A note from Billy: Yes, Billy really does read every dream we receive. They are fascinating and vulnerable and beautiful but alas, there’s just no way to respond to all of them. Billy will feature a few dreams per issue, but if your dream was not chosen this time, know that we will still welcome your future midnight missives.
❧
Dear Billy,
The dream started with me at work, in my aunt’s home office. I watched my cousins get home and dealt with someone acting like my boss but who was, in real life, just a family friend. I stayed sitting on the couch—it isn’t actually in the office in real life—watching a TV that also isn’t normally there. I was sitting on this couch with a girl I really like from my other job. We were watching a movie of some sort and talking about comic book movies, something I don’t know if she has any interest in. We were flirting; we were the closest we’d ever been. All of a sudden everything vanished and the home office looked normal again. I decided to get to work. I got up and went to the restroom, and I didn’t turn off the lights.
I returned to office and walked around for a bit before realizing the lights were out, so I went to turn them on. I thought I was alone. I felt alone, but as I was about to flip on a light, I heard a voice coming from a stairway leading away above me.
“Hey, you turned out my light,” the voice said, in a cute, almost innocent tone, with a childlike but gravelly voice.
I flipped on the lights. “I don’t remember turning them off,” I said and walked toward the stairs. I saw a figure but it was obscured by the bars of the railing.
“Yeah, you turned my lights out,” said the figure. Then, as I walked up the stairs, my eyes locked on it. I think it morphed to the top of the stairs, or I just didn’t see it at first.
It was my young niece. I tried to rationalize why she’d be there. Maybe she’d spent the night? I said her name, asking her what she was doing there. She said nothing, but started down the stairs. As she came closer I saw her…its…grey skin and yellowish eyes. It was smiling.
“You turned out my light,” it said again, in that voice. I grabbed it by the neck. It kept looking at me, kept smiling as I choked it, pushing it against the stairs. Right when I was about to call for help, I woke up.
—Alone in the Dark
Billy says: Two of life’s great blessings—and the source of many of life’s difficulties!—intertwine in this dream: work and family. Billy notes the slippage between these two spheres, as throughout the dream you are never quite sure if any given setting or person belongs in the “family” category or the “work” category. Your aunt’s home office is a perfect symbol of this elision. Billy is not surprised that your work-crush appears in this dream—a crush can be the first step toward finding or creating a new chosen family beyond your birth folk. The moment you decide to “get to work” is the moment the lights go out. Light in dreams is often illumination or understanding, and this illumination disappears when you focus on unreasonable work demands at the expense of relationships.
With the lights out, your dream takes a dark turn. Your niece becomes Something Else, something Not Family. On her skin the grey pallor of death, her eyes lizard-like and inhuman. Its smile, like its gravelly voice, disturbing. A lizard indicates a false person who is not what they seem; a niece is a warning. Your lizard niece blames you for the loss of illumination—“you turned out my light!” – even though it is not your fault, and you know it.
Your attempt to choke this gaslighting creature that was once family suggests to Billy you are struggling mightily, perhaps with work relationships that have gone toxic and are upsetting the balance between work and family life. However, to go upstairs in a dream indicates that you will soon be enjoying life more, and finding peace in the love your true friends and family will show you soon. Your inner light, the one who guides you toward your best life & self, may be flickering right now, but hold on and keep calling out for help from those who truly love you. Billy says that the upper floors, when you get there, hold something truly luminous and warm.
❧
Dear Billy,
Lately, I have been having dreams of the same creature: a demon of sorts, with animal-like legs, but a humanoid torso. He is very thin and is missing one rib, with an odd symbol where the missing rib should be. Every dream is nearly the same. He chases me down a dark hall until he corners me at a dead end. He gently touches my cheek, and then I wake up. There are only a few instances where this sequence changes.
Since these dreams started, I've been having blackouts, where my friends say I do odd things that I cannot remember after. Usually after a blackout, he becomes more aggressive, actually trying to harm me. My dreams also cause me to injure myself in my sleep. Is there any reason for this creature appearing, always the same?
—Alex
Billy says: Alex, Billy is very concerned for you and would like to gently suggest that dream interpretation is no substitute for medical care, since your dreams are having negative real-world effects. When dreams lead to injury, it is worth seeking help for your corporeal and psychological well being.
That being said, your dream is urgently trying to tell you something. Ribs in dreams symbolize something bothering you insistently, as well as poverty and misery. Billy can’t help but be reminded of Christian mythos and Adam’s rib. The issue you are running from goes to the very heart of your creation. Your pursuer’s animal characteristics may point to feeling overwhelmed and marginalized from human society. To be chased in a dream is a shriek from your unconscious: there is something you do not want to face. To be chased by such a symbolically loaded being (occultly marked, with animal characteristics, plus that missing rib) suggests that whatever you are avoiding, it is an existential threat, of extreme importance to your survival and thriving.
All is not lost, however: Billy is reassured by the final loving touch your pursuer always bestows on you. Your dreaming mind loves you and desperately wants you to confront whatever is causing these blackouts and injuries. It is not your dream that wishes you harm. Speak your truest fears, obsessions, desires, & pain. Somewhere in this speaking is the feeling you’ve avoided, and only by its naming can you heal.