Up there it's an unnatural temperature. This specific set of air was never meant to sit under pine jousts and knob and tube wiring. There is always a single lonely light bulb for illumination and when it goes out, you are in the teeth of a dragon.
It's suffocating. Imagine dunking your head into a basket of towels pulled too early from rhe dryer. It doesn't just hit the skin and make you roll your sleeves but makes you want to simply abandon the idea of clothes. It's the waft of heat when opening an oven save that it sits like a thermal fog over the box of Christmas decorations.
I've lived in too many place like this. One where it boiled away my guppies in the fish tank. To save the others I had to regularly drip ice cubes into the tank. One that I owned where the house was wonderful but the attic and basement were both metaphorical warts. In this house is where we saw the husk of a rat (maybe squirrel) merged into the pine and ancient insulation. One place didn't have stairs into the A frame space. Instead you pulled a wooden panel off a closet wall and climbed up an angled ladder (like Discovery Zone. If anyone does read this I know they are 90s kids) to the area. We sparingly used this so we made this room my daughter's nursery. During holidays she would watch from her crib and chatter to us as we dragged boxes from the attic and made the temperature go up by five degrees.
"It would be awful to die here," said my mother once when we toured the home we owned and showed her the strangled sirroco air of the attic. I guess she is right save what would be great places to die? Surrounded by family with no pain? In a blaze of glory after kissing your lover and saying to never forget me? That is more a time than place. A cool place for sure.
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