White Line and Forced Moulting are pieces of flash published by the lovely people at Gone Lawn. Both are stories of mothers in cities doing what it takes to survive. Both were written either side of Halloween 2020 and both are influenced by magic realism and lockdown (but neither are set in lock down).
White Line is set in Mumbai, prompted by the time I was there when new lines were painted on the road for a visiting VIP. Add to that - life in lockdown with the gap widening between the haves and have-nots and the rise of domestic violence and all the roads taken and not and all the lines that are crossed.
I wrote Forced Moulting after Halloween when there was a call for horror stories. I was drained from all the horror - real and fiction and the first line was my response - I have no horror left inside me - and I went from there. And with the second lockdown the food poverty in East London brought a familiar picture of chicks in a nest sqwawking for food and I extended the metaphor to the whole piece. My research on moulting took me to the practice and the title - Forced Moulting.
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