August 2026

Jack Lennon, A cock aye craws best on her ain midden-heid

The Americans on the train wouldn’t stop screaming. Every crumbling cliffside brought out a chorus of incredulous noises, cinema loud. The picturesque Scottish scenery looked back, silent and stoic, as the train licked its way along the coastline. It was approaching the point of no return. The Americans all piled off at Dundee, pealing away in their cars before the train had left the station. The feeling of being watched came over the only person left inside the empty carriage. Ailsa whirled round. Rows of empty blue seats stared back at her, uniform as gravestones, a saltire on each one. Nobody had any reason to travel this far north anymore.

Ailsa was relieved when the silent carriage was hers again. Ever since COVID she’d struggled with people. And maybe before then too. Thank God she’d snagged a work from home job in the city, she barely left her flat these days. Talking to people was proving to be a challenge already. The conductor almost walked past her before he noticed her, ticket outstretched. He punched a hole out of it and handed it back without smiling. Heather would have said something to make him laugh if she’d been there. Her sister had never left Aberdeen, and now she had stopped answering her phone. With most of their family vanished into the graveyards and crematoriums on the city’s outskirts, Ailsa was forced to leave the comfortable central belt to come back home. It had always felt easier when Heather was in Aberdeen. Like some better version of Ailsa was carrying on up here without her.

Heather had always been better than Ailsa. Nobody had ever gone to the trouble of hiding it from her. They all seemed slightly relieved when Ailsa announced she was leaving Aberdeen. More time with Heather, and they could just forget about that other one. Not as pretty or funny or smart. Ailsa held it against Heather like she’d caused it, and Heather was too nice for it to really feel fair or justified. This, of course, infuriated Ailsa. Thinking about it again made the anger stir in her chest once more. She breathed deeply of the train-flavoured air, letting the sweat dry on her skin.

Aiberdeen watched yon train’s approach wae mild interest. It came and went as usual, but this time, left een of her own. She hud settled, affa comfortably she’d say, into her gloamin years, and hud been allowin’ hersel tae rot fer the past few centuries. But at this unexpectit arrival she creakit een eye open, intrigued. At least fer a moment. Soon, she was sighing deeply, allowin’ a wave o putrescent oil tae leak out fae her ancient flesh. Aberdeen let oot a gant, nae ready tae awaken jist yet. Smackin’ her moo thirstily, she turned over and went back tae sleep. 

One lonely escalator still ascended inside the Union Square shopping centre, its low hum the only sign of life under the greening glass ceiling. The American brand name shops had all closed up and moved on. Some even left piles of stock behind the rusted metal grates; blue skinny jeans, powdery with mould, greying oranges abandoned and stacked inside a juice machine, rancid pulp solidifying at the bottom of its cloudy tank. Outdated pop music crunched through the odd speaker still clinging to life. Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke. The ghost of 2014 lingered, unsure of what to do next.

Ailsa stood at the feet of its basilical hall. She stared past the shuttered Abercrombie & Fitch, the smashed glass front of the Apple store. Even as the shopping centre stood empty, anxiety rose in Ailsa’s throat. Just as she turned to walk away, she noticed a streaked set of arms, grasping out listlessly from underneath a slumped and broken bench. As Ailsa turned her head downwards, she saw that the arms were attached to a young woman. Her long hair was set in flowing beachy waves, fighting to maintain their lightness under the heavy black viscera. A gold Michael Kors belt glittered at her waist as Ailsa pulled her out and she got unsteadily to her feet. The smell instantly hit Ailsa, horribly and instantly recognisable. Thick and sweet, like a petrol station.

She choked into Ailsa’s face, oil splattering from her open mouth. Like a zombie movie. It felt ridiculous to run but Ailsa did it anyway, embarrassingly breaking into a jog, moving up the main artery of the shopping centre. Bodies clad in moderately expensive suits expelled themselves from the shops, smearing themselves along the floor. Black-greased heads with white-tailed earbuds still in their ears turned to follow Ailsa as she passed. They were slow-moving at least; when she passed the heavy glass doors at the head of the centre, Ailsa couldn’t see any of them behind her. Had it really gotten this bad?

Aye, it wiz at bad. Aberdeen didnae feel ony shame towards those few remaining folk. She lay still, her eyes still closed, but reminiscin. She was a wranged woman, her hoose lang since robbit. The 21st century had no been kind to her, an’ she wasnae inclined tae be kind back. The only eens that mattered hud long since left. Fer Paris, London, New York. Thon that remained guzzled what was left o’ the oil, sucked oot o car exhaust pipes and petrol station nozzles, mewling and hungry. Aberdeen paid thum nae attention. Did they no ken this was just one tiny event in her long, storied history? Did they no realise there wiz more than yon dead rigs still dotting the horizon? Staunin jist barely, ready tae fall at ony moment. They didnae, by nature of being children, short-sighted and glaikit. 

