Chapter Text
The water was really, really far down. It churned and swirled around the stout metal legs of the bridge, frothy as a cappuccino.
Thinking about beverages made him realize he was thirsty. His throat burned. It seemed stupid to do this while he was distracted by how thirsty he was, but then, in another minute or so, that wouldn’t matter.
He’d spent most of the day driving through endless deserts and desolate countryside until he found the bridge. He didn’t even know what river this was—he was drunk, he’d lost track of his location, and his cell phone was dead, so he couldn’t use the GPS. But the bridge was high enough to do the job and isolated enough that no one would stop him, and that was all that mattered. Scrub-studded desert sprawled around him. Stars winked overhead, far more than were visible in the city. On the horizon he could see the lower, redder stars of cell phone towers.
Pretty.
During the day the river’s water was probably a cheerful blue, but now—at night—it was an all-swallowing black. BoJack started to get dizzy and closed his eyes. His back was pressed up against metal, his chest heaving. His car was parked on the bridge itself.
He peeked down at the water through half-closed eyes, then quickly shut them again.
Very far down.
But that was the point, wasn’t it?
It was a clichéd way to go, but if it was good enough for Secretariat it was good enough for him, and he didn’t trust himself not to wuss out when it came to pills. He’d end up calling 911 before he blacked out, or jamming his fingers down his throat. A jump was final. Once your feet left the ledge there was no taking it back.
Sarah Lynn, are you out there? I’m joining you.
Who am I kidding? You aren’t anywhere. And if you were, you wouldn't want to see me.
If all he did was hurt people, if his existence was a net negative, then this was the most moral course of action. Right? His life had been a series of mistakes, but he could at least go out with a noble gesture.
Of course, it was also entirely possible that that was a rationalization and that he was just being a pussy, unable to face the consequences of his actions. But it didn’t really matter. As Diane had once said, there was no deep down. There was only what you did. So if he’d decided to do this, his reasons (whether selfish or altruistic) were irrelevant. There was only the naked brute fact of the action itself.
He lurched forward a little, then jerked back, hyperventilating. Shit.
Come on. Just do it.
A bit of debris—a beer can?—appeared briefly above the surface, glinting, then the water sucked it under again.
Would it hurt? Would he feel anything at all? He seemed to remember hearing once that when people jumped from a great height they usually passed out on the way down. But how could anyone know that? How many people actually survived falling from a great height?
Don’t think. You’ll talk yourself out of it.
Shouldn’t he at least leave a note in the car or something? Explain to his friends that it wasn’t their fault, that this was just his own shit reaching its natural conclusion? No. A note wouldn’t make anything better. He was looking for excuses to delay this. Because he was scared.
Do it, you fucking pussy. Do it. Do it. Do it. DO IT.
He leapt.
Shit! NO!
Bad idea! BAD FUCKING IDEA.
The water raced toward him. He opened his mouth to scream but the air ripped the sound from his throat.
His fall seemed to slow. The world rippled strangely around him. An odd, shimmering light rimmed his vision like a halo.
He’d heard about this happening. Time distorting and stretching out in the brief seconds before death. He seemed to be floating down like a petal. It was almost…peaceful.
This was it. Another moment of consciousness and then—
What? Heaven, hell? Nothing? Probably nothing. No more bourbon, no more parties, no more hugs, no more sun and clouds, no more dreams or nightmares. Not even peace. Just an end. Like a bug smashing itself into a windshield. SPLAT and then swept away by the wipers. That was what he’d wanted. Wasn’t it?
No, no. He did not want this. He did not fucking want it.
Closer now. He could see the individual waves cresting and lapping. They looked hungry. Even if he survived hitting the water, it was cold enough that hypothermia would probably set in pretty quickly. There was no way to climb out of the river. The banks were sheer stone.
He wondered who would find his body. He wondered how long it would take.
He flailed, striking out at the air. No, please, let me take it back—God, I—I know you don’t exist, but if you do, just this one time—
BoJack froze. “What the fuck?” he said aloud, the words perfectly clear and audible, because there was no rush of wind.
It wasn’t an illusion, after all. His fall had been slowing down ever since his feet left the bridge, and now—impossibly—he’d stopped. He hung in midair just above the river’s surface, close enough that he could’ve reached down and grazed the water with his fingertips. He looked at his own hand. His entire body was enveloped in a faint, wavering light.
“Hey, uh,” a hoarse voice above him said. “Can I get a selfie?”
Dazed, he looked up to see a silver aircraft—almost like a spaceship, but it had a cobbled-together, homemade feel—hovering overhead. An old human was leaning out the window, his wild white hair catching the moonlight, slobber glistening on his chin.
BoJack flailed helplessly in midair. He gulped. “Wh—what?” he bleated.
“My grandkids like your—the show. Your stupid fucking TV show.”
“What’s happening?” His voice came out small and childlike. “Why am I floating?”
“Because I stopped your fall. Obviously. H-hang on.” He pointed what looked like a gun at BoJack and pulled the trigger.
