Do you read horoscopes? Come on, I’m sure you do. Everyone has read a snippet at least a handful of times in their life. The temptation to flip to that last page of a newspaper or magazine can prove too powerful to resist. I get it. I really do. And yet, considering the amount of people who claim to never read them, horoscopes are surprisingly common. I guess what I’m trying to say is that for a bunch of non-believers, the market sure has an appetite for their so-called daily fortune.
My mother is a Taurus. I know this because she won’t let me forget it for a second. Checking her horoscope is the first thing she does when she wakes up each morning, and the last thing before she goes to bed.
“To make sure the day went as planned,” she told me once, after I had asked her why she read them twice.
I’m Miles, by the way, and just for the record, I don’t believe in horoscopes. I think my mother is mad if I’m honest. We live in a small, two-bedroom apartment in the northern part of the country. It’s not like I’m a kid though – I’m thirty. And it’s not like I don’t want to move out, I do, I just don’t feel comfortable enough leaving my mother to live on her own. I wouldn’t call her senile, but she certainly has her days.
My mother reads her horoscopes online. She has a particular site that she swears by and constantly reminds me of how accurate it is. Except it’s not, really. She will go to great lengths to prove a horoscope correctly predicted any aspect of her life, even if it didn’t. Last week I found her hunched over the kitchen table, furiously typing something on her computer.
“What are you writing?” I asked.
“My acceptance speech!” she announced proudly, “My horoscope predicts major accolades!”
She then delivered her speech to our upstairs neighbor Martha, who had just come down to thank her for the cookies my mother had baked the previous day.
See, this is exactly what I mean. I hate how she takes it so literally. I feel embarrassed every time I have a friend over and my mother asks them for their zodiac before she even knows their name.
“Oh, so you’re an Aquarius,” she said to my last girlfriend, Brenda, who had unknowingly let her in on her birth date, “Sounds like we’re incompatible.”
I had a lot of explaining to do that time. Needless to say, the relationship didn’t last.
“Can’t you be a little more discreet?” I pleaded with my mother, “If you’re going to devote your life to astrology, then at least don’t sacrifice mine!”
But she’d only laughed.
“You are too young to understand, Miles,” she had said, “Wait ‘til you’re my age!”
I wished she would snap out of it. Astrology had become a religion to her, and she insisted on following its every commandment. I didn’t want my life passing me by, but I also didn’t want to put her in a nursing home. She’d cared for me all my life, after all, and it wasn’t something I could bring myself to do, so I racked my brain for ways to make her see sense.
One morning, my mother came into my room to report her daily horoscope, with a spring in her step and an elated smile on her face.
“You won’t believe what it says!” she cried, as I struggled to crack my eyes open.
“What?” I mumbled, without particular interest.
“It says I’m going to win the jackpot on the slot machine – today!”
I gaped at her incredulously.
“Well, that’s nothing short of ridiculous,” I said, studying her expression.
“Ridiculous?” she sounded astonished, “No! Horoscopes are always so ambiguous and obscure, but this one is as clear as day! Miles, we’re going to be rich!
She sang the words, leaping about wildly in my small bedroom. I felt a lump forming in my throat.
“Ma, it’s not real,” I couldn’t help sounding alarmed, “You won’t win.”
She looked offended.
“Course I will! It says so right here, under ‘Taurus’,” she said, pointing to a block of text on her phone.
“Do you know how many Tauruses there are, mom?” I asked, getting out of bed, and seizing her by the shoulders, “Hundreds and hundreds of millions.”
“Well yeah,” she laughed, “But not all of them read this horoscope!”
I didn’t know what to say to that. She was right, after all. But I simply couldn’t wrap my head around her logic. How was that day different from any other in terms of luck on slot machines?
I knew the answer to that. She’d told herself a little fairy-tale, in which her luck was somehow dependent on a sentence under a picture of a bull. That picture alone changed everything. And I knew the drill. This was going to be like the time the horoscope had said she was destined to make a difference in someone’s life, and she’d asked a beggar to move in.
“Ma, please, you’ve never even played the slot machine,” I begged.
“Nonsense!” she waved her hand dismissively, “How hard could it be?”
She returned home at about 2 A.M. that night, looking disheveled and exhausted.
“Miles, I won!” she croaked, thrusting a wad of notes in the air, “It’s our lucky day!”
I could smell her from the other end of the apartment. She was drunk.
“You won?” I asked, dubiously, “How much?”
She looked a bit uncertain.
“Five hundred,” she finally said, eyeing me warily.
I studied her.
“Five hundred,” I repeated, “That was the jackpot?”
She nodded solemnly.
“Turns out, someone had just won it before me.”
Granted, I have no idea how jackpots work, nor am I particularly interested. However, my mother’s short-lived excitement was certainly cause for suspicion. As soon as she had disappeared into her room, I raided her handbag for any kind of clue. A receipt, a token, I was looking for anything to confirm my theory, but there was nothing. Could she have actually won the money?
My suspicions were confirmed when I logged into our shared bank account. I looked under the latest transactions and found two withdrawals – the first for five-thousand dollars and the second for five hundred. I stared at the screen, feeling the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. Was that how much she’d lost?
The next morning, I acted as though nothing had happened. My own savings were safely stored away in my own account, and it was her business if she wanted to spend the next couple of months without food. I was just finishing my breakfast, when my mother came out of her bedroom, still wearing her nightgown. Her face looked sullen and the circles under her eyes told me that she hadn’t slept very well. Come to think of it, I thought I’d heard her tossing and turning throughout the night. I wondered whether it was guilt keeping her awake.
“Good morning,” I said, “How did you sleep?”
She mumbled something inaudible and continued to the kettle.
