“JESUS FUCK,” Renee exclaimed, recoiling into her car seat and slamming her hands to the sides of her head. An earsplitting hiss blasted out of the stereo, a far cry from the audiobook of Dress and the Opal Ocean she typically listened to on her commute.

Renee scrambled to turn the audio down, fingers fumbling for the correct dial before pushing down hard. Then again. And again and again as hitting the button did nothing to quiet the cacophonous Prius. After three more presses, Renee nearly dove out of the car and into the driveway, slamming the door behind her.

She took a moment to breathe, the hiss muffled but clearly audible within the closed car. Breathing in for four seconds, holding for seven seconds, breathing out for eight. Repeat.

What the hell was wrong with her radio? She furrowed her brow, staring at the audio system through the car’s tinted window. She took another deep breath, pried the door open, and gritted her teeth and she leaned in, fruitlessly pressed the volume dial a few more times, then managed to spin the dial down to a volume that merely felt like a dull roar.

“Well, fuck.”

Two phone calls later, Renee had three things: the day off work, an appointment at the Toyota dealership’s service center, and a splitting headache. Bracing herself, she stepped back into the belly of the beast and started her long, painful drive.

She had, briefly and with little confidence, hoped that the pain of the headache would help her ignore the hissing still piping out of every speaker in the car. Alas, she was wrong, and was instead blessed with the newfound knowledge that there were also speakers on the rear doors, providing a surround sound experience as she drove the familiar route to the… dealership? Hold on.

Renee blinked and realized that she was not at the dealership. Indeed, she didn’t even seem to be in the right ZIP code. Instead, she had just pulled up at what appeared to be a mountain trailhead parking lot. She blinked again and realized that for 10 AM on a Tuesday, this parking lot was remarkably full. She blinked a third time and realized that many of these cars either contained, or had standing nearby, a woman wearing the look of befuddlement Renee had on her own face.

Stepping shakily out of her car, Renee stumbled from car to car towards one of the women. This one was circling her pickup truck repeatedly, running her fingers through her short blonde hair with every few seconds. A series of tattoos – flowers, dreamcatchers, mandalas – ran down both her arms.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” Renee squeaked, her voice barely audible over the hissing of the car next to her.

The blonde woman jumped, an inked hand jumping to her chest as her breath caught. “Oh. Oh my god.” The woman half-smiled, half-winced. “Sorry. Just a little jumpy.”

Renee mirrored the woman’s wincing smile. “I take it you don’t know what’s going on, either?”

“As much as anyone else here. Which ain’t much.” The woman reached out a hand. “Tanya, by the way.”

“Renee. Have you called anyone about this?”

“No service,” Tanya grimaced. “Not for Verizon, not for AT&T, nobody.”

“Well, shit.” She turned downhill, towards the long road she’d inadvertently taken to get here. “Has anybody gone on foot?”

“A group left about twenty minutes ago, yeah.” Tanya sat down on the back of her pickup, patted the spot next to her a few times, and resumed running her hand through her hair. “But apparently there were at least two groups before them, and nothing’s come of that yet.”

Renee joined Tanya on the pickup, the business pantsuit she hadn’t thought to change out of now feeling rather silly. “Well, I didn’t exactly plan to go hiking today. I don’t even know where we are.”

“Bobcat Mountain,” Tanya chuckled. “It’s actually a pretty nice hike. There’s a bunch of single-track for regular hikers, but newbies can take the service road to the top and still get a good workout.”

“Is there a nice view at the top?” Though her headache persisted, and the hiss from the pickup’s stereo system forced her to speak up, Renee felt the butterflies in her stomach start to settle.

“It’s… fine,” Tanya frowned. “The radio tower is the most exciting thing. You can see downtown, but there are better hikes nearby for actual views.”

“Wait, wait, wait. There’s a radio tower? That seems important.”

Tanya nodded knowingly. “Yeah, probably. A lot of folks have left to hike up to it, but nobody’s come back from that, either.” She leaned back and lay in the bed of her truck. “And that’s why I’ve been hanging out in a parking lot for two hours instead of going to Home Depot. How’s your Tuesday going?”

Renee drummed her fingers on her legs, watching a pair of identical redheads step together onto the service road and up the hill, the shine of their hair in the brilliant sunlight almost painful to her headache-addled eyes. She squeezed them shut and massaged her temples. “Tanya, do you have a quarter?”

Tanya, eyebrows raised in expectation, produced a tarnished Washington State Quarter from her jeans pocket and handed it to Renee.

Renee placed the coin on her thumb. “Heads I hike up, tails I look for help.” She took a deep breath and flipped.

***

Renee’s pantsuit was, as expected, a terrible outfit to hike in. She’d discarded her modest heels before even hitting the trail, borrowing a pair of sneakers Tanya kept in the bed of her truck. But even those sneakers were uncomfortable; even though they were the right size, they chafed, and they didn’t provide nearly enough arch support for this surprisingly arduous hike. Her blouse was too tight and clung to her sweaty body, even after discarding the suit jacket by hanging it neatly on the branch of a tree.

But it wasn’t all bad, she had to admit. The fresh forest air that she gulped in ragged breaths was much better than the stuffy air of her office. The horrible hiss that permeated the parking lot soon fell away to the relaxing sounds of wind and birdsong. And after peeling her sweaty blouse off her body and folding it neatly under a trail sign, the cool morning air caressed her overheated skin pleasingly. Her pants, which kept getting caught on fallen branches on the trail, soon followed, along with those ill-fitting sneakers.

Yes, without those stuffy clothes, she felt unburdened. Aside from the dull ache still throbbing in the back of her skull, she could enjoy herself. She could breathe easier, steadily, her chest rising and falling in an even, controlled rhythm. In through her nose for a few steps, out through her mouth for a few steps.

Turning around a bend in the road, she spotted the twin redheads a few hundred feet ahead. They, too, were unclothed down to their underwear, though Renee was amused to notice that they wore matching brown hiking boots. Their wavy red hair swayed with each step, again almost glittering in the dappled sunlight coming through the trees above. She found herself matching the twins’ rhythm, stepping and breathing in time with the swaying of their burning locks.

And then, there was the tower. Steely gray, surrounded by a fence, itself surrounded by no fewer than two dozen scantily-clad women. Renee blinked. Wait. That was weird. A mountaintop of nearly naked women wasn’t a normal thing to see, and it was even less normal to also be one of the women. Had nobody figured anything out yet? Had anyone even tried climbing the fence?

But before she could ask, she heard a creak from within the fence. Next to the radio tower was some sort of maintenance shed, its walls plastered with industrial symbols Renee couldn’t even begin to make sense of. And the door of this shed was opening. Her breath caught her chest.

Out stepped… an e-girl?

To be continued...