Loretta walked slowly down the hallway of the old mansion. The Halloween party was a fundraiser for the historical group which was trying to restore the place. They also rented out some of the restored bedrooms as a B & B during tourist season, but this annual adults-only party was their big money-maker for the year. In one night it brought in almost as much money as the rest of their fundraisers.

The tickets were not inexpensive, but there was a two-for-one price for couples so Loretta and Delany had splurged. They had considered splurging even further for the additional cost of reserving one of the bedrooms but then decided that they could go home to their apartment after the party and celebrate that they had saved a lot of money.

The floorboards squeaked noisily under Loretta’s feet as she slowly explored the huge house. Downstairs The Greatest Halloween Party Ever continued noisily. Upstairs the muffled sounds of sex could be heard behind the closed doors of the bedrooms. The party was fabulous, but it wasn’t that great for Loretta. She was attending alone, so she had refused any offers of alcohol. She had also refused several offers of various drugs. It might have been a great party for her if she and Delany hadn’t just broken up.

Loretta had thought that Delany and she were the perfect couple. She even had thoughts... and hopes... of someday marrying her. But just last weekend she had come home from work early and discovered Delany, who worked from home, in bed with their neighbor Breanna. Breanna was spread-eagled on her back on the bed with Delany kneeling at the foot of the bed with her face buried in Breanna’s twat. Neither of them heard Loretta enter the apartment, nor did they see her standing in the bedroom door. She had wanted to scream and yell and cuss. But the overwhelming shock of what she was seeing rendered her mute. She just turned and walked silently back out of the apartment. When she returned two hours later, Delany was sitting in the living room reading. The bed had been carefully made and several scented candles were burning in the living room and bedroom.

The candles were an additional shock to Loretta’s already shattered senses. She remembered that Delany had suddenly developed an interest in lavender-scented candles about three months ago. Several times each week, Loretta would return from work to an apartment that smelled heavily of lavender. She sat down across from Delany and said softly, “I hadn’t realized how well lavender candles would cover the smell of sex.”

Delany’s eyes opened wide and her face paled. “How did you know?” she said, obviously startled.

“I came home from work early,” Loretta replied. “I wanted to surprise you. Instead, you and Breanna surprised me.”

“I’ll move out tomorrow,” was all Delany said.

The next day... yesterday... Delany moved all of her stuff next door into Breanna’s apartment. Today when Loretta came home from work, she sat alone in the now very empty apartment. Her pain and grief were almost too much to bear. The sense of betrayal overwhelmed her. She thought about maybe ending it all, but then she saw the tickets sitting on the kitchen table. Without really thinking about it, she found herself slowly dressing in the long, figure-hugging, black witch’s outfit that she had bought for the party. There was also a witch’s hat, but she left that on the bed.

She picked up the black tickets with orange scary-style printing on them and then set one of them back on the table. She stood wavering between going back into the bedroom and ending it all or going out the front door. Then she said aloud, “What the hell? They’ve already been paid for. Maybe I will find a new love of my life... or at least maybe I can bury my pain in the Halloween festivities.”

Her pain instead buried the festivities. She half-heartedly tried to dance with a couple of the guys... and gals... at the party. And she tried... unsuccessfully... to join in the conversation around the bar. Her world was becoming darker and darker and darker. So now, to avoid going home, she was exploring the old mansion where the party was held rather than being a part of the party itself.

The ornate staircase went all the way up to the third floor. That floor was almost identical to the second with one exception. One bedroom door had a large, permanent sign attached to it which said, “Do not enter this room. The Scheele's Green wallpaper in this room has not been neutralized.”

That sign intrigued Loretta and she tried the door. It was locked. But as Loretta turned away from the door, it opened from the inside. A soft voice called out, “Please come in. I’m so lonely in here.”

Loretta’s first thought was that this was a really neat special effect. But she wasn’t in the mood for special effects. She was going to just walk back down to the main floor, but the voice behind the door repeated, “Please...”

Loretta said aloud, “What the hell. It might be interesting.”

She turned around and went back to the door which was now open about a finger’s width. She slowly pushed it open and then gasped aloud. The room was beautiful!

“As you can tell,” a very pale woman said with obvious pride as she gestured around the room, “my favorite color is green.”

