This is a (very) short story originally composed for a Reddit contest, where entries were limited to 3,000 words. It has been edited for clarity and includes some additional details the 3,000-word limit forbade.
Erica loved working out at night. She usually visited her condo's gym at 10 p.m., spending an hour on the treadmill, looking out at the New York skyline through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the glass and steel tower she had called home since September. From that vantage point, she could see the lights flicking on and off in the apartment buildings across the street, a mosaic of domestic city life spread out before her. She was usually all alone up there, at that hour. There weren't many night hawks in her building, it would seem. Just how she liked it.
She had a hard time focusing on her audio book, some free-to-download fantasy novel whose title and author she had already forgotten. Magic had awakened. The king was ill. Blah blah blah. Her attention kept turning to the presentation that was due on her boss's desk in two days, and how the elements she needed to complete it were someone else's responsibility. She could do nothing but pester him for them, and seethe. She took her job seriously. Why couldn't Nolan? Did he think a Friday afternoon deadline meant "wait 'til Friday morning to get Erica what she needs?" She had half a mind to throw him under the bus earlier that day, to just barge into their supervisor's office and complain about the pace of his work, but she didn't want to rock the boat. Not when she was so close to her own midyear reviews, and the promotion she'd been promised for the last six months.
Her skin was slick with sweat as she finished her six-mile run. Erica walked to the women's locker, stripped off her running shorts and sports bra, and removed her scrunchie, letting her light brown hair tumble over her shoulders. She grabbed two towels from the wall, filled a paper cup with cold water, and entered her favorite place in the whole gym: the sauna.
The sauna was an eight foot by eight-foot block of cedar heaven, with a coal-filled stone grill against the south wall, and two levels of benches lining the north and west walls. A thermometer sat on the east wall, indicating the ambient temperature of the room, and a timer sat beside the door on the south wall, allowing for the automation of the heating element, for safety purposes, Erica assumed.
She turned the dial up to 30 minutes, and laid one towel on the cedar planks of the west wall's upper level, placing the other neatly beside it before climbing up and sitting down. From this location, she could see the door open before anyone could see her, and she liked the added privacy, even if it would only last a moment. She hung her head, breathing in the scent of burning coals and warm cedar, and began to relax. The mercury thermometer read 110 degrees and climbing. Soon, it would be nearly 175 degrees Fahrenheit in the small room, the perfect temperature for a post-workout schvitz. And in the 20-degree January temperatures, a schvitz and an orgasm sounded like just the thing.
Tired of the dating scene, and usually working so late to maintain any sort of regular relationships, anyway, Erica had been masturbating a lot, lately. The sauna had presented itself as an attractive option early in her tenure in the building. It was warm, it was clean, it was relaxing, and she was already naked. And given how unpopulated the gym facilities usually were at night, she was hardly ever interrupted or distracted. At least not by anything other than her own invasive thoughts.
Once she was certain she was alone, Erica started to touch herself, trying as best as she could to concentrate on her pleasure. Soon enough, though, she was running through the list of things she needed to accomplish at the office the next day, even before Nolan got her the things she needed, when she heard the locker room door open from beyond the sauna walls. That was surprising, she thought, given how empty the gym usually was by this hour. It was a large building, she supposed. But she had been coming up here late at night for long enough to feel confident she was the only one to use the facilities this late. She wondered whether it was perhaps the custodial staff, or maybe someone had forgotten something in a locker earlier and only just remembered. Fresh beads of sweat formed on her arms, and she closed her eyes, trying to ignore the sound of a closing locker from outside her little oasis while she teased her clit again, and tried to conjure up a more attractive image than Nolan's stupid face.
A whoosh of cool air entered the room, followed by a tall, blonde woman, about 50 years old, tanned and wrapped in a towel, holding a small bucket of water in one hand, and a bundle of leafy sticks in the other.
"Oh," the woman said, looking startled. "I'm sorry, I usually don't run into anyone up here this late."
Erica lifted the clean towel to her chest, letting it fall open and cover her torso and groin. So much for her post-workout routine. She hoped the woman hadn't seen anything she shouldn't have.
"Don't do that on my account," the woman said, sitting on the northern bench and unwrapping herself. "It's just us girls here."
The intruder's breasts hung lower than Erica's own 28-year-old examples, with stark tan lines cutting across them, just above her soft, brown nipples. She wasn't a natural blonde, it seemed, as confirmed by the manicured tuft of dark hair between her legs. Her lower tan lines suggested a particularly racy taste in bikini bottoms. She had the figure for it, Erica thought. She hoped she looked that good when she got to be her age.
Without an orgasm to look forward to, Erica figured she might as well strike up a conversation. She was still relatively new in the building, and hadn't met that many of her neighbors. That was typical, in the city, particularly for young people who bounced around from apartment to apartment. No sense getting to know a transient community, especially not when you were a transient yourself. But this felt like a place she could plant some roots for a while. She could be in her new one bedroom for at least five years, she thought. It was time to make an effort.
"I'm jealous of your tan," Erica said, looking down at her own fair winter skin as she dropped the towel on the lower bench and wiped the sweat from her neck. It had been months since her body had seen the sun, and there was no differentiation whatsoever across her creamy, white skin.
The woman looked down and laughed. She threw her head back and inhaled, filling her chest with the warming air.
"Turks and Caicos," she said. "Some girlfriends and I took a trip for the holidays."
"Sounds perfect," Erica said, feeling the sweat pooling on her shoulder blades, feeling the ache down under as the heat rose. Pavlovian response, she supposed. She had been coming up here a lot, lately. The thermometer read 140 degrees. "I've never been."
"If you go," the woman said, "Stay at Seven Stars. Ugh, it was beyond. The spa. I could die." She nodded to the leafy sticks. "That's where I learned about these. They're birch branches. I've been coming up here the last couple days since coming back, to get my fix. I'm addicted."
The woman lightly beat her legs with the branches. Erica took a sip of water, luxuriating in its cold temperature, rolling it around her mouth before swallowing.
"I didn't realize birch grew in the Caribbean," Erica said, curious about the woman's bizarre ritual.
"They import them for the spa," she said. "And these came from Whole Foods, I didn't bring them back. But it's great for the skin. Improves circulation, opens up the pores. They've done studies and everything. Want to try it?"
"Um... sure..."
"Ok," the woman said, standing up and stretching her arms high above her head, her fingertips nearly touching the ceiling. "Lie on your stomach."
Erica didn't know whether to laugh. She had expected the woman to just hand her the branches, let her hit her own legs as she had been doing. But the older woman seemed to have another idea in mind.
"Um... ok..."
