Dead Billy

With a thriving career in academia and a brilliant fiance who dotes on her, grad student Calliope Girard seems to be well on the way to success. But her pleasant, orderly life is suddenly upended by a series of unexplained seizures which unlock memories of a much darker past.

...A past defined by violence, abuse, and manipulation, and occupied by a mysterious man she knew only as Billy.

LONG SYNOPSIS:
Calliope Girard’s life is full of promise and success, including a thriving career in academia and a brilliant fiancé, Roy, who loves her. The two share a love of literature, quoting the classics to each other, and enjoying the dream life of up-and-coming academics with a bright future ahead of them.

But after Roy unexpectedly proposes, Calliope is beset by a sudden series of unexplained seizures that unlock memories of her long-buried past as a teenage runaway—a past defined by violence, sex, and emotional manipulation by a mysterious man named Billy.

Billy is an enigma — a pathological liar and self-proclaimed Vietnam vet who made his living selling junk at flea markets. Teenage Calliope found herself drawn to him for reasons she could not explain. In an effort to escape her abusive mother and largely absent father, she found herself falling into his twisted world. She was nearly consumed by it, barely escaping with her life.

Now, as the seizures increase in intensity and the memories of her time with Billy begin to intrude upon the reality of her ordered life, she finds herself compelled to seek answers — and to confront the man who brought her so much pain.

But as Calliope journeys deeper and deeper into the vagaries of her past, the hard lines of her current reality become porous and blurred. Past and present collide, sending Calliope into a spiral from which she may not emerge.

Suffused with both the emotional naturalism of Mike Leigh and the psycho-sexual surrealism of David Lynch, 'Dead Billy' is a deeply disturbing psychological thriller, an intense drama of faith and identity, and a raw and brutal love story that provides more questions than answers. It is a look at one woman’s search for her own truth — and an examination of how that truth may lead her into madness.