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inspired by a short story reimagining the boohag as women (particularly black women) who have had the life sucked out of them via the pressure of taking care of everyone at the expense of their own need, eventually shedding their skin to become red women (boohags are typically described with red, usually slimy appearance as they remove their daytime skins at night) that then go on to take their life back, hence the legend of scary women who climb onto people’s chests while they sleep and steeling their breath, making people ill and eventually killing them.

The first illustration shows a woman, newly liberated from her skin, emaciated and exhausted, on the brink of death but ready to begin a new life. The second illustration is a boohag woman who has been collecting breath of those who drain Black women, a form of seeking reparations that has been vilified to the point of boohags function as a type of dangerous, vampirous, boogeyman figure attacking the innocent, while it is quite the opposite (at least in this interpretation).