Ailsa made her way up Guild Street, glancing behind every few seconds. The familiar path took her past the buses lying piled up at the station like dead horses. Past an armoured corner shop, neon sign blinking between the bars of a steel cage; SAFE…NO OIL DRUNK…CIGARETTES…COLD DRINKS…HOT FILLED ROLLS. Her feet took her to the nearest place she knew. Moorings bar was the only pub that would serve under-agers when she was young. Her and Heather had been many times, and she knew Heather attended their karaoke nights. The pictures littered her social media profiles before they went silent. The bar was an old sailors haunt, a mermaid swinging on a squeaking sign. Ancient oil tankers caked with rust sat still in the green water opposite its iron door, solid with algae. The door was bolted shut, but lights inside told Ailsa someone was in there. Low voices grinding out old sailors’ shanties stopped abruptly when she banged on the door, silent until a voice barked “Hud on!”

“Aye?” A thin faced man stared at Ailsa as though she’d knocked on his bedroom door in the middle of the night. “Um. Can I buy a drink please?” He kept staring for a moment, then rolled his eyes as he opened the door, allowing a slice of cold sunlight to fall inside. Ailsa squeezed past him, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. The man had a nervous energy, as though he’d just let a wild dog into his bar. He had dark, untrusting eyes, and kept his chin high.

Greying light glinted off something lined up along the bar. Bottles? Mirrors? Ailsa squinted at them until she realized they were the eyes of several men, all turned towards her. She gasped, apologised. Some of them turned back to their drinks, others kept their flint-like eyes trained on her, their faces stony. Smoke hung around them in a haze of grey. Their backs were hunched, bound in denim and waterproofs, and not one of them had taken off their jacket.

“Excuse me!” Ailsa spoke too loudly and felt like a child. “What’s happened, why are all those people…like that? In Union Square?” The barman kept his eyes low, pulling Ailsa a thick, black pint from a sputtering pipe. Someone coughed. Murmured something Ailsa couldn’t parse. A rough chuckle. “Oil drunk,’ he said, as though it was obvious. “Nae reason tae go doon there. Nae guid shops. Ye’d be better aff away hame,”

“I’m here looking for my sister,” she said. The barman let out a long sigh, and slammed a pint on the bar, spilling its stomach acid froth over the glass and his hand. “Nae sisters here, lass.” he said, too loud for the cramped, dark space. The pint glass tried to wriggle out of Ailsa’s grasp when she picked it up. “She’s been here for years. We grew up here. Her name’s Heather? Heather MacLeod?” Ailsa unlocked her phone. Its blue light felt like science fiction here. She shone Heather’s Facebook picture towards the men, blinding their lined faces. They shook their heads.

“She’s no fae here. Ah ken a’b’dy, an Ah’ve nivvir seen her afore. Most people left aftir 2014…” He spoke the year’s name like a curse. The barman’s tone was suddenly low. A smeared, cloudy pint glass hung in his hands. “Okay, could you maybe help me-” The barman spoke over Ailsa until she stopped speaking. Ailsa, momentarily, hated him.

“There’s nothing here for you.” He spoke clearly and slowly, as though Ailsa wouldn’t understand him. “This is my home,” she said in the same monosyllabic tone. The men let out a loud, cruel crack of laughter. Maybe it was unrelated. “Ye dinnae want tae be here, lass!” The barman said, laughingly. “Especially no the night,” One of the Aberdonians took a long drag on his cigarette before drinking deeply from his pint. After he swallowed, he let the smoke out. It hung, milky in the dark, still air.

Aiberdeen hud been strugglin’ tae get back tae sleep, her thoughts racing and so full of memories, so she thought it worth sittin up tae hae a leuk at whit was gang oan. Nuhin would come o it, she wiz sure. But she might as weell. She’d cracked open wan eye, watched the quine skite her way ower the city. Aiberdeen didnae even hae the energy to flick her awa lik a fly. She kent her fizog, the young lassie. And she kent her sister, of course, as well as the city kent Ailsa hersel.

It was even more depressing in the rain. The cobblestones became slick and shining, like fish pulled fresh from the sea. Starving seagulls cried uselessly into the silent sky. Maybe Heather had moved. Maybe she was dead. But that still wouldn’t erase her from everyone’s memories. Ailsa checked her messages, called Heather’s number again, just in case. She was the only contact in Ailsa’s recents, her smiling face repeated over and over. She was here, somewhere, laughing at her. Making Ailsa chase her all over their home town, just for her to have gotten a new number or something. It was a stupid idea to come up here. She was too responsible, Ailsa’s mother used to say. Took too much responsibility for things that weren’t her fault. Too sensible for her own good.

