PORT TALBOT: Drug-driver jailed after killing much-loved ex-council leader

Zack Mason, an unaccompanied learner driver, was over the legal cannabis limit when he struck 85-year-old Thomas Noel Crowley in Port Talbot.

The tragic incident happened on Water Street in Sandfields at around 5.45pm on Saturday, December 7, 2024.

Mr Crowley, a former leader of Neath Port Talbot Council, was crossing the road when he was hit by Mason’s blue Skoda Fabia.

He was rushed to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff with severe head injuries, a fractured rib, and a fractured pelvis.

Sadly, Mr Crowley, described as a “much loved and much respected” man, died three days later on December 10.

Swansea Crown Court heard that Mason, then aged 20, had pulled out of the Blanco’s hotel car park where he worked and driven just 25 metres before the collision.

Prosecutor Hannah George stated that Mr Crowley was “established on the road crossing” and “there to be seen by vehicles using the road.”

Mason, now 22, was arrested at the scene. A blood test later revealed he had 2.3mg of cannabis in 100ml of blood, exceeding the legal limit of two.

In his police interview, Mason claimed a motorist had “flashed” him out of the car park, distracting him as he thanked them.

He admitted consuming cannabis two days prior and acknowledged it was a “stupid” mistake to drive unaccompanied on a provisional licence.

Mr Crowley’s family described him in a moving statement as a man of “fairness and compassion” and a “champion of social equality.”

Known as Noel, he was a well-known community stalwart and a devout Catholic who lived his entire life in Port Talbot.

He had been with his wife Anne for 70 years, and the court heard she now sleeps each night with the hat he was wearing when he was knocked down.

A bricklayer by trade, he rose to become deputy manager for American contracting company Hecketts at the local steelworks.

He was awarded a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II for his community service and was also a Deputy Lieutenant and Freeman of the Borough.

His family said he “greeted everyone with a smile, had a wonderful ability to make you laugh and was a great storyteller.”

He was also a key carer for his grandson Sam, who has autism, and was “missed in every tiny detail of the day.”

Mason, of Lorraine Close, Sandfields, Port Talbot, pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving while over the drug limit and driving without a licence.

The court heard his provisional licence had been revoked the previous year after he was caught driving without insurance.

David Singh, defending, said Mason took full responsibility and had stopped using cannabis since the incident.

He argued it was not a case of speeding or mobile phone use, but Mason had “clearly not been concentrating” with “devastating consequences.”

Judge Huw Rees said no sentence could mark the value of a life lost, describing Mr Crowley as “held in high esteem by all.”

PC Luis Tobenas from South Wales Police said: “Zack Mason took the decision to drive uninsured, without a licence and when he had recently consumed cannabis to a level exceeding the legal limit for driving. As a result, he cost Noel Crowley his life, and left his family and the wider community completely devastated.

“Mason will now have to live with what he has done for the rest of his life.

“Our thoughts remain with Mr. Crowley’s family, and we hope that this verdict gives them some comfort.”

Mason received a one-third discount for his guilty pleas and was sentenced to four years in prison.

He will serve half of the sentence in custody before being released on licence.

Mason has also been banned from driving for seven years and must pass an extended test to regain his licence.

THE SAGE PART TWO

The Sage was inchoate and distressed as he flew off into the darkness of the forest. He trundled through brackets and thistles. He wheeled into a thorn bush. He tripped on a root, he slipped on some moss, he fell down a long hill and hit his head on a rock at the bottom. When he woke, The Sage was staring up at the night sky and a smattering of stars.

Not only was The Sage spiritually lost but physically lost too. He’d wanted to go home almost as soon as he’d left, but now, after the stumbling and bushwhacking, and knocking his head, he had no clue where home was. To top it all off, he was heartbroken as well.

The Sage was inchoate and distressed as he flew off into the darkness of the forest. He trundled through bracken and thistles. He wheeled into a thorn bush. He tripped on a root, he slipped on some moss, he fell down a long hill and hit his head on a rock at the bottom. When he woke, The Sage was staring up at the night sky and a smattering of stars. 

Not only was The Sage spiritually lost but physically lost too. He’d wanted to go home almost as soon as he’d left, but now, after the stumbling and bushwhacking, and knocking his head, he had no clue where home was. To top it all off, he was heartbroken as well. 

He didn’t understand that his wife regretted her harsh words. But also, he wasn’t ready to change either. There were still too many questions to ask. At least The Sage was Sage enough to know that. 

“What has my life become?” He shouted into the darkness.  

“I’m empty.”  

He gnashed his teeth and wailed.   

But through his tears, The Sage saw a comet with a red tail burning. It traced crimson across the dome of the heavens, like a beetle crawling along the inside of a glass. He sat up and shrugged and figured he’d follow the falling star.  

So, he did.   

He picked his way through a polluted stream, filled with soggy paper cups, and the tangled skeleton of a discarded tent.  

“Yuck,” he murmured, stepping over the swirls of iridescent oil.  

“Wait!,” called a muffled voice. And when the Sage looked down, he saw floating in a puddle on the bank of the stream, a sick goldfish. It was one of those goldfish with bulbous foreheads.  

“Please,” called the fish. “I’ve been flushed. You gotta help me, man.”  

The Sage looked around and shrugged. He didn’t have anything on him but his clothes.  

“Sorry pal, no dice.”  

The goldfish wailed. “Come on! I don’t care what you put me in! Hold me in your mouth for all I care! I just gotta get outta here!”  

So, The Sage plucked a stretched out old condom from the riverbank. He rinsed it in the murky stream, filled it with water, and plopped the goldfish inside.  

“You won’t regret this!” bubbled the fish.  

“Sure thing,” sighed The Sage. He tied the latex shut with a snap and pushed it into his pocket.  

The Sage traveled for many days, through fields and forests and city blocks where people walked quickly with their heads hung low. All the while keeping his eye on that burning comet tail.  

One day, The Sage came to a hill, and as he climbed the hill, he started to cry. Fat salty tears poured from his eyes and into his dirty beard.  

“This might be it,” He wept to the fish. “This could be the end of the trip. I’m tired. I’m cold. I’m following a star. What the hell am I even doing up here?”  

“You’re just looking,” said the little voice from inside the condom, inside the Sage’s pocket. “That’s kind of all there is to do on a hill like this.”  

When Rhe Sage crested the hill, he gaped, astonished.  