The woman was dressed in a vibrant green dress. Her light brown hair was held back by a matching green ribbon which trailed down her back almost as far as her hair. There were three oil lamps burning in the room. One was on the dresser; one on a stand beside the bed; and one on a low desk which sat in front of the window. The shades on all three of the lamps were the same dark, vibrant green as the patterned wallpaper which covered the walls. A matching wallpaper with the same pattern in white covered the ceiling. Whoever had restored this room had spent a lot of money.

“It’s beautiful,” Loretta said with a sigh. Then she gasped as she unconsciously added, “And so are you.”

“Harold thought so, too,” the woman said and then smiled. She smoothed the front of her dress with her hands and then said, “He made this room for me when he built the house.” She smiled again. This time her smile looked a little pained. After a long pause, she said almost flatly, “He said it was a safe place for me to practice my perversions.”

Loretta again gasped slightly, and the woman once again smoothed her dress. Then she continued, “My parents were an accepted part of high society. Harold needed someone to establish him as more than nouveau riche.” She laughed before continuing, “... and my parents wanted to get rid of me before I could create a public scandal that would damage the family name.”

She reached out and stroked Loretta’s face and then said, “They knew I liked girls.”

She paused and a pouty frown flashed across her face. “So did Harold,” she said with a sigh. “That’s why he made this room for me with its secret staircase to the back porch.” She shrugged and gave Loretta a wrinkled smile.

“Is that why you invited me in here?” Loretta asked.

“Yes... and no,” the green lady replied. “You are very lonely and you are in deep despair. I think you needed me. You were going to take your own life tonight when you got back to your apartment.”

“How do you know that?” Loretta sputtered.

“When you are very rich,” the woman answered, “you know many things. And in my current situation, I know even more.”

She held out her hand and Loretta slowly moved across the floor to where she stood. “You can leave if you want to,” the woman said as she pulled Loretta into her arms. Then she said, “Don’t say yes or no, just leave... or kiss me.”

Loretta moved her lips to the woman’s mouth. As soon as their lips touched, the woman pulled her tightly against her body and passionately returned the kiss. Somehow, they did not desperately rip the clothing off of each other’s bodies. Instead, the woman slowly unzipped Loretta’s dress and let it drop to the ground. Loretta did the same to the woman, though her dress was held together with buttons, not a zipper. Loretta was now standing there in her black bra and the tiny thong that didn’t show panty lines in the figure-hugging witch’s dress. The woman was in a corset, a slip, stockings, pantaloons, and boots that laced up over her ankles.

“Wow!” Loretta gasped. “You really went all out with your period costume.”

“One must dress properly,” the woman replied, “even when doing improper things.”

Loretta laughed and began to untie the lady’s corset strings. “It must have taken forever to put all of this on,” she said, still laughing softly.

“It takes even longer to get it all of it off in times like this,” the woman replied as she untied her own slip and pantaloons and slid them down off of her hips.

Loretta kicked her shoes off to the side and knelt down to untie the woman’s boots. The woman started to push her stockings down her legs, but Loretta said, “No, leave them on... for now.”

Finally, they were on the bed. Loretta was totally naked. The woman wore only the black stockings which Loretta had asked her to keep on. The black of the stockings made the woman’s pale skin look almost paper-white.

After laying still for a few moments, the woman began to gently push Loretta onto her back but Loretta said firmly, “No. Let me be in charge. I need that... especially tonight.”

“As you wish... for now,” the woman replied and lay on her back.

Loretta lay alongside the woman holding herself up by resting on her left elbow. She used her right hand to slowly stroke the woman’s body. She let her hand run down the woman’s flesh from the top of her neck to the tops of her stockings. She was surprised that the woman didn’t shave... anywhere. There were tufts of light brown hair in the woman’s armpits and a slight fuzz of hair on her legs. Her mound was covered with a fine layer of slightly darker brown hair.

The woman’s hands reached up and began stroking Loretta’s body. Her face showed that she was evidently just as surprised that Loretta had no bodily hair.

“Where is your woman hair?” she asked. Her face showed her shock at sliding her hand across Loretta’s totally denuded slit.

Loretta looked confused and the woman said, “There is no hair... down there... and none under your arms. Are you still a child?”

“No,” Loretta said laughing, “I shave it all away. Some of it is permanently removed.”

“Why?” the woman asked, sounding surprised.

“So Delany doesn’t get hair in her teeth,” Loretta replied. It was her standard answer to that question, but as soon as she said it she froze.

