“SNAAAAAAATCH!” The only ones who heard the yell were the ones it was meant for. And when they heard it, they moved swiftly out of the shadows onto the crowded streets unnoticed. “Snatch”, whispered The One With The Crooked Eye into the ear of The One With The Blue Hair. Blu lifted her silver, Dr. Marten boot and kicked a woman in her womb and off her Manolos. She stood over her.
“You can’t fight in high heels”, Blu said and returned to the shadows. “Snatch”, she whispered before she disappeared. The Tall One In Patent Leather—from head to high-heeled foot—strutted over to a group of gorgeous girls in matching minis.
“Can I bum one?” Dino gestured to the cigarettes being held but not smoked. “Sorry,” the prettiest one said. “I don’t have anymore.”
“RAWWWWWWR”, the tall one growled low and long then floored the less-pretty-ones with three moves. The other one tried to run in her red-bottoms and fell atop her buckled ankle. “You can’t fight in high heels”, Dino snarled at the weeping girl and returned to the shadows, cigarette smoke trailing behind.
“Snatch”, she said to the one who never smiles, and Monet rolled onto the sidewalk tilting her bearings and splitting up couples. The Poetess sprinted close behind, elbowing and clotheslining the coupled women while reciting this poem:

“Let them clothe to control you
We will claw to disrobe you
Un-diamond and re-coal you
Then teach you to rebuild
AND YOU CAN’T FIGHT IN HEELS
Reclaim your Snatch Power
And eventually/imminently/ultimately you will!”


I was riding my bike home from work when I heard the call. I followed The Poetess and The One That Doesn’t Smile twenty blocks before they turned a corner and vanished. I stopped to rest and noticed a note written in glitter on the pavement:

Snatch Mansion
005 Clinton Ave., Suite 6

I laid my body into a plank and blew away the message and sipped a bit of water for the 11-mile journey.
I locked my bike two blocks away and slung my fanny pack across my chest. I unsnapped the buttons for easy access to the knife strapped to my thigh as I approached the building. The One With The Crooked Eye was smoking a cigarette and smiled big when she saw me. “Welcome, Snatch”, she said placing a palm up for what seemed like a too-low-high-five. I put my hand up to hers and she stroked the backside of my hand with her thumb. “This is a hand hug”, she said releasing an eruption of smoke into the sky.
“You want a drag?” She held out a quarter of a cigarette and my three-years-smoke-free-ass DID want a drag and I took it.
After my own volcanic exhale, I smashed the fire out on the butt of my knife, placed it in my fanny pack, and followed the barefoot woman in lingerie through a heavy metal door with “005” spray-painted in silver. She was in a sheer, white, babydoll dress—braless—with pasties, and her path slanted toward her straight eye. I followed silently, two paces behind, in a straight line—listening.
She stopped suddenly and waved above head to a tiny hole drilled above the door covered in sixes stolen from other things. There were wood sixes, marble sixes, iron sixes, and fishes and Gs that looked like sixes. I reached out my hand to touch one that looked like sand and the door opened.
The One That Doesn’t Smile looked me up and down. I dropped my right hand to my knife. “Sup” she said and walked into an almost-empty room where The Tall One sat playing Beethoven on a grand piano. Her patent leather boots were sprawled on the floor next to her piano bench and her shiny, crunchy jumpsuit was folded at her waist revealing the scales tattooed all over her body.
Dino rocked and leaned into the long notes of the composer’s 5th Symphony. Monet and The One With The Crooked Eye took seats on the floor behind her and watched intently.
“By the mark on your left arm, you are The Lovechild Of Maat and Tehuti”, the crooked walker in lingerie told me without looking at me. “You are here to watch and tell with righteous words. Make yourself at home, Lovechild. There is a lot to see.” Then to Dino and Monet: “There’s one more coming.”


I moved across the the room to the narrow hall that was parallel and furthest from the door with the sixes. The piano music faded and disappeared as I crept through the darkness toward the faint sound of drumming. I navigated toward it by ear—eyes useless in the pitch-blackness of the hallway. When the drumming got louder I started sliding my hands across the walls in search of a door handle. “HA!” I heard followed by a loud thud. “HA!” Another thud. “HA!” And I found a handle.
Inside the drum room The Poetess was swaying and beating on a conga while The One With The Blue Hair chucked knives on either side of her. “HA!” Blu boasted with every missed blade—and they all missed.
“Peace”, I said as Blu retrieved the knives from their newly formed grooves. The Poetess continued drumming. Blu cocked her arm back. “HA!” She missed and cocked back again. I unholstered my weapon and upon her sixth “HA”, I threw it. The knives clinked in the air and landed on either side of The Poetess. The drumming stopped and I left the room.


When I got back to the room with the piano, the one with the crooked eye was sitting at the piano playing jagged, staccato notes. Dino stood over her—spotlighted somehow, now fully disrobed so that I could see the scales rolled over her shoulders and on down her toes. The One Who Never Smiles emerged from some room beyond the shadows—a kitchen probably, with a tray of steaming tea cups. She left two on the piano and stood before me. I took a cup and she moved to Blu and The Poetess who had emerged from the drum room. Each of them stared at me and I pretended not to notice.
“Lovechild”, The One With The Crooked Eye said while her staccato notes smoothed and elongated, “I am Free. If you remember this—we’ll get along just fine”. “This is Monet”, she said gesturing to The One That Never Smiles, “and she smiles plenty. It’s just crooked. And I see plenty.”
“I’m Dino-rawwwwwwwwwr”, the tall, scaly one said and sat next to Free on the piano bench.
“Nice blade.” Blu said handing my knife back—blade first. I reached underneath, tapped it and caught the handle while it flipped in the air. “I’m Blu” she smiled brightly revealing a prominent gap.
“I don’t know you,” The Poetess began walking circles around me. “And I don’t trust you. But I like you.”

