Marguerite: The Weird & Outrageous, ~ A Short Story, Part 1...

Marguerite was "un infant terrible," ~ a terrible child, but she was never really a child. (You know what I mean.) Well, of course, she was small once, and when she was full grown she was still tiny, being no more than four feet eleven. But, she was abnormally advanced in mind and spirit always, with a sly cunning, like an exquisite evil vixen fox.

But, her hair, rather than being red, was a silky platinum blond and it stayed that way, even when she was an adult. (She was such a diminutive beauty.) Marg, as she liked to call herself, said she was born on a murky Spring night under a streetlight in Pigalle, in Paris, but if that was true who could say? Her father was a grifter. Her mother was a streetwalker-pickpocket of the scrappiest type, picking fights with other soiled doves, continually, even when she was in labor. That Marguerite survived her birth was practically a miracle. She was taken under the wing of another streetwalker, a heart-of-gold type, who was nursing her own baby at the time. (Yes, Marguerite's mother rejected her, calling her "a squirmy little rat".) When Marguerite was twelve she delighted in dressing in adult clothes and seduced the son of a baker, who was eighteen. He wanted to marry her, but Marguerite would have none of that. However, she did develop a liking for chocolate eclaires. [To be continued.] --- Copyright by Antoinette Beard, 2023.