A Writer’s Dilemma
It was a dark and stormy night. Well, actually it was a bright and sunny late afternoon. I’ve always wanted to start a story the other way. Anyway, I was working at home, basically cleaning up the house, rearranging furniture, baking bread, and doing laundry, when suddenly I had the idea to go up into the attic and search out one of my old pieces of writing that I had stored there.
It was a rather warm and humid day, so I didn’t want to spend much time there. I opened up the attic door and went in. The attic, though it had air vents in the siding, was very musty and dark. Luckily for me, there was a light switch near the doorway and after switching it on this small storage facility became lit.
It had a low ceiling, which was under the roofline. I crept to the far corner of the room and began my sorting process. I was so involved in what I was doing, that I lost track of how long I had been in there. I also ignored the fact that there was a low rumbling sound coming from outside. Had I been more aware I might have realized that storm clouds had blotted out the sun and it was getting a bit more humid and stuffy in the attic.
Of course not being the brightest bulb in the room, I had also closed the attic door on my way in, which had a self-activating electric lock. I would have been fine had the lightning not struck the power lines outside my house. Of course, I hadn’t remembered to bring a flashlight. I didn’t think I would need one.
When the power went out I was trapped in an overheated, dark, enclosure with no clue how to get out.
You should know that the roofers who had recently reroofed the house had used overly long nails in their nail guns, leaving the sharp points of steel sticking out above my head in the rafters spaced not very far apart. Raising my head too high, surely would have aerated my skull sufficiently enough to draw plenty of blood.
My wife was due to come home soon, so hopefully, I would be rescued before I succumbed to heat exhaustion.
On the plus side, I had just found the piece of writing I had been searching for. It of course had to be a mystery about a man found dead in the attic of an old mansion. The culprit ended up being his wife. Talk about fate.
As I remembered, in the story, the dead man before he died had tried to get help by kicking out the air vent on the side of the attic. He didn’t succeed.
What the heck, it couldn’t hurt. So that’s what I did. There was some glimmer through the air vents whenever lightning struck. I slowly crawled toward them, remembering to keep my head low. When I could feel the vent on the wall, I kicked or I should say pushed hard against it. Due to weakened wood due to the age of our house, the vent popped out, which at least provided me with more air to breathe. I screamed as loud as I could.
Whether or not anyone heard me I’ll never know, because the power came back on for just a few minutes. Enough time for me to get to the door, release the lock, and get out of the attic.
Shortly thereafter the lights went out again and it was a dark and stormy night.
