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.
