#horrorscopes

♈ Aries

Take one look at your life and tell me what it would be like with more clowns in it. Then, toss that whole idea out -- How about jugglers? Chainsaw jugglers?

Your Omen for the Month - A moth-eaten coat made of badger fur

♉ Taurus

You’re going to get married this month. Not for long, though. I’m not exactly sure how long it will last -- just long enough for a honeymoon, I hope.

♊ Gemini

Don’t drink beer, and beware areas that require protective equipment. Don’t touch any irradiated surfaces, and avoid shampoo with high amounts of iodine in it. As for what you should do, I’m not quite sure.

♋ Cancer

The best look for you is going to be a fresh-faced, recently partied look, that just-got-out-of-bed charm. Achieve this easy, effortless look by staying in bed until the absolute last moment to go out.

Your Omen for the Month - A bear trap with a tie in it

♌ Leo

So, another month in this great big sea that is life, eh, Captain Leo? Time to take the wheel of your ship and go left! I mean, starboard. Go starboard.

Your Omen for the Month - Your own pony, finally!

♍ Virgo

Dear Virgo, I don’t know how to break this to you, but the check isn’t in the mail. The check is in the right-hand crisper drawer of your refrigerator.

♎ Libra

Try a new, direct way of communicating your needs to the ones you love. Start with the usual song, dance and hour-long parade that you usually telegraph your needs with. Then, remove the parade, including the drum line, mayoral speech, and fireworks display.

Omen: The world’s worst pianist playing the world’s tiniest piano

♏ Scorpio

You know what? Astrology is hard. I’m a Scorpio too--let's just chill. Don’t try anything this month, Just put it all off until November.

Omen: The taste of garlic in your mouth

♐ Sagittarius

Thank your ancestors for all they've done for you with a simple ceremony they have no reason to pay attention to and no context with which to understand it. This will insure that they have no advice for you, and instead will just send good luck.

♑ Capricorn

It’s time to start working on that one project you’ve been putting off. If you’ve got multiple unfinished projects, start on them all at once! The project that deserves it most will defeat the other objects in unarmed combat.

Your Omen for the Month - Caltrops

♒ Aquarius

If you don’t refuel at the next charging station, your spaceship is going to break down at an incredibly inconvenient time. Remember that regular particle drive maintenance is the key to a spacegoer’s longevity! It wouldn’t kill you to get a phase and filter swap while you’re at it, you know! Is this your first time on a space mission? Wait, it is? What do you mean, 21st century? Who's on this broadcast band???

Your Omen for the Month - An assortment of varieties!

♓ Pisces

Get some exercise before making important decisions. It’ll give you vitally important stalling time while you google on your phone for the answer.

🐍 Ophiuchus

It’s time to embrace the New You. Splay your body against a full length mirror. Spread your arms wide and really try to feel the sincerity. Is this working?

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These are October’s Horrorscopes!

Want the omen for each sign, to be extra prepared for the month to come? Want an expanded version of each piece of advice that’s the length of Aquarius’s? Want more?

Check out BOA’s Patreon tier!

Cute image versions for you to share are popping up on Facebook and Instagram, and individual text posts to retweet are on Twitter!

Otherwise, see you next month with a new set of 12 horrorscopes and some omens!

There's a word for it. That's all Billy can think. There's a word for this feeling - he read it in a book once… it'd been such a weird word, he'd had to look it up…

That's all he can do when he finds Steve lying in the alley, covered in blood. Stand stock still like a complete and total fucking moron, thinking about how there's a word for everything, including the feeling of not being able to stop noticing the beating of your own heart. Like that's what fucking matters right now.

He takes a cautious step forward and hears the soles of his boots crunch wetly against the pavement, echoing in that unnervingly loud way every sound always does in a small town the instant the sun goes down and the lights go off. 

"Steve?" he says quietly, his own voice coming out sounding raspy and thin. Afraid. Like he's so afraid he's not even feeling it, rather only hearing it like it's an afterthought, a reverberation, something coming from somewhere other than himself. 

And Steve… he doesn't even say anything in response. He just grunts and barely manages to lift and turn his head to look over at the source of the noise, not that Billy's even sure Steve knows it's him, what with the way the eye Steve's turning towards him is practically swollen shut. 

And Billy, well, he knows a little something about bruises so he knows that in about a day or two Steve's going to have an awful one with big, fat, splotchy, ugly patches of purple running all up and down the side of his face; right now though, the damage is fresh enough that it's only swelled up his face like a balloon from chin to eye rather swelling it up like a balloon in addition to making it discolored as well.

But, then… that's just the bruises. Like all of this is happening and here Billy is focusing on the bruises.

"Hey, what…" The words ghost from Billy's lips as he moves towards Steve. He feels like he's trapped in one of those old zombie movies, one of the black and white ones made by George Romero, only like he's one of the zombies, instead of one of the heroes because there's nothing heroic about the slow, sad, shuffling steps he's taking towards Steve. 

Not that he can seem to move any faster, no matter how hard he tries and boy, has he tried. He's done everything he can think of up to and including threatening his own feet to move faster, listing off several different things he could do to them if they don't get their shit together and get him to Steve but it's doing him no good. He's forced to watch and to catalogue Steve's every wound and cut and bruise as his feet drag him forward inch by cursed inch as slow as the living dead. Slower, maybe.

