Gately's dreams: Mrs. Waite and Death
his next, even more unpleasant Joelle van Dyne pain-and-fever dream takes place in what is, unmistakably and unavoidably, Mrs. Waite’s kitchen, in great detail, right down to the ceiling’s light-fixture full of dried bugs, the brimming ashtrays, the bar-graph of stacked Globes, the maddening arrhythmic drip of the kitchen sink and the bad smell—a mixture of mildew and putrid fruit. […] Mrs. Waite is played by veiled U.H.I.D. House resident Joelle van D., except without her veil, and what’s more without any clothes, as in starkers […] Because in this dream, Mrs. Waite, who is Joelle, is Death. As in the figure of Death, Death incarnate. Nobody comes right out and says so; it’s just understood: Gately’s sitting here in this depressing kitchen interfacing with Death.
Context
A dead woman returns through a living one: Mrs. Waite — the shunned neighbor-"witch" who hanged herself after her birthday cake got thrown away — is "played by" Joelle, and the composite is Death incarnate, hosting Gately in the exact kitchen where he used to interface with her as a child. The casting is the revenant logic of the whole theme in one move; that Joelle is also the actual on-camera Death-figure of JOI's Entertainment is what makes the dream read as planted rather than remembered.