At the top of the hill was a hot dog stand, and inside the hot dog stand was the young guy with kinky hair, and the woman with hot dog fingers.  

“What the hell,” cried the Sage. “What are you doing here?”  

“Well, I came up here after you told me to run to the top of a hill,” said the woman with hot dog fingers. “And once I got here, I was so tired I lay down and took a nap.”  

“And I came up here, because I was following the comet,” said the guy with the kinky hair.  

“And while I was sleeping,” continued the woman with the hot dog fingers, “a little white dog came and started chewing on my fingers.”  

“It was my dog,” said the guy with the kinky hair, astonished. “She found him! He loves hot dogs!”  

“And he’s not the only one,” said the woman with hot dog fingers, a little saucily. She held her hand up to The Sage, who was dazzled by a shiny engagement ring with a big fat stone in the middle.  

“I proposed on the spot,” said the guy with the kinky hair.  

“So, I left my husband, and bought this hot dog stand, and we live here now. My relationship’s way better with my kids, too,” said the woman with hot dog fingers. “Who’d have guessed–they just hated our fighting.”  

The Sage nodded slowly. “So, what you’re saying,” he said. “Is that I did this?”  

The couple blinked.  

“What?”  

“I’m responsible for this,” crowed the Sage. “I knew this would happen! My advice was good!”  

“I mean, I guess,” said the woman with hot dog fingers.  

“Yeah, well, it was kind of our own th–” said the young guy, but his fiancée elbowed him in the ribs.  

“He clearly needs this, Josh,” she hissed.  

And she was right. The Sage did need this. He cheered and whooped and fell to his knees in tears. He bid the happy couple farewell and ran down the hill and through the city squares, and the fields, and forests, and over streams and up cliffs, and finally made it to his old front door.  

“I’m home! I’m home,” he shouted.  

The Sage’s wife was happy to see him, but furious that he’d left. “Where the hell have you been,” she shouted. “I’ve been worried sick!”  

The Sage, being very old, took a long time to catch his breath.  

“You were right! I’m self-centred,” he gasped.   

“But I went on a long journey and I found this couple, and I’m the reason they’re together, and I’m NOT A FAILURE OF A SAGE ANYMORE!”  

The Sage’s wife looked skeptical, so The Sage produced from inside his pocket, the goldfish filled condom.  

“Here,” he said, handing it over. “I carried this goldfish in my pocket and I love him, and now I’m giving him to you, because I love you.”  

The Sage’s wife looked into the condom.  

“This goldfish is dead,” she said.  

The Sage opened and closed his mouth, looking at the fish. His wife was right. It was dead. Apparently goldfish don’t do well, crammed in a condom full of dirty water, in a crazy old man’s coat pocket.  

It was clear to The Sage’s wife that her husband was not reformed. He’d had his ego rebuilt, not washed away. But it was also clear to her that he was a ridiculous fool, and that was why she’d married him in the first place.  

“Listen,” she said. “This is all very nice. But I don’t care.”  

Then she hugged The Sage, and kissed his forehead, and left to tend to her salves, as he sat in wait for his next querent, pleasantly convinced that something had changed. 

“What has my life become?” He shouted into the darkness. 

“I’m empty.” 

He gnashed his teeth and wailed.  

But through his tears, the Sage saw a comet with a red tail burning. It traced crimson across the dome of the heavens, like a beetle crawling along the inside of a glass. He sat up and shrugged and figured he’d follow the falling star. 

So, he did.  

He picked his way through a polluted little stream, filled with soggy paper cups, and the tangled skeleton of a discarded tent. 

“Yuck,” he murmured, stepping over the swirls of iridescent oil. 

“Wait!,” called a muffled little voice. And when the Sage looked down, he saw floating in a puddle on the bank of the stream, a sick little goldfish. It was one of those goldfish with bulbous foreheads. 

“Please,” called the fish. “I’ve been flushed. You gotta help me, man.” 

The Sage looked around and shrugged. He didn’t have anything on him but his clothes. 

“Sorry pal, no dice.” 

The goldfish wailed. “Come on! I don’t care what you put me in! Hold me in your mouth for all I care! I just gotta get outta here!” 

So, the Sage plucked a stretched out old condom from the riverbank. He rinsed it in the murky stream, filled it with water, and plopped the goldfish inside. 

“You won’t regret this!” bubbled the fish. 

“Sure thing,” sighed the Sage. He tied the latex shut with a snap and pushed it into his pocket. 

The Sage traveled for many days, through fields, and forests, and city blocks where people walked quickly with their heads hung low. All the while keeping his eye on that burning comet tail. 

One day, the Sage came to a hill, and as he climbed the hill, he started to cry. Fat salty tears poured from his eyes and into his dirty beard. 

“This might be it,” He wept to the fish. “This could be the end of the trip. I’m tired. I’m cold. I’m following a star. What the hell am I even doing up here?” 

“You’re just looking,” said the little voice from inside the condom, inside the Sage’s pocket. “That’s kind of all there is to do on a hill like this.” 

When the Sage crested the hill, he gaped, astonished. 

At the top of the hill was a hotdog stand, and inside the hotdog stand was the young guy with kinky hair, and the woman with hot-dog fingers. 

“What the hell,” cried the Sage. “What are you doing here?” 

“Well, I came up here after you told me to run to the top of a hill,” said the woman with hot-dog fingers. “And once I got here, I was so tired I lay down and took a nap.” 

“And I came up here, because I was following the comet,” said the man with the kinky hair. 

“And while I was sleeping,” continued the woman with the hot-dog fingers, “a little white dog came and started chewing on my fingers.” 

“It was my dog,” said the guy with the kinky hair, astonished. “She found him! He loves hot-dogs!” 

“And he’s not the only one,” said the woman with hot-dog fingers, a little saucily. She held her hand up to the Sage, who was dazzled by a shiny engagement ring with a big fat stone in the middle. 

“I proposed on the spot,” said the guy with the kinky hair. 

“So, I left my husband, and bought this hot-dog stand, and we live here now. My relationship’s way better with my kids, too,” said the woman with hot dog fingers. “Who’d have guessed–they just hated our fighting.” 

The Sage nodded slowly. “So, what you’re saying,” he said. “Is that I did this?” 

The couple blinked. 

“What?” 

“I’m responsible for this,” crowed the Sage. “I knew this would happen! My advice was good!” 

“I mean, I guess,” said the woman with hot-dog fingers. 