“What will we do with your winnings?” I asked nonchalantly, “Shall we take a little trip?”
She looked at me, clearly displeased by the sarcasm in my tone.
“Actually, I think the wisest thing to do would be to put it away for a rainy day.”
I nodded thoughtfully.
“What’s today’s horoscope?”
She seemed taken aback.
“Since when are you interested in horoscopes?”
“Oh,” I gestured expressively, “Just curious.”
“Well, actually, I’ve yet to read it,” she said, pouring her tea, “I’m about to.”
I watched as she sat down in front of the computer and typed the name of the site into the search bar. I rolled my eyes. I’d never been able to teach her how to use bookmarks. She circled the cursor until she found the Taurus sign and clicked it.
“Aha!” she exclaimed, rubbing her hands together, “Let’s see now!”
I waited patiently while she read it.
“Can you believe it? It says I will buy a new car!”
I snorted, half expecting her to laugh and dismiss it.
“Mom, we already have a car,” I reminded her gently, “We bought it last year.”
She nodded, taking a sip of tea. I could hear her teeth clinking against the cup.
“Yes, that we did,” she agreed, “But you don’t have a car, do you Miles? I could buy it for you! Oh, this must be a sign I’ve put it off for too long!”
“No, no, ma!” I said, alarm bells going off in my brain, “You never promised me a car and we don’t need another, really!”
“Well, it says here that we clearly do.”
“What kind of horoscope would straight up tell you to buy a car, for God’s sake?” I cried, “Can’t you see this is all just a scam?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head.
“You cannot argue with fate, Miles,” she said sternly, “We’re buying a car.”
And so, she did. I watched her steering it along our street in the late afternoon.
“Isn’t she a beauty?” she said, cocking her head in admiration, “I only wish the parking space hadn’t been so expensive.”
I shot her a reproving look. She didn’t seem at all concerned with the depleting funds in our account and I wondered whether the nursing home was the right call after all.
When I woke up the following day, however, the apartment was silent. My mother hadn’t come bursting into my room to report on her horoscope, and as much as I appreciated it, I also found it strange. Perhaps she was ill? I found her in the kitchen, staring at the laptop screen.
“What’s up, ma?” I said, peering over her shoulder, her lack of movement making me nervous.
She had the site open, but this time she wasn’t making any notes or jumping for joy.
“Ma?”
“It says,” her voice was low and husky, “It says I will make a sacrifice.”
I surveyed her.
“What?”
My mother looked as though she was about to cry.
“It says I will sacrifice my child… to the universe,” she sobbed.
I snorted.
“Imagine that,” I said, chuckling, “Well, I’ll be honest ma, I’m glad you snapped out of it. That horoscope website has gone way too far.”
But she didn’t look like she was in a playful mood.
“Miles,” she whispered, “I have to do it.”
“You what?” I looked at her from the kitchen counter.
“I’m sorry,” she swallowed, “It must be done.”
She rose from her seat and took a large carving knife from the drawer. My eyes widened as I realized she wasn’t kidding. I darted out of the kitchen and to the front door, yanking desperately at the handle, to no avail.
“I’m sorry Miles, I had to lock it,” she said, emerging from the kitchen, “Now, don’t worry, I promise I’ll make it quick.”
“Ma, you can’t kill me!” I was half-laughing, half-crying at the concept, waiting for her to tell me it was just a big joke, “I’m your son!”
She didn’t seem fazed.
“It’s in the fortune,” she said coldly.
I tried to duck around her and run to the bathroom, but she held out her arms, waving the knife dangerously. I was cornered. There was nowhere left to run.
“Stop! Stop it! I wrote it!” I cried, backing into the corner.
She stared at me, her arms still up in the air.
“I wrote it! It was all me! I wanted to see how far you’d go! I’m sorry, ma, I can see now I shouldn’t have done that!” tears were spilling down my cheeks.
Her arms fell to her sides.
“You wrote what, Miles?”
“I wrote the horoscopes! All of them! I’ve been making money from the site for two years now! I hated seeing you victimized by my own nonsense, so I wanted to try and help you! It was a terrible idea, ma, I’m sorry!”
She seemed too stunned to speak and I could see my words going round and round in her brain.
“I see,” she said eventually, “Except you would say that, wouldn’t you?”
I gawked at her.
“What?”
“It’s a good thing then,” she continued, fiddling with the blade in her hands, “that it’s not the only horoscope I read.”
“It’s not?” I said, wondering what on earth that had to do with anything.
She shook her head.
“It’s not. And the interesting thing is, the one in the newspaper did say I was going to get lied to today.”
It happened so fast. I saw her swing and then the knife was in my shoulder, sending sharp waves of pain through my entire body. I screamed and collapsed onto the floor, thrashing under her weight as she fell on top of me.
“Ma! Stop!” I shrieked, but she wouldn’t listen.
“You can’t argue with fate, Miles,” she hissed, twisting the knife deeper into my shoulder.
I tried pushing her off, believe me, I did, but she was too heavy and my shoulder too weak. I looked around desperately for anything I could use before her second blow and noticed a pair of high heels sitting next to the door mat. I grabbed one with my good hand and struck her as hard as I could across the face, sending her flying backwards.
I pulled my legs out from under her and scrambled to my feet. Blood was seeping through my clothes, but I knew I wasn’t supposed to pull the blade out. My own mother was lying unconscious in the middle of the hallway. I couldn’t risk her waking up of course, so I took her by the legs and dragged her into the bathroom, using the key to lock her in from the outside.
All it took was one call, and she’d be locked away for a long time. Jail instead of a nursing home. How ironic. I picked up my phone and dialed the number. As I heard the dialing tone, however, I remembered my website. I needed to take the horoscopes down before-
My heart dropped as I heard a child crying downstairs.