Aiberdeen, nodded her heid. Ailsa’s mother hud been right. The lassie was a gype. Not headstrong and confident, like her sister, the wee bisum. No even humble and hardworking like her grandmother had been. Quines like that are only good fer bearin’ geets. The city rarely gave up on her wimmin, but some o’ them werenae good fer much else. Dull as dishwater. Aiberdeen decided Ailsa couldnae be trusted tae run her ain story. Scunnered, she reached doon tae the quine and pressed her giant finner tae her forehead. Told her far to ging, and whit would happen fan she got there. Aiberdeen needed some entertainment.

Ailsa, like many an Aberdonian, was struck by the sudden and unexplainable urge to go to the beach. She still knew the way. Past a towering car park, empty except for a lone alarm, screaming into the silence. Down a gaping, silent motorway. Soon she became tangled in the labyrinthine industrial estate; monstrous chains slumped in rusty piles, barbed wire protecting desolate concrete slabs. Unreadable signs whispered long faded warnings amongst the spiked skeletons of unknowable machines. A tiny Gothic kirk with a scattering of ancient graves was crowded by pebble dashed walls and blue plastic warehouses; the length of their neglect the only difference between them. The sea swam through the gaps between the buildings like a shark.

The old Ferris wheel loomed over the beach. Sun-bleached signs sported non-copyrighted children’s characters smiling dully outwards from behind cracked windows and splintered plastic ice cream cones. And on the beach, huge and black, a jagged, metal structure. It looked crude and out of place, like it was supposed to be much further out at sea. Like if an oil rig crawled its way up out of the water. As Ailsa got closer, she recognized a twisted walkway, a curled support beam, a chipped and vicious looking drill. The metal was stained and rusty, so black it looked burned. The separate pieces made a kind of disjointed logic, as though its’ constructors had only seen pictures of oil rigs after they’d exploded. It all melted together as one on the sand, jellyfish and empty shells collected at its feet like prey.

Aiberdeen looked on the scene wae apathy. Her children were want to do all manner o strange hings. It is the nature of their mither no to understand them. Like a pack o witches, chanting to summon their lost father. Aiberdeen had lang lost ony hope that the days of old would return. They were affa fine, fan the people would crowd her beaches, aw tweed and cotton, the wimmin in their fine summer dresses. And nights where the floor of the beach ballroom would bounce fae its occupants’ merrymaking. Maybe it was all better afore it came along. Aiberdeen tried no tae reminisce sae muckle, it made her cowk. 

Ailsa stared as the people around the structure gathered like flies, greased and shining. As Ailsa approached, the people turned to leer at her, none so un-human as the ones at Union Square, but Ailsa could see the hunger pulling at the corners of their eyes. These were a people on their last nerve. Ailsa scanned the crowd but didn’t see her sister there. She became suddenly aware of the timer that had been running inside her all day coming to an end. The crowds made her face turn hot and her breathing run ragged. But then, there she was, the prettiest girl under the deconstructed rig.

When Ailsa got to Heather she didn’t turn to face her, Ailsa had to awkwardly say her name louder and louder until she managed to break her eyes away from the rig. “Oh, hello,” Heather said, as though the time between seeing each other had been minutes rather than years. Then her face broke into an excited grin. “OMG! You’ll get to be here when it happens!” Heather took her sister by the shoulders and shook her, Heather’s hair unmoving and plastered to her head. “See what?”

“See Him come home!”

Heather meant the Old God of Oil. The Prince of the Black Gold. Aberdeen’s long-lost husband. The city choked at the sound of his name, letting out a smoker’s laugh. Heather spoke of his deep slumber below the sea, and how a human sacrifice would bring him home, and return Aberdeen to the glorious age before 2014, before the oil left us to surround Him in His sacred womb beneath the waves. Ailsa stared into her sparkling eyes and couldn’t help smiling. It was a false, weak smile and her heart felt like it had sloughed out of her body onto the sand, pulsing weakly in the cloudy sunlight. She’d gone crazy. Just like everyone else still living here. Ailsa’s sister was too far gone. All the visions she’d had of bringing her home safely to her flat in Edinburgh, of the two of them sleeping top-to-toe just like when they were kids, disappeared in a cloud of blackened smoke.

“Okay…”

The sparkle in Heathers’ eyes was still there but the smile had dropped. “I knew you’d be like that. You just can’t get excited for me, it had to always be about you. Just forget it, you wouldn’t understand”. Ailsa’s face heated in anger.

“All about me?! Everything for as long as I can remember had been about you!”