And Billy certainly feels like he's about to die, what with the way every part of him is shaking inside and out, what with the way his whole body is drenched in a cold sweat he would swear wasn't there a minute ago and the way he feels like he's sucking in water rather than air. 

He can't even finish saying, "Hey, what happened? Who did this?" 

He feels like he's losing track of his words, losing track of his thoughts, and then in the second between one blink and the next, he does and all he can see is Steve lying there before him, staring up with his one good eye, his chest heaving with the effort every single breath is costing him.

"Steve… I…" Billy whispers as he sinks to his knees in front of him. "What…" He drags Steve up into his lap by the shoulders and Steve's face pinches and twists, his eyes clench shut so hard even the swollen one shudders and his breathing goes as sharp and as ragged as if he'd just run a mile for the first time in a year. 

Billy sits and helplessly counts his thundering heartbeats as he waits for Steve's breathing to stop rattling through him like a freight train has decided to up and lay tracks across his chest.

But it doesn't happen.

Instead, it just gets worse and worse and worse and Steve opens up his one good eye to stare at him, wordlessly pleading, begging, not for Billy to stay, no, Billy's stared at this face long enough to be able to read it even when Steve can't speak and right now, he isn't saying help me, he isn't saying why didn't you save me, he isn't even saying I love you, no, what Steve is saying right now, what Steve is shouting even with just this one look, is run. Go. Get out of here.

Which is fucking ridiculous and has the exact opposite effect of its intent, has Billy clinging to Steve's shoulders and saying, "No, fuck that, I'm not going anywhere." 

Steve's rapid breathing switches tracks to become a wracking cough that has his whole body shaking and has Billy running his hands down Steve's body like if he could maybe just find the source of all this, find the worst of the injuries, if he could just find it he could… he could...

He could what? They're sitting in an alley in the middle of Hawkins in the middle of the night and all Billy's got on him is his car keys, his smokes and his lighter and all his frantic searching gets him is hands that come away bloody.

"I… we have to…" Billy fumbles. He has to get Steve out of here, he has to… hospitals don't close, right? They don't, so - 

He starts to get to his feet, his knees grunting in protest after having sat on them in that awkward position for so long and he starts dragging Steve up with him, but Steve uses what little strength he has left to smack at his arm, telling him no, telling him to leave it. And he's still coughing, too, his whole body lurching with it; he's coughing so hard it makes Billy feel like he's the one coughing, like he's the one… the one…

Dying.

No. This isn't -

Steve can't.

He can't - 

Steve has blood on his lips. He's coughing so hard there's blood on his lips, flecks at first, then a flood, like the few drops of rain that hit before a torrential downpour.

"I'm getting you out of here," Billy snarls, overcome by more rage than he thinks he's ever felt. Because how dare he, they have a life together, they have a home together, how dare he - 

Steve, with the very last of his energy, the last of his life, raises a now ghostly pale hand towards the mouth of the alley and Billy smells it before he sees anything. 

Iron. The air suddenly tastes of iron. Iron and copper and blood. So much blood. 

Then he follows Steve's hand with his eyes and just before it falls, Billy sees something.

There, in the shadows at the mouth of the alley is something big and huge and deathly silent. Something with big, yellow eyes that glow in the dark. Eyes that hunger for - 

Before Billy has a chance to think of what, he hears Steve go silent, feels him slump against his chest, feels the wracking, rapid, freight train in motion of his breathing slow to a crawl then stop dead in its tracks. 

The monster howls and Billy doesn't bother to look at it. If Steve is gone, then - 

If Steve is gone, then - 

Billy wakes up with a scream tearing itself from his throat and his heart pounding in his chest. 

He blinks, he takes a breath and he looks over to Steve's side of the bed, hoping for, needing the reassurance seeing that beautiful face lit up by moonlight always gives him but -

Steve's side of the bed is empty. 

Harringrove | Explicit | Graphic Depictions of Violence | Murder Boyfriends | Horrorscopes (round 2)

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Everyone said that Billy would snap.

They all tried to warn him, told him to watch out, told him be careful, Billy’s damaged. Well, unhinged had been the word Nancy used, but she always had been a little dramatic (always had a bigger vocabulary, too).

Thing is, everyone said that Billy would snap. So Steve shouldn’t have been surprised when he arrived at Billy’s house and everything was too quiet, too empty. Shouldn’t have been surprised when he followed the trail of broken plates and shattered glass into the backyard. Shouldn’t have been surprised to find Billy with a knife in his hands, a body in the shape of Neil Hargrove dead on the dirt at his feet.

And maybe, if he really let himself think about it, he wasn’t surprised. Not by the fact that Billy finally had snapped, and not by the fact that Steve liked it.

He always did say Billy looked good in red.

The thing is, after all of the Upside Down shit ended, after all the monster killing finally stopped, Steve didn't.

There was just something about protecting people, about eliminating the threat, that excited him, that gave him a purpose. A purpose other than just looking pretty, and doing what he's told.

He'd finally found something that gave him complete satisfaction and he wasn't about to let that go.

We all know about the monsters in Hawkins, but who’s to say we’ve seen all of them?

Welcome to Horrorscopes, a collection of Stranger Things fanworks in which astrology walks hand in hand with the darkest impulses of the mind and the stars shine down on unspeakable deeds, creatures, and secrets.

Look for new waves of prompts and follow the rules, then post your works to the Horrorscopes collection to join in the fun.

This week’s prompt: Creatures

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