Friday 21 September 2012

Object Writing 15


Today’s word – ‘Smoke’

Subtitled - Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast!

A thick wooden door, painted red, was set at head height in the chimney – a window into a blackened, soot encrusted world. The smokehouse keeper opened it and stepped back as smoke billowed out, puffing the scent of winter churchyards to softly shade the room in grey pencil.

Inside hung row upon row of twin bodies, nails hooked through their eyes, drizzled with minute beads of oil which threaded downwards over exposed spines to hang like crystals from fanned tails. Their amber flesh, caught up in beams of sunlight spilling into the chamber, glistened and shone like pebbles in a stream.

The smokehouse keeper tossed a handful of wood-chips onto the smouldering embers which lay glowing in the hearth, where they hissed and spat before settling down to send taste trapping tendrils of smoke curling and dancing around the dangling fish.