“Yeah, well, it was kind of our own th–” said the young guy, but his fiancée elbowed him in the ribs. 

“He clearly needs this, Josh,” she hissed. 

And she was right. The Sage did need this. He cheered and whooped and fell to his knees in tears. He bid the happy couple farewell and ran down the hill and through the city squares, and the fields, and forests, and over streams and up cliffs, and finally made it to his old front door. 

“I’m home! I’m home,” he shouted. 

The Sage’s wife was happy to see him, but furious that he’d left. “Where the hell have you been,” she shouted. “I’ve been worried sick!” 

The Sage, being very old, took a long time to catch his breath. 

“You were right! I’m self-centred,” he gasped.  

“But I went on a long journey and I found this couple, and I’m the reason they’re together, and I’m NOT A FAILURE OF A SAGE ANYMORE!” 

The Sage’s wife looked skeptical, so The Sage produced from inside his pocket, the goldfish filled condom. 

“Here,” he said, handing it over. “I carried this goldfish in my pocket and I love him, and now I’m giving him to you, because I love you.” 

The Sage’s wife looked into the condom. 

“This goldfish is dead,” she said. 

The Sage opened and closed his mouth, looking at the fish. His wife was right. It was dead. Apparently goldfish don’t do well, crammed in a condom full of dirty water, in a crazy old man’s coat pocket. 

It was clear to the Sage’s Wife that her husband was not reformed. He’d had his ego rebuilt, not washed away. But it was also clear to her that he was a ridiculous fool, and that was why she’d married him in the first place. 

“Listen,” she said. “This is all very nice. But I don’t care.” 

Then she hugged the Sage, and kissed his forehead, and left to tend to her salves, as he sat in wait for his next querent, pleasantly convinced that something had changed. that something had changed. 

THE SAGE

Everyone came from far and wide to hear the soothes of the Sage. Citizens lined up from the door of his stone hut, down the path through his herb garden, past the river, and the mushrooms, and the lichen, and out to highway 8. All day long, the Sage gave them advice.  

In the beginning, when he was a young Sage, he could hardly believe his luck— he’d managed to make a career out of telling people what he thought. His father, a tax lawyer, had advised against it.  

“You want to be a Sage?” he’d sputtered. “Smarten up! What are you gonna do?  Sit out in the woods all day and think about stuff?”  

But somehow the Sage actually became a Sage. Of course, for many years, he had to wander the earth, growing his beard and learning about the truth, beauty and ugliness abundant in life. He’d had some rough times, lonely times, dirty times. But not anymore. Now he was a real, professional Sage.  

And he looked the part, too! He lived in a hut made of stones with his wife—a formidable woman who made tinctures and salves and smoked a pipe. He was scrawny and stooped, elbows and knees and angles, and his beard was long and filthy. He wore rags and ate only curds and whey and porridge. If people didn’t know any better, they’d think he was profoundly unwell.   

But he wasn’t. He was a Sage.  

Unfortunately, this Sage’s heart wasn’t in it.   

Between appointments, he would bet on sports on his phone or watch videos of people having sex. In his water bottle the Sage laced vodka. One time he got drunk and let the dog chew his divining bones, said to have been carved from the femur of a dragon. After that day, the Sage would cast futures on the old bones of a Costco rotisserie chicken.   

What was more egregious, though, was the quality of advice the Sage now gave. Once he was wise. Now, he was full of shit.  

“I’m worried that my kids resent me,” said a woman one day. She had short, stubby fingers that reminded the Sage of hot dogs.   

God, he thought through the warm heaviness of his vodka, what I wouldn’t do for a hotdog right now.  

“Ahem?” said the woman with hotdog fingers. “I said, I think my kids resent me. And my husband sucks,” she added for good measure.  

The Sage blinked. “An old mitten bears many holes,” he offered. “But luckily a hand has fingers.”  

“What the hell does that even mean?”  

The Sage presented his querent with a sachet of tea and a bright blue pebble from the aquarium store.   

“Steep both for a few minutes, stir counterclockwise and drink. Save the teabag. Jog five miles with the stone under your tongue. Jog to the top of the tallest hill you can find. Bury the teabag and swallow the stone. Your children will love you once more.”  

The woman with hotdog fingers left, a perplexed frown across her face.   

The Sage went back to his betting and porn.  

“I’m full of shit,” he complained to his wife one night. “People ask my advice and I make up baloney. I’m a fraud.”  

The Sage’s wife didn’t think he was a fraud, but she did find his despair trivial, and irritating.   

“You’re just burnt out,” she said. “You need a break.”  

“A break!” The Sage cried. “What do you think this is? I’m not a man who works as a Sage. I AM a Sage! I’m THE Sage. This is my vocation!”  

The sage’s wife opened her mouth to argue. She wanted to tell her husband he was just a self-involved child. Then there was a knock on the door.  

When the Sage opened the door, there stood a young guy with a halo of kinky hair.  

“What?” asked the Sage.  

“It’s my dog,” said the young guy with kinky hair. “He’s lost. I love that dog. That dog gives me a reason to wake up in the morning. The other day, I came downstairs to feed him, and he was just gone.”  

“Just gone?”  

“Just gone.”  

The Sage chewed on this information.  

“I’ve been sitting on my porch for three days straight, waiting for him to come home,” said the young guy. “I want to look, but I just don’t know where to start.”   

He gestured around the deep dark forest.   

“He could be anywhere.”   

The young man rubbed a tear from his cheek.   

“Sage, if I don’t find him soon, I’m going to walk off into these trees and never come back.”  

The Sage was tired. He wanted to go to bed. He wanted to smack the young guy with the kinky hair in the face and tell him to go away, but then the Sage had the first stroke of wisdom he’d caught in a long while. He looked into the young man’s big, beautiful eyes, and he saw in there that he was telling the truth. He saw that if this guy didn’t find his dog, or at least start looking for him, he would actually do it. He’d walk out into the trees, and never come back.   

But it was hard to find a solution. And he was tired.  

Then the Sage caught his second stroke of wisdom. He looked over the guy’s shoulder and into the sky, where a comet was burning across the heavens.  

“See that?” He asked.  

The guy nodded.  

“Your dog’s chasing that comet. If you run after it, you’ll find him.”  

“Thank you. You won’t regret this!” Then the young guy turned on his heel and ran off into the woods, and the Sage went back to bed, and his betting, and his internet porn, and his terrible advice, and complaining to his wife, and his self-hatred and aimlessness.  