“The Lovechild is our mirror. She’s here to keep us balanced. She bears the mark of Ma’at and Tehuti. Her pen will reveal our effect on the planet.” Someone knocked on the door and Monet went to answer it.

Part 2

When Monet had returned from answering the knock at the door there was someone with her. One of the pretty girls Dino attacked earlier stood with her high heels pressed between her forearm and chest. Her steely eyes darted around the room curious and frightened. Bloody footprints trailed behind her. Dino tossed her a pack of cigarettes and she let her shoes fall to the ground to catch them.
“What’s your name, pretty?” Dino said lighting one of the cigarettes. The girl stared at Dino. Daggers. The tall, naked pianist walked around her playfully decorating the air with smoke.
“Don’t be shy, honey. What’s the matter? Lizard got your tongue?!” Dino thumped the girl under her chin and her mouth sprang open.
“BRITTANY!” She blurted, then gasped sharply shocked at the sudden return of her voice. “Who are you?! Where am I?! What did you do to my—?!” Dino snapped her fingers and cut Brittany off.
“Voice?” She said offering Brittany a drag of her cigarette. Her hand rose reluctantly and plucked the burning stick from Dino. Dino clapped in delight and smiled, her shiny fangs caught the stream of sunlight rushing from the ceiling. “I just borrowed it, honey. I asked for it and you were willing to give it to me. Beyond willing.” Dino pointed at Brittany who let out a huge exhalation, then:
“I heard you! I heard you in my head!”
“And I heard you in mine, Bright Star.” Dino walked to the piano and started playing. The Bright Star involuntarily sang in a full, rich alto that billowed and swelled all around us.
The one with the crooked eye—called Free—danced. She jerked and jumped and fell and flailed and collapsed and resurrected and she did it all to the Bright Star’s vocals. At the end of the performance I was crying. I was crying and clapping for the first time since I was a child and I could not stop until Free clasped my thick wrists in her boney fingers. My hands were hot and stinging.
She led me to the piano where Dino had begun to play and sing “Do I Move You” by Nina Simone. “Dance”, she instructed and though I knew who she was talking to, I looked around the room and hoped for someone—anyone—else to start gyrating. When no one did I looked at Free pleadingly and she motioned to Monet who disappeared back to the kitchen and brought more tea.
The mug of tea I had was the size of a cereal bowl. i drank it down in great gulps and when The One With The Crooked Eye—called Free—said “Dance”, I rose like water in a tub.
I’m laughing now because I honestly can’t recall if it was voluntarily or not—but I do recall what she said as I swayed and spun and leapt and lengthened.
“Fashion is what we go to war in,” the voice echoed through me. “You’ve always dressed for functionality: for running and fighting. But what of hiding? What of sneaking and searching? What of dancing? What of loving?”
The One Who Never Smiles, also called Monet, passed out more tea to the ones watching me dance, she gave a mug to Free and took the last one for herself.
“Our enemies have used fashion to imprisoned us,” Free continued and started dancing with me, “to render us confused mentally, depressed emotionally, and physically impaired.”
“We are squeezed tight” I added, “put on pedestals and made to strut for the entertainment of passersby. We’re incapable of defending ourselves if in danger. We’re incapable of expressing ourselves fully! We’re made out to be playthings!” My voice was loud, and Free’s movements were wild. I had stopped dancing all together and was just pacing the room—each step accented with another declaration. Dino was singing loudly in harmony with Bright Star: “…the answer better be…that pleases me…” she played hard, long notes at the end of the song then joined the rest of us who had begun moving slowly around the room. Some petting walls, some just smiling, walking and touching each other along the way. Some just standing and looking and laughing and crying.
“We all have strengths”, Free said, “and we can call on each other whenever we need access to a strength we don’t have. Whatever we don’t have—we go get. And now we have you.”
That’s the last thing I remember before the mushroom tea completely took over and I began my training.
For the next few weeks, I observed. I went out and lurked in the shadows from where Free whispered “Snatch” and I watched Dino, The Poetess, The One Who Never Smiles, The One With The Blue Hair, and The Bright Star challenged women in the streets who tried desperately to disappear in trendy clothes.
“We kick them off their heels”, Free’s voice echoed in my mind, “ to see if they can fight. Most of the time they can’t and we fuck them up, and when they try to run, we chase them. We scream that they’d be better off if they changed their clothes, or if they learned to fight in heels. We say ‘Snatch’, and we tell the ones who hear where to find us.”
A year had passed when Free called The Poetess, Monet, Blu, Dino, The Bright Star, and me into the kitchen. Snatch Mansion had become an all-out training facility complete with outdoor gun ranges and obstacle courses, and academic courses, music and physical education classes. The seven women in the kitchen were all instructors. I taught literature, shooting, stealthiness, observation, and writing.
“Fashion week”, The One With The Crooked Eye began, is what we’ve been training for. “Paris, New York, and Milan”, there are thirty students to a Snatch—that’s seventy per city. Ten on the runway, thirty on security, thirty on the getaway.” Free spoke and gestured over a blueprint she’d spread out onto the floor.
For months we trained and sipped tea, and mediated. We taught and practiced and danced and mediated some more. We fasted and traveled and got press credentials and studied with fashion houses. We got jobs as models, journalists, makeup artists, photographers, janitors, cooks, bartenders, assistants—you name it.
Two Septembers passed, but on the third—the first of us were stationed in New York. Several backstage. A few front row. Plenty near the exits. Lots in the press section. The One With The Crooked Eye stood near the hallway where the models had just started to strut onto the runway. “SNATCH” she whispered, and no one heard the call except the ones it was meant for.