They all have their theories -- the moralists, the social workers, the police, the politicians. They all have their lessons to be learned from my example. I make a very instructive lesson of the moral lassitude of youth, the unfortunate circumstances of women in this age, or whatever social ill you care to illustrate with the lurid details of my plight. Everyone has a story to tell of me, of my fall. Everyone has their own version of the events that led to my current state.
    It is time to hear mine.
    My name is Lotte Gottingen. I am a fallen woman.
    Barely a woman, I blush to admit, and unfamiliar with the rules and conventions of normal, respectable adulthood. Perhaps it is better to call me...a lost girl.

    It began with the housekeeper.
    Her name was Rosa, and she was not much older than I was, a year or two maybe. She was hired by my widowed father to take care of the household, and she was very good at her job. Her very presence brightened our home. She was plump, rosy cheeked, plain but winsome, and affectionate. She was also quite hard-working. My father was nearing retirement, working only part-time at the accountancy firm he'd founded, and resting his aging frame on the cushions of our parlor room the rest of the week.
    Motherless, I used to crawl into Rosa's narrow bed each night for the comfort and warmth her ample body provided. We would lie together chastely, her arms around my shoulders. She would hum lullabies in my ear. Sometimes she would let me undo her long, honey hair and brush it out thoroughly before tying it into a simple braid for the night. She treated me not so much like a surrogate daughter as like a younger sister.
    What I did not know then was that my father, in contrast, used her much like he would have a wife. 
    What I do remember is my father, appearing one night in the shadowed doorway as I lay curled in Rosa's arms. Rosa sitting bolt upright in the bed. "What are you doing here?" she whispered to my father as she hugged me to her breast. 
    My father said nothing, only stared at us both. I did not understand the look in his eye.
    "Lotte," she said in a curiously strangled voice, "Go back to your bed. This instant." Her hands, which a moment before had been caressing me, pushed me sternly out of my berth. "Lock your door behind you, and stay put. You're not being punished," she added, her voice losing all iron. "Just, please. I will come to you later and tuck you in. Be a good girl, a big girl for me."
    My father's eyes smoldered with an emotion unfamiliar to me as I passed.
    It took me a week to gather the courage to ask Rosa what had happened on that night. When I did, she stiffened, and tried to push me away.
    "I think it is best that you learn to sleep alone now," she said. "You're almost grown up. I shouldn't baby you. You'll become spoiled."
    Instead of acceding to her command, however, I curled up even more tightly against her. "Please Rosa, tell me. Why did father want to see you? Why did you have to send me away?" I rolled over and looked her in the eye; I tried to look stern, imperious, commanding. I was the closest thing our little home had to a Mistress of the Household, I told myself. In the absence of my mother, it was I who should command. "Tell me about it this instant,"
    Rosa stared at me for a moment in defiance, but a moment later, her features softened. Something remained in her eyes, however, a spark or a glint, like a blade. I had never seen her eyes so hard before.
    "You want to know what your father does with me, late at night? Or during the day, when you are away at school? You want to know my real purpose in this household, do you? Very well. You are old enough to know." She smoothed her plain gray skirt. "I am your father's whore."
    I was dumbfounded. I wasn't even sure what the word she'd used meant.
    Rosa wasn't looking at me anymore; her eyes had gone wild, and she stared past my shoulder, toward the door of her room. "Yes, that's right," she continued in a hysterical tone. "That he pays me to do the housework is only a cover. If only I'd known that when I entered his employment, I would have asked for a higher wage." Rosa laughed, a broken sound. She turned to me, eyes afire. "Let me show you what your father does to me, whenever he gets a chance at me alone. Then you will understand. That's what you want to know, isn't it?"
    "Y-Yes," I stuttered.
    Instantly, she leaped upon me, pinning me to the mattress, my hands above my head, clasped in her too-cruel grip. "What are you doing?" I cried.
    "Yes, I'll show you what your father was doing with me," Rosa replied, and pushed my nightgown up to my waist.