As days trickled into weeks, and weeks to months, the Sage’s dismissal of the young man began to eat him away like mold. After a while, the Sage just couldn’t take it anymore. Despair finally hit him one afternoon, when he looked around his hut, and everything seemed to be flat, like cardboard props on a stage play.  

“I’m horrible,” he cried, clutching his wife’s elbow. “That poor man! All he wanted was his missing dog, and I sent him after a shooting star!” He shook her, causing her to spill the serum of nettle she was working to distill. “My life is a lie!”  

“I’ve had it with you,” said the Sage’s wife. “You’re right! You are horrible! You’re full of shit and you’re a pain in my ass.”  

“Fine,” he hollered, flying into a rage. “I’m going out into the forest. I might just lay down and die!”  

“Sure you will,” grumbled his wife, turning back to her nettles. Then she felt bad and tried to turn and give the Sage a warm look, but he was already gone.  

He had wandered out into the night.  

THE GLIMMERING SOMETHING HE ALWAYS CRAVED

The store was a mess when I arrived. Strewn pumps and stilettos and, in the middle of it all, twisted wings, blood pooling like spilled oil—a crow, haloed by shattered glass. 

My stomach was a pit: I recognized the white patch on his chest. This is Charlie. 

Janelle, the ratty shopgirl, said something, muffled by the roaring in my ears. It couldn’t be Charlie. Charlie, my lunch break companion. Charlie, who coveted bits of foil. I even gave him my engagement ring after my husband passed—skydiving accident near Lake Superior. His chute was faulty, rigged. I was a wreck when that happened. Yikes. I’d tried to sue the skydiving company, then the instructor, then the people I’d bought him the parachute from. I’d even gone after the pilot.  

“He knew the risks, Ms. Rothscowitz. He loved the sport, and he knew the risks.” 

Without Charlie, I’d have lost my mind for sure. 

“He wouldn’t have hit the window.” I heard myself say. 

“What?” Jenelle said. 

“Too smart,” I murmured. 

And I was right. Charlie knew when my lunch breaks were.  

He could unwrap a caramel. The window couldn’t fool him. I looked around the ruined store. Someone did this.  

“What a mess.” It was Corbin, the store owner. Gaunt, tired eyes. He gestured at the flapping banner beyond the broken glass. “On sale day too.” 

I sobbed. Sale day. Just yesterday, I’d given Charlie one of the shiny brass tacks I’d used to hang the banner. 

“She’s gonna freak,” Janelle hissed to Corbin. I wiped my eyes. 

“Well,” Corbin stammered, shrilly. “Anything with blood’s gotta go. And, the bird,” he added nervously. 

Janelle fell to collect the ruined shoes. “I’m vegan,” she explained, slinging the black plastic bag over her shoulder and leaving me with Charlie. 

I picked up the carnage. Charlie must’ve been thrown, I reasoned. He wouldn’t have flown into the window. Someone must have thrown him. 

I looked at his body again and sobbed. I couldn’t work like this. I lifted him into a shoebox and rushed outside. 

Across the asphalt, Janelle was rummaging near the dumpster. 

“What are you doing?” I asked, creeping up behind her. 

Quickly, she shoved the bag of ruined shoes into a bush. “He said to sell them anyways!” 

I gasped. 

Janelle touched my arm. “Listen,” she pleaded. “We can split the profits!”  

I flinched away, imagining traces of Charlie’s blood on my cardigan.   

“Murderer!” My pulse pounded in my ears. “Want the shoes for yourself, so you cover them in blood, make it look like a mistake!”  

Janelle blinked, feigning confusion. “Sorry?” 

“Murderer,” I shouted again, speeding towards the office. 

“Crazy bird bitch!” Janelle shouted behind me. 

“It was Janelle!” I shouted, bursting into the office. “She threw Charlie through the window! For the shoes!” 

Corbin frowned. “What?” 

I took a breath. “She broke the window, smeared Charlie’s bloo–” 

“Charlie?” 

I held up the box. 

Corbin paled. “Lenore, no.” 

“She–” 

“Lenore!” Corbin rubbed his eyes. “Please.” 

“She killed him! For the shoes!” 

“As far as I’m concerned, those shoes are garbage.” Corbin shook his head. “Please. You’re telling stories again. A bird hit a window. Take a seat outside and come back when you’re calm.” 

I sat in the parking lot, shaking. Micah, the lanky warehouse boy, eyed me from the railing. Usually, Charlie perched on that railing. 

Most days Micah cawed at me and threw crumbs of bread like I was a pigeon. Today, he spoke. 

“The insurance’ll be nuts.”  

I straightened. Insurance.  

A line of ants marched between his feet, and he began crushing them. “Like, really nuts” 

Yes. Too good to be true. The way he smeared the poor bugs made me think: Janelle was opportunistic, skeevy, but no killer. Her words echoed back to me: 

“I’m vegan.” 

Corbin though. A failing business could drive people to murder, no doubt about it. But I needed proof 

“I’m going to the restroom,” I said. 

Micah grunted. 

Corbin was at lunch. I had to act quickly. I crept towards the office door and darted inside. 

Corbin’s desk looked like the work of a deranged mind: papers, receipts, reminders, crushed empty coffee cups. I stood transfixed. He must have been the killer. 

“Lenore?” 

My head snapped up. Hulking and backlit was the stooped silhouette of Corbin.  

I opened and closed my mouth. Then, with a steadiness I cannot explain, I spoke. 

“I know about the insurance scheme.” 

“What are you talking about?” He stepped into the darkness. Despite the desk between us, my heart hammered. I could picture Corbin’s hairy hands squeezing the life out of poor, shivering Charlie. 

“You killed Charlie.” My voice was impossibly calm. “For the insurance on the store. I know about people like you, hurting innocent people to make a buck. When my Edgar–” 

“Lenore,” Corbin said slowly. “I don’t even have an insurance policy.” 

The silence was crushing.  

I stood, frozen. “No insurance policy?” 

He shook his head. “This is ridiculous. You’re fired. Leave your name tag and go.” 

I put the shiny brass tag on his desk, fighting back tears as I ducked through the still ruined shoe store. If they had no insurance, why kill Charlie? Why all this blood and shattered glass? 