“Leave Delany in the past,” the woman said softly. “And I wouldn’t mind getting a little hair in my teeth. Would you?”

The woman opened her legs slightly and Loretta bent down to kiss that hairy mound.

“It is better when it is mutual,” the woman said and began scooting down on the bed.

Loretta looked confused at first and the woman said, “Don’t you know how to do the double kiss of Lesbos?”

“I’ll have to remember that,” Loretta said aloud as she moved to straddle the woman’s head. “It sounds much classier than doing a 69.”

She then bent her head down and began nuzzling and kissing the woman’s hairy mound. She yelped in surprise when the woman speared her cunt with her tongue before lapping against the sides of her slit. There was no hurry. Each woman slowly explored the other’s crevices and folds, pausing occasionally to flick or lick or suckle the clitoris.

Time seemed to stop for Loretta. Her pain was gone. Her despair was gone. All that existed was the exquisite pleasure the woman’s tongue was stirring within her. She tried to hold back and return the pleasure, but eventually, she could feel her body beginning to undulate and buck. The woman’s body was also undulating on the bed. Loretta could no longer hold it back. She began grunting in time with the woman’s tongue penetrating her cunt. A low moan began to escape her lips and then suddenly the woman sucked her clit into her mouth and began tonguing and suckling it.

Loretta’s loud scream was heard on all three floors of the mansion. Suddenly there was pounding at the door. A voice said loudly, “This is security. There isn’t supposed to be anyone in this room. Open the door immediately.”

The woman laughed slightly and said, “It will take them a moment to find the correct key to that lock. It is different from any other door in the house and the master key doesn’t work for that lock.”

“Are we in trouble?” Loretta asked.

“No,” the woman answered. “We are safe. You can easily escape through the hidden stairs and there is nothing that they can do to me.”

“My husband started out as a professor of chemistry at a big university,” she said calmly, “but he found that investing in railroads and oil wells was much more to his liking. He was very skilled at it and soon became a millionaire.” She took a deep breath and then said, “But the rich elite wouldn’t accept him. He needed a key to his new life... me.”

She stood up and said, “Dress quickly. The hidden door is at the back of the wardrobe. It opens onto the back porch.”

Loretta hastily began dressing as the woman continued, “Unfortunately Harold had other ideas about ‘til death do we part. When he realized that I loved green... and girls... he created this room with all of the vibrant green colors. He never came in here. He said it was to give me privacy, but the reality is that the pigment invented by Mister Scheele that was used to create these wonderful green colors... even the green of this dress... contains arsenic. Over the months I began to get pale and weak. They said it was a form of female consumption.”

Loretta now stood staring at the naked woman with her mouth open. “Harold sobbed so convincingly at my funeral, but by then I knew what he had done.”

The sound of a key being inserted in the door interrupted them. “Go quickly,” the woman said. Then she smiled and said, “And if you still need me, I will always be here on Halloween.”

Loretta opened the doors of the wardrobe and pushed the secret latch the woman had talked about. There was a steep, narrow stairway which led downward into darkness. She felt her way to the bottom and then fumbled around until she found the latch. She had to push hard to open the door and winced as the hinges squeaked and squealed. But no one seemed to notice as she stepped out onto the back porch. From the outside, the door was covered by a large shutter for the dining room windows. Luckily none of the lumber and old furniture which littered the back porch had been piled against that shutter.

Loretta hurried around the house and came back in through the front door. She hurried up the staircase to the third floor to find a knot of security people standing in front of the woman’s bedroom door.

“Is there a problem?” she asked innocently.

“Someone picked the lock on this door and was having sex in there,” the man replied.

“Are you sure?” Loretta asked sweetly.

The man held up a black thong and said, “This isn’t an antique.”

Loretta blushed slightly and then gasped. Over the man’s shoulder, she could see a decrepit room with greenish wallpaper peeling from the walls. There was a broken bed covered in bits of plaster and debris against one wall. Fragments of green drapes hung alongside each window.

“But how in the hell did they get out of there?” another of the security men asked aloud.

“Maybe they went down the secret staircase,” Loretta said smiling broadly.

“What secret staircase?” the man barked.

“Doesn’t every old house like this have secret staircases?” Loretta replied, “... and ghosts.”

“Just go back to the party,” the man said somewhat angrily.

“I think I will,” Loretta replied. “And I will definitely be back next year.”