    After such a savage beginning, however, she turned strangely gentle. She spent a great deal of time stroking the white skin of my thighs, her hand never straying to my more intimate parts, not yet. She would alternate such caresses with a touch along my neck, a kiss upon my shoulder, and all sorts of affectionate gestures that soon had my skin afire, my nerves primed.
    "Does it feel good?" she asked. I nodded. Her mouth formed a strange sort of smile. "It feels good when your father touches me like this, too," she said.
    Her hand strayed to my breast. For a long moment, she merely drew her fingertips along the curve and swell to be found there, nothing more. But presently, her hand found my nipple; then, her mouth. I gasped as she sucked at it through the thin cloth of my silk nightgown, the nightgown my father had given to me on my most recent birthday. Rosa chuckled a little. "Yes, it's very nice, isn't it?" she murmured, hardly lifting her head to speak. I nodded, breathless. "This is just the beginning," she said.
    Soon her hand was worming into the cleft between my legs, and my own hand was covering my mouth to stifle the gasps I would otherwise have uttered. "Does it feel good?" Rosa kept asking as she pressed the heel of her hand against my mons, her mouth pouring kisses upon my neck and shoulder, behind my ear and on my cheek.
    "Yes, yes, it feels marvelous," I finally cried. "Please, I am on fire!"
    And I was, every nerve aflame, craving the merest brush of her fingertips along my skin. But Rosa's touches had grown progressively rougher. She had found my moistness and was spreading it along my nether lips, making me shiver with every stroke. My hips rose to meet her hand; my mouth opened in a wordless sigh. My knees parted. I welcomed her touch, her tender ministrations. How I adored them!
    She lavished me with kisses, which kindled sensations I had never before known. My flesh unfurled beneath her hands, her mouth. I blossomed into a woman that very moment, or so it seemed.
    And when I cried out in ecstacy, and bucked my body in the throes of pleasure, and my innermost moisture spilled out onto her hand, I looked into Rosa's fevered eyes with a new sort of love. The gaze she returned me mingled fear, shame, and exhilaration.
    She lifted her hand to stroke my cheek; it was streaked in blood. When I looked at it quizzically, she smeared the stuff upon my lips, where it tightened as it dried. "Your virgin blood," she whispered. "I have taken your maidenhood, it seems."
    I did not know it then, but that moment marked the beginning of my fall. Such a delicious moment, like the first bite of Eve's fruit. 
    I tasted myself, my blood and that other flavor, unfamiliar and yet unmistakably my own. I licked my lips clean, and then I kissed Rosa, yearning suddenly to taste her as well. Would her womanly savor taste the same as mine, or would she have her own sweetness? 
    It was as if a demon had possessed me. What else could explain my boldness? For now I was the aggressor, pushing Rosa down onto the thin mattress, pushing her nightgown up to bunch against her hips, spreading her plump thighs and peering at her womanly parts. I explored their pink furls first with fingers, then with tongue; I found her taste to be muskier than mine. I found the nub at the crest of her vulva, that when I flicked it with my tongue, caused Rosa to convulse in a spasm of pleasure. I found the cleft that was the source of her musky fluid. I even ventured a tentative lick or two near her other hole. Before long, I was buried to my chin in Rosa's glorious scent, her tender flesh, her moistness. She urged me on in husky tones, directing my tongue, my fingers, until she could speak no more, only howl her pleasure.
    It was hours later when we finally collapsed, exhausted, into each other's arms. "You are a wanton," Rosa whispered in my ear. "An untamed creature. You are a wild thing, masquerading as tame. But you will not be able to keep this charade for long. You are no-one's pet, destined to be no-one's wife, or even mistress." She lifted her head and stared into my eyes. "I pity and fear you," she said. "And I also fear for you." She cradled me and kissed my hair, murmuring soft adorations to me.
    As the first light of dawn crept through the bedroom window, I fell asleep cradled in my first lover's arms.

    She would not be the last.