Janelle scowled as I passed, my neck red with shame, and it hit me:  

Crazy crow bitch. Telling stories again. Micah’s taunting caws. This wasn’t for insurance. It was far simpler: they wanted me to go. 

My reeling thoughts froze when I got to the SALE banner. 

Before me was a wall of glitter, a shining, shimmering expanse. For the first time, I saw the world through my friend’s eyes, and it was magical. 

I’d been wrong: Charlie hadn’t been thrown away. He’d seen the shine and plunged through it. No scheme to resell shoes. No phony insurance claim. No mystery. 

But there was a killer. With tacks and a hammer, I’d laid this trap. 

At first, I was wracked with sobs, but the minutes passed, and my wailing did too.  

I realized that Charlie died happy. He died chasing that glimmering something he’d always craved. 

#fiction #halloween #jessiWood #lenore #shortStory #zackMason

GRAINS OF RED SAND

You begin bouldering when you are 11. Your first time at the climbing gym, you gaze at the plastic holds, like candies, your mouth agape.   

You take to it quickly, and before long, you’re the gym’s pet. You scamper, awed by men and women with vein-roped forearms, standing cock-hipped, hands folded in front of them, perpetually dipping in and out of chalk buckets. They are easy eyed, strong bodied, fearless, muscles twitch in their backs.  

You meet Q. He’s 26. He’s tall. His arms hang from his body like steel chords and he’s different from the other boulder rats. Stronger. Intense. They say he was raised in a cave in Red Rocks, Nevada. Trained in the dark and became a beast. Your child-eyes flit darkly, absorbing everything Q does.   

He says his secret is a small bag of red sand and rubs the grains between his hands like he’s washing them.  

“Dark magic,” he laughs. “Good luck.”  

You watch the sand trickle as though grains in an hourglass.  

At 13, you beg Q to be your coach.  

“Will you train hard?” he asks.  

You nod vigorously.  

“These are your best years,” Q warns. “But only if you work.”  

He becomes your coach. Who knew? Rock climbing? Rock climbing isn’t a job, but you’re getting so good that Q says it could be. Your eyes glitter, picturing what he describes: sponsorships, stipends, world travel, medals, pushing the limits of human possibility.   

Your first national comp comes. In the car, you gaze at Q, telling stories of his own competitions, training, his time in the cave.  

The comp starts and you’re alone in the spotlight. Over the crowd and DJ and screaming MC, Q is a silent, intense presence of focus, watching slack-faced, like the dark waters of a stagnant pool.   

You approach the boulder, hands shaking, but on the wall, silence. You flow through movement, until your toenail folds backwards inside your shoe, slick blood mixing with foot sweat. Pain tears through, and when you hit the mat, chalk erupting in a cloud, you search the crowd for Q and find his back turned, walking away.  

After, in Q’s car, you wonder what’s next. He turns to you, the shadows around his eyes hang low, and his skin is waxy and slick. He looks like he’s wearing a mask of his own face, and his voice comes flat and hollow.  

“Come back when you’ll try hard.”  

“But!”  

You gesture at your injured toe, you present your palms, worn from the holds, irritated and pink.  

“Training is a war we wage against our bodies. Pain convinces it to transform.”  

“I want to be great.”  

Gravel crunches as Q steers to the shoulder. He turns to you, face shadowed.  

He tilts back your head, opening your mouth, and he presses a pinch of red sand onto your tongue, like medicine, like sacrament. The sand is gritty, crystalline, tinkling as you grind it with your teeth. The slurry slides down your throat, plummets to your belly’s depths.   

The rest of the drive home is silent. Q is reptilian in the driver’s seat, and you turn to wood beside him, silt sloshing in your stomach with every pothole and bend.  

At the climbing gym, Q ignores you. You watch him take on other pupils, starry eyed 12- and 13-year-olds, rearing for competition. Your face burns red with shame. You’re getting sick. At night, you toss, cough grit in the bathroom sink, but never all of it. You can still feel the sand sloshing in your belly, and the skin on your hands is thinning, turning pink, turning red. You can’t stop training. There is a voice inside you, and though you try not to listen, it whispers.   

You need a red-sanded cave of your own.  

You begin roving at night, collecting pallet wood, collecting fibre glass, collecting scrap metal. You climb to the steepled ceilings of your attic and screw the garbage to the walls, making your own gym. Endlessly, you climb laps, tracing an infinity symbol, your shoes filling with blood and sweat and fungus. You abandon the gym with the candy holds. You turn inside.  

Q’s words echo: Training is a war we wage against our bodies. Pain convinces it to transform. You feel his focus, blank, opaque, grating.   

As the weeks drag and summer comes, hot, close, heavy, you disappear deeper into your attic. A smell hangs thick against the slanted walls, sour, fungal, mildewed, rotting. Climbing shoes, yes, but there’s another scent too. Something darkens and twists and latches in your mind. Crouched in your homemade cave you inspect your bloodied fingers, eyes blank.  

You’ll have less to carry if your body becomes smaller. You stop eating, your hair thins, teeth loosen and fall out, your bones turn brittle, and you continue to train. Your face becomes hollow and waxy and masklike. Your elbows and fingers stiffen, curl into claws.   

Your toes break. They are like flaccid bags of meat and gravel, and you hunch over them, whimpering between attempts on the wall. Your shoulder blades peel and wing from your ribcage, your spine between them, knuckled and glassy.  

You’re dying.  

And you know it.   

You want the sand out of you, but it never leaves, red grains worming their ways to every nook, every cranny, grinding between your joints and the emptiness behind your eyes.  

You need to stop, need to slow the momentum, to rest, but the sand itches you to push through, sharp fractals like seed crystals, geometrics between sinew and fibre and neuron.  

In a haze, you stumble through darkness to your old gym with its candy holds. On broken feet, you lurch, unaccustomed to walking.  

You find Q, parting the crowd around him, presenting yourself, your body twisted and mangled.  

When he sees you gazing up at him, ghoulish, squinting, cowering, he stares back, placid and blank. Someone screams.  

Q turns his back. Weeping, you turn yours as well, dragging yourself home to train. 

#collectingScrapMetal #fibreGlass #nevada #redRocks #ZackMason

ZAPPED

Every day, the inflatable tubeman flailed in advertisements of “USED CARS,” and “HOT DEALS”.

“DREAM CARS!” read his sign. “HIGH END! CHEAP!”

Cars screamed past at horrifying speeds and he flailed until six o’clock when Wilf, the owner, would flick the big red switch at the tubeman’s base and watch his long orange body wilt.