“Yes! You always needed reassurance, that you were so special and clever and kind! I never got that, never got to move away to Edinburgh and be so impressive. I failed out of school and I still live in my hometown. Let me have something, Ailsa,” Heather’s words shocked Ailsa into silence. Ailsa had been the one who’d failed, who’d been lonely. It had never occurred to her that Heather could have felt the same way.

Heather turned away but someone standing near her caught her arm. One of the others came close to her then, whispering in her ear. And Heather’s smile lit up her face once again. Ailsa was already feeling exposed, loose among the crowd. And now a cage built into the base of the old rig lowered onto the sand, empty and expectant. “We need someone to give to him, to stay in the rig. You won’t die or anything, just stay inside. We’ll feed you, we’ll keep you company. You just can’t leave. We didn’t know who’d do it for us, but now you’re here! I knew it would be for a reason! You don’t want to go back to Edinburgh, right?” Heather seemed so excited Ailsa couldn’t help but smile back. “Yeah, I mean, I think it is for a reason…”

“So, you’ll do it?”

Ailsa didn’t fully know what she was agreeing to. But with so many expectant smiles facing her, she politely agreed to be sacrificed, her heart still beating slowly on the sand between them. She thought of her flat in Edinburgh, the tiny studio she could barely afford, her WFH job where nobody turned their cameras on. She’d thought she was safer in isolation, and maybe she was. But here, she would be among people. She’d be with Heather. And maybe she wasn’t ever meant to leave. Maybe she was always supposed to come home. To help someone other than herself. People were smiling at her for the first time since she’d arrived. Ailsa felt special. And maybe they were smiling too because maybe they recognized her. Knew her. Maybe they were thinking there you are! We’ve missed you! Ailsa felt the city nudging her head into a nod, and let it. Heather turned to the crowd. “She’ll do it!” The Aberdonians erupted into cheers of relief.

Aiberdeen held her hand oot tae Ailsa, ruggin’ her along the san, towards the yawning, open mouth o the cage. She’d stoapped believing in witchcraft lang ago. Fanciful follies of her youth, they wouldnae serve her noo. Those pagans gathered in the kirkyard hadn’t done anything to help her. The only thing whit hud ever helped wiz ‘at American money, an’ that coffer was lang dry. Still, she wiznae immune tae sentimentalities, and something aboot draggin’ een o her wayward bairns hame was appealin’ tae her. Mebbe she wiz jist bitter. Mebbe she wiz bored. Still, the lassie would go in the cage, she made sure o’ it. Aw the promises, whispered on the wind lik the caws o’ the gulls. 

Ailsa approached the cage’s open mouth with something like excitement. The woman standing next to Heather looked like their old maths teacher but she didn’t recognise Ailsa. She bowed, like they were starting some sacred ritual. “Hi Mrs Milton,” Ailsa said, stupidly, and her maths teacher ignored her. She raised her hands over Ailsa’s head to place a life jacket around her neck. Ailsa was ushered into the cage with smiles and nods, strangers pushing dead fronds of beach grass and empty ice cream wrappers into her hands. Some reached in and smeared her face and clothes with rancid oil.

The cage’s door slammed closed on Ailsa and Heather was the one to lock it. For a few tense moments, it seemed like nothing would happen, and Ailsa stared into her sister’s eyes long enough to see the doubt creep in. A torrent of oil erupted from the top of the structure, spattering the sand and the people in a hail of oil. Some of the Aberdonians started crying with what looked like relief, others jumping in celebration. The ocean was rolling in black, throwing itself sluggishly against the shore and pulling away again in excruciating torpidity.

Ailsa tried to call out to Heather but she ran towards the sea with the oil drunk, dropping to their knees at the shore to pull handfuls of oil to their mouths. Flaming silhouettes of long-dead oil rigs were raising themselves up out of the ocean, alarmingly close. Freighter ships that had been lying dormant in the harbour were now creeping their way through the oil and out to sea, leaving a slow trail in the water behind them. The cage ascended into the bowels of the rig, trapping Ailsa inside with her own frantic cries. She screamed until she couldn’t anymore, and silence overtook her. Then, later, the only sound, the ceaseless hum of the old rig, murmuring in the darkness. Ailsa whispered to the city and Aberdeen was silent, except for slow rhythmic breaths, like a baby drinking milk.

Author biography:
Jack Lennon is a Scottish writer, originally from Aberdeen. You can find their work published by Always Crashing, Night Shades, Extra Teeth and X-R-A-Y, among others. Their short fiction has been nominated for Best Small Fictions 2026 and won the Scottish Mental Heath Arts Festival’s fiction prize in 2024. Contact them or read more at jacklennon.com.