, he was a man whose head and chest jutted out of the massive neck of a mammoth, you know, an ancient kind of elephant. And I was approaching this house on the orders of a schoolgirl I'd last seen in about 1970 who, seated in her schoolgirl outfit on the couch of the last house I'd lived in, said to "Go forth and tell all for all the world has been transformed."

So I walked past the man/mammoth and into the old homestead and, well, then I began to awaken...

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Boomerang

by

Will Mayo

"What you do unto others you do unto yourself," the holy man said.

"How is that?" I said. "Some sort of 'boomerang' effect?"

"Yes, exactly," he said. "For you are they and they are you."

"Ah, I see," I said.

"Yes," he said. "You do."

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