One day the tubeman watched a woman pull into the dealership. She was grinning and pear shaped, with a floppy hat. She had ringlets of grey curls and thick cateye glasses and lots of red lipstick and she was absolutely radiant with joy.

“Wilfieeeeee,” she squealed, bouncing into the dealership.

Six o’clock came and went and Wilf didn’t come out to turn off the tubeman.

As the sales team left, and darkness crept over the parking lot, the tubeman’s flailing became imperceptibly panicked. Traffic thinned, and his wide eyes got wider. His inviting grin shifted to teeth gritting terror. Wilf always turned him off before sunset, and, as dusk rolled in, the tubeman thought the world was ending.

But as the stars came out, and bats flitted in the cool air the tubeman gazed in awe and wondered at the night, this cool, quiet, peaceful thing he’d never experienced before. He was struck.

Finally, Wilf and the woman strolled outside. She was holding his arm, and Wilf sauntered with a straight back.

“Tammy,” Wilf said.

“Yes?” Tammy had lipstick smeared all across her teeth.

“I know it’s silly,” he started. His grey moustache trembled. “We hardly know each other, but you make me feel young again.”

“Wilfie!” Tammy planted a huge, wet kiss right on Wilf’s lips. When she finally pulled away, the two panted, Wilf with a big smear of red across his mouth.

Tammy was breathless.

“I feel like I’m in my forties again! Or my twenties! Or high school! Quick,” she said. “Let’s screw in my car!”

The tubeman had no idea what ‘screw’ meant, but as the blue car began to rock and the windows fogged, he watched with equal parts horror, joy and amazement.

For the next couple weeks, Wilf came to work with a sparkle in his eye. He started wearing a tight red golf shirt and would pause at his reflection in the dealership door.

Things continued like this. Every day at lunch, Tammy came bouncing into the dealership, Wilf’s name operatic on her lips. She’d tip her hat at the tubeman flailing in the heat. She and
Wilf giggled, and kissed and screwed in Tammy’s car, always leaving the tubeman on, to whirl blissfully in the night air.

Then Wilf came to work with tension in his walk. When he glanced at his reflection in the dealership door, he glanced quickly, like he was touching something hot and didn’t want to burn his fingers. He tugged at his red golf shirt where it was tucked into his khakis.

At lunch when Tammy arrived, her gaze was downcast. She didn’t tip her hat at the tubeman, and she slouched into the dealership, hands clasped in front of her.

She left a few minutes later, wiping her eyes with the backs of her soft hands. Tammy wasn’t bouncing at all.

“Wait!” Wilf called, running after her. “Don’t worry, it was silly, I’ll return them.”

“Acupulco’s not the point,” Tammy called from her car. “I thought we were on the same page!”

She left.

Wilf hung his head and cried, fat tears marking his red golf shirt.

After that day, an urgency filled Wilf like a fan was blowing it in. His movements were calm, but inside, Wilf was flailing.

The boxes came on trucks and they were beige and unassuming and anonymous. But inside, they contained bright colours, tassels, grins. Wilf was buying dozens of tubepeople.

His employees gossiped and frowned, but he carried on, plugging them in and standing back as they unfurled into wriggling life. By the end of a month, Wilf had 23.

One night, after everyone left, Wilf came out and sat under his 23 tubepeople, swigging a bottle of rye.

“It makes sense,” he grimaced. “She wanted to screw in her car, and I wanted to have dinner and take her and her daughter to Acupulco.”

The tubepeople spun around him.

“Guess,” he said, hiccuping. “Guess I just thought at our age, we’d have something a little steadier.”

Night was falling, and the tubepeople’s twisting bodies cast long shadows on the pavement. Fireflies were starting to wink, and the day’s heat radiated against the night’s coolness.

Wilf rubbed his nose. “When I was seventeen years old, I was doing dishes. Our kitchen looked out on this big field of the people next door, covered in muck and chopped off corn stalks. There were a few clouds in the sky, but it wasn’t even raining, and I saw our neighbour, Tom, walking out across that field, and all the sudden, he got struck by lightning.”

Wilf took a long drink and burped through his nose.

“Bolt just hit him in the head, and his body went writhing around, like he was one of you. But I swear to god, maybe it was the electrical current making his muscles go funny, but he was smiling the whole time. Like this.”

Wilf looked up at the tubepeople, grinning.

The tubepeople grinned back.

“When I met Tammy, I felt like neighbour Tom. Like something great and magnificent had come out of nowhere and smote me, and all I could do was flail around and smile. But now that she’s left, I feel the same way– totally zapped.”

Wilf went to drink again, but found the bottle empty. He giggled, slumped back on the steps, and started to snore.

The tubepeople didn’t really understand Wilf’s point. Actually, they didn’t understand anything at all. But they enjoyed his company and the cool night air. And as Wilf drifted off into his drunken stupor, he did too, his broken heart easing in the grove of multicoloured flailing bodies.

#Cars #Fiction #flailing #JessiWood #multicoloured #olderAdults #relationships #story #tubepeople #ZackMason

JUN-KAN PERMACULTURE IS ON A MISSION OF REPAIR

Just off Notre-Dame Rd. in Petersburg, Ontario is the Jun-kan Permaculture Garden. The garden sits on one of 20 acres in the Petersburg Community Garden, and volunteers tend permaculture food forests and annual vegetable terraces.   

The garden was started in 2022 when the land’s owner, Daryl Dore decided he no longer wanted to rent his fields to cash-cropping commercial farmers. Dore contacted Doug Jones of the Waterloo Regional Community Garden Network and proposed that his land be available to individuals, especially new Canadians.  

While the proposal was eagerly accepted, years of cash cropping and heavy pesticide use had left the soil damaged.  

“In a word, this soil was dead. And poisoned,” Barbara Hankins, one of Jun-kan’s volunteers, said.  

Permaculture gardening operates on the basis of symbiosis and diversity. A wide array of individual species are planted in cooperative guilds to work in concert with each other and the environment. Together, they thrive and improve the quality of the land they are growing on.   

This is where the name Jun-kan comes from. The garden’s website explains, it is a Japanese word that translates roughly to “the universe,” or “the cycle of life”. In accordance with the principles of permaculture, Jun-kan’s first step was to plant swaths of five distinct cover crops: clover, alfalfa, buckwheat, field peas, and rye. Quickly, the earth began to heal and the gardeners started producing food, still with permaculture in mind.  

“[We ask ourselves,] ‘what does the ground need? What do the plants need? How can I give to them because they are giving to me?’,” Hankins said.  

In turn, the land gives back to its farmers, not just in food, but in a more existential way as well. This is especially helpful at Jun-kan, where many of the volunteers are new Canadians and do not own their own land. People are given the opportunity to form a relationship with the land they may not otherwise have been able to. This is crucial for a sense of belonging.  

“This garden supports a huge diversity of growers from around the world, and it’s nourishing to see how the diversity of culturally relevant foods, approaches, skills, stories…the diversity enhances our resilience as a community of gardeners,” Nikola Barsoum, one of Jun-kan’s founding volunteers, said.  

The ethos of repair and repurposing extends beyond physical gardening and the dignity of the volunteers as well. In 2023, ongoing war in Lebanon put Hankins’ family in danger, and here in KW, her house burned down. The garden provided the family with relief, repairing them in the wake of the tragedies. The bricks from their home were salvaged and used to cobble Jun-kan’s community fire pit.  

“We went through so much that year. This was my therapy. Coming out here, and just being with the land, with the earth, with the butterflies, and feeding the insects and the birds… Watching things grow is very therapeutic,” Hankins said.  

Restoring the land, offering a dignified community for newcomers and a sanctuary for its volunteers, Jun-Kan is on a mission of repair. For more information, the garden can be found on Instagram @junkanpermaculture, or on their website. 

#agriculture #BarbaraHankins #belonging #dougJones #Gardening #junKan #nikolaBarsoum #Ontario #permaculture #Petersburg #RandyMoore #waterlooRegionalCommunityGarden #ZackMason

OUT OF THE BOX COUNSELLING CATERS TO MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES

Out of the Box Counselling and Collaborations is a counseling and support
service for Two Spirit, LGBTQIA+, Neurodivergent and Nonspeaking people, and those who love them. They provide one-on-one counseling, group counseling, Spelling to Communicate (S2C) work and workshops rooted in principles of Indigenous sovereignty, anti- oppression, Disability, Trans and Queer rights. Their mission is to reframe disability and celebrate the diverse ways people live, love, and think.

Out of the Box was originally conceived in 2021 by Krystal Hilchey-Muise. As a Neurodivergent and Queer person, Hilchey-Muise was struggling to find a work environment that was accessible to them. They wanted to create a Neurodivergent-affirming space for clients and decided to start
a practice that aligned with a framework of Disability justice,

Neurodivergent affirming, Queer affirming, decolonial and anti- oppressive values.

“What [Hilchey-Muise] was being told to offer in some of their past work environments wasn’t what [Neuroqueer] clients were needing,” Monica van Schaik, Hilchey-Muise’s business partner, said.

Van Schaik joined Out of the Box the next year in 2022 after completing their master’s thesis on Dyslexic narratives of Neurodiversity.

“Our collaboration together is so based on our neurotypes,” van Schaik said. “There are certain things that [Hilchey-Muise is] super good at that they do, and there are certain things that I’m good at that they struggle with.”

Their own Neuroqueer identities are part of what make Hilchey-Muise and van Schaik well suited to their work. They have a personal understanding of where their clients come from.

Rather than approaching the counseling they give from a position of authority, they offer guidance in a non- hierarchal way, drawing on lived experiences as well as their extensive training and education to help their clients.

Mirroring their own journeys, they seek to help people understand and accept themselves in a culture that often forces assimilation. “We actually have diversity within the human community, and we’re looking to figure out how to embrace that,” van Schaik said. “What does it mean to be ourselves? What does it mean to learn about ourselves when we haven’t been provided with opportunities to do so? Because the focus is often on how to fix us, to make us someone else.”

For more information, visit https://outoftheboxcounselling. ca/.

#decolonial #disability #hilcheyMuise #indigenousSovereignty #JessiWood #LGBTQIA_ #neurodivergent #nonSpeakingPeople #outOfTheBoxCounselling #queerRights #trans #twoSpirit #vanSchaik #ZackMason

WATERLOO REGION COMMUNITY RALLIES FOR WILLOW RIVER CENTRE

Downtown Kitchener’s Willow River Centre (WRC), an Indigiqueer led community center, and the brick-and-mortar base for Land Back Camp, was recently in imminent danger of closing.   

After receiving less grant money than anticipated, the WRC’s budget could no longer sustain their rent. For an organization whose mission is largely to provide a safe space for marginalized people, this issue presented a very formidable challenge.  

In an effort mainly organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement, a banquet and fundraiser were organized in a short time.  

“We had nothing to do with it, either…We just gave them our social media passwords, and they ran with it,” Bangishimo, co-founder of the centre said.  

With 200 tickets sold, 12 community sponsors, 86 donated raffle items, a meal provided by nine local businesses and plenty of volunteers, the fundraiser brought in over $27,000. The WRC was able to stay alive.  

“It was the most on point organizing I’ve ever seen,” Amy Smoke, the WRC’s other co-founder, said.  

The fundraiser was a triumph for the centre and the region at large.   

 A large portion of the WRC’s funding comes from the Upstream Fund, a fund created in 2022 to support community organizations and build a more harmonious and happier Waterloo Region.  

Upstream draws its money from the regional budget and aims to prioritize groups that service underrepresented, racialized, or marginalized people.  

Initially, the Community Edition reported in the June issue that the WRC’s funding issues were caused by Upstream extending their eligibility beyond Indigenous and Black organizations. With a greater pool of people to compete for funds, less money overall could be distributed to each individual group.  

This however, has proven to be untrue. While many of Upstream’s recipients are and have been Black and Indigenous, they have never been exclusively so. Furthermore, Upstream is not currently providing funds to more people than before. Their records consistently show cohorts numbering between 30 and 40 members each year since they started.   

According to the WRC’s grant writer, Robyn Schwarz, hard times are coming for nonprofits across the board. With a conservative government, whose mandate is to cut taxes, money for publicly funded services is drying up.  

“[The majority of Regional Council] wants a five per cent increase, but that’s actually a cut, because in order to keep current services where they are, we need about 12 per cent,” Schwarz said.  

Schwarz said nonprofits are particularly affected because Ontario’s provincial government and Canada’s federal government currently prioritize business support over social services.  

With only a five per cent tax increase (less than half of what Schwarz predicts is needed) nonprofits are the first to lose funding. Upstream gets cut, and by extension, so does the WRC.  

“Basically, the thing to blame is that we’re under a government right now that doesn’t want to tax things and doesn’t want to fund the nonprofit sector,” Schwarz said.  

Regardless of government funding, a substantial portion of the community wants to support organizations like the WRC, and that support was felt by Smoke and Bangishimo.  

“We were wrapped in care, and it was really lovely to be held by other people,” Smoke said.  

Despite the economic instability and the challenges of working as a nonprofit under a conservative government, the WRC is committed to keep working.  

“We’re still grant writing, still getting funds to continue doing what we need to do. Regardless of what happens in a brick and mortar, Land Back is a movement. We’re not going anywhere,” Smoke said. 

#AmySmoke #Bangishimo #BangishimoJohnston #blackAndIndigenous #ChristoffLeRoux #DowntownKitchener #Indigiqueer #landbackCamp #localActivism #PalestinianYouthMovement #RobynSchwarz #upstream #willowRiverCenter #wrc #ZackMason

SANCTUARY

The summer Rupert turned 15, his parents decided to sell their house on Finkle street. Rupert had been born on Finkle Street, and up to that point, never been forced to venture outside.  

As a child, when the world became too much, Rupert would duck into his bedroom closet. He’d close the door quietly and nestle down into his small, dark, fabric scented sanctuary. On moving day, Ruper ducked into his (now empty) closet one last time, and tried not to cry.  

The new neighbourhood was a maze of cul-du-sacs, filled with identical houses, and maple trees pruned like lollipops. Rupert hermitted in the blasting air conditioning and watched people outside.  

There was a woman with dark glasses. She walked a little dog, and whenever it got tired, the dog would lay down on its side, and the woman would keep plodding along, dragging it behind her like it was a mop.  

There was a boy about Rupert’s age too. He loped lankily along the sidewalk, and always wore his shoes without socks. When he passed, Rupert would withdraw from the window, just in case.  

To help Rupert’s listlessness, his parents gifted him a little cage filled with hay, and a wheel, and a clear plastic tube, and a hamster. The hamster was grey with quivering, bulbous black eyes.  

Looking at that hamster in that cage all day made Rupert want to scream. In his distress, he left the new house and roamed, pedalling up and down the cul-de-sacs and courts.  

This was how Rupert found Wildgrove Creek.  

Wildgrove Creek wasn’t very wild, and it wasn’t much of a creek. Rupert only knew it was Wildgrove Creek because of a little sign that said so. Really, it was a cement lined ditch behind a stripmall, with slow, shallow water that trickled and disappeared through some sewer pipes and under the highway.  

The creek was smelly, full of blackflies and frogs and a snapping turtle.  

Rupert was transfixed.  

From atop the cement bank, he watched the turtle float and bask. It had dragon claws and a muscular tail covered in swaying mats of algae. It blinked at him like it had been waiting for a meal since the dawn of time and could wait an eternity more. It was a dinosaur, a hermit, its shelter on its back, its round, reptilian eyes like mossy crystal balls. It was not concerned with the past or future, and it was not afraid.  

Over the next days, Rupert told the turtle stories and rolled hotdogs down the side of the basin, watching as the leathery neck extended, the maw gaped, the beak came snapping shut.  

“You’re lucky to have a shell,” he told it. “A hiding place wherever you go.”  

The turtle blinked up from the cement basin with its ancient swampy eyes.  

This went on until the day before Rupert was to start grade 10. That morning, he woke up cold and sweating. He knew that as the school year came on, he would have less time, less energy to see his turtle. This terrified him.  

“I’ll just have to bring it here,” he told his bedroom ceiling. “Then I can see it all the time.”  

That afternoon, when Rupert biked to Wildgrove Creek, the turtle was waiting for him, water flowing around its shell, staring up with a beatific, benevolent smile.  

“I’m going to bring you home,” Rupert said, “I’ll dig you a pond and you can live with me.”  

The turtle gazed up at him like a begging dog. It blinked one murky eye, which Rupert took as agreement.  

He stooped to grab the snapper, and the turtle, now accustomed to eating hot dogs, extending its leathery neck, gaped its maw, and snapped its jaws shut, lopping off Rupert’s pinky.  

Rupert screamed. He stared down at his gushing stump and went weak in the knees.   

The turtle blinked up at him lazily.   

“Ugh!” Holding his bleeding hand, Rupert stumbled up the bank of the creek. All he wanted was to go home. Not to his new house, but to his real home, his bedroom closet on Finkle street.  

But he was losing blood, and he thought he might throw up, and someone else lived there now. He stumbled to the closest house.  

“Help!” Rupert screamed.  

“Arf!” yapped a dog in response.  

Rupert’s heart dropped when he saw who opened the door: the old woman with the dark glasses. Her dog jumped and yapped and snarled .  

“My hand!” Cried Rupert. “I need a doctor!”  

The old woman couldn’t see Rupert’s mangled hand, but she had a grandson who could, and he retched when he saw it.  

He was the lanky boy who wore his shoes without socks. He’d just got his driver’s license. He drove Rupert to the ER and sat with him for nearly eight hours.  

Afterwards, the boy called Rupert ‘Stumps.’  

The two would sit by the creek and laugh. By October, Rupert walked the cul-de-sacs with ease. By January, they started holding hands, by March, they kissed each other, and by June, the boy graduated. He moved. The two broke up.  

The day the boy left, he awkwardly shook Rupert’s pinkiless hand, got into his crappy little car, and left.  

“It’s been good, Stumps.”  

Rupert sniffed. He cried. He wandered, trying to recapture his heart   

Eventually, he found himself on the banks of Wildgrove Creek.  

The turtle was long gone, but the trickle of dirty water sparkled, and the gnats hung in shafts of sun as Rupert stepped in. He followed it, through the dark sewer pipes, and under the rushing drone of the highway, and when Rupert emerged into sunlight at the other end of the tunnel, he found the cement lining gone, and his sobbing eased. The creek opened into a river with dappled, mucky banks. A quiet, peaceful place. A sanctuary.  

He wondered if he’d become more or less like the turtle in the past year. The question made him smile.  

#2SLGBTQIA_ #cement #comingOfAge #culDeSacs #hamster #JessiWood #Neighbourhood #sanctuary #shortFiction #shortStory #story #Summer #ZackMason