BoJack tensed and opened his mouth to scream. The gun shot out a beam of light. “Oof!” He felt himself propelled upward, back toward the bridge. Up and up. His stomach dropped. His feet touched solid ground, and he stumbled.
Solid metal. Thank God. Except…
He was dreaming. He had to be. Or tripping, maybe. He’d gotten a bad batch of acid. The technology that man had just used did not exist. Not outside of the movies.
The spaceship levitated straight upward and landed on the bridge next to BoJack’s car. A man got out—tall, skinny, wearing a white lab coat. He approached BoJack and pulled a cell phone from his pocket. “This’ll just take a second,” he said. He stood beside BoJack, slung an arm around his shoulders, held the phone out, and snapped a picture. “There.” He showed BoJack the results—the man grinning crookedly at the camera and giving a peace-sign, green-tinged drool dribbling down his chin, and BoJack staring straight ahead with a bleak, shell-shocked expression. “Okay, thanks.” He pocketed the phone. “I’ll l-let you get back to it. Sorry to interrupt.” He started to walk toward his spaceship, then stopped. “Oh, uh…where can I get a drink around here?” And then, as though the thought had just occurred to him, “You—you-you wanna get a drink with me?”
“What?”
“I said do you w—”
“Who are you?” BoJack spread his arms in helpless bewilderment. “What is that thing?” He pointed at the ship. “Who just…shows up and prevents someone’s suicide with secret government technology, then takes a selfie with them, and then acts like they’re just going to walk away, then asks them if they want to go get a drink as though nothing just happened?”
The man faced him and wiped his mouth with one sleeve. “I’m Rick Sanchez,” he said. “And this isn’t ‘secret government technology.’ The government wishes it could do this. That is my spaceship and this is my anti-gravity gun which I made myself with no help from anyone because I am the smartest being that ever was or ever will be.”
“And you expect me to believe that.”
“Dude, I just made you float. So you want that drink or what? You’re buying though. Th-they won’t take my money here. The currency all has f-fuh-f-fucking furries on it.”
“What is a ‘furry’?”
“You. You’re a furry.”
A sense of unreality had slipped over him. This was absurd. All of it. And yet he’d never had a dream this lucid. His body was still flooded with adrenaline from the jump and the brush with death. He felt—altered. Shaky and detached. He glanced at his car, then at the spaceship, then at the man. “Look, I don’t—” he stopped. Took a breath. His mind latched onto something the man had said earlier: something specific, something comprehensible. “Your grandkids watch Horsin' Around?"
“Oh it’s not just Morty and Summer. I wish. My whole family e-e-e-eats that shit up like ice cream. Jerry cries like a little bitch at every sappy, mass-produced, Hallmark card family moment. Summer keeps talking about how hot you are. I mean the younger ‘you’ on TV. And I told her ‘that’s fuckin’ gross, he’s a horse,’ and you-you-you know what she said to me? She said, ‘you sexist hypocrite, you fuck entire planets. You fuck hiveminds. You fuck aliens with three vaginas and penises for eyes. I’ll thirst after a horse on TV if I want to.’ Smartass little bitch. You-you-you’re not getting anywhere near her, by the way.”
“I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”
“Oh, and Beth? My daughter? She-she-she-she keeps insisting she’s watching the show ironically and that she’s laughing at how stupid it is but you can tell even she’s really into it. And Morty’s just…they’ve seduced him. He’s part of their little horse-fucker fan club now, and you know what? It pisses me off. We have literally billions of channels at home—th-there’s a channel in this reality where the dominant species on Earth is gummy bears, like the candy, except they have nervous systems, and there’s this fucked up game show where they have to eat each other—and yet they keep going back to the sitcom where the gimmick is a horse raising human children? How much mileage can you get out of horse-related puns? Apparently eight hundred seasons’ worth. It just goes on and on. And on. Like I’m staring into the mouth of hell. But whatever. M-my daughter is pissed off at me because she found out about the Mind Blower room. A selfie of me and BoJack Horseman is just the distraction I need.”
BoJack was still trying to process the details about cannibalistic gummy bears. “Okay, well. You got your selfie. Congrats. I’m going to get in my car, drive to the nearest hotel, and get some sleep. And tomorrow morning I am calling my doctor and scheduling a CAT scan.”
“Oh, s-s-s-so you’re not killing yourself?”
“Not tonight. Probably.”
“Then check this shit out.” Rick withdrew a small bag from his pocket and opened it up to show a sparkly pink powder. “Kalaxian crystals. You never had anything like this. Wanna try it?”
BoJack eyed it suspiciously.
He should turn and walk to his car. The keys were still in the ignition.
“What does it do?” he asked.
Rick smirked. “You know that dark, aching void in the center of your being? The one that never gets filled no matter how much attention or praise or material success you accumulate and that eats at you until you find yourself with your back against a wall, staring down over a ledge into the abyss of your own soul?”
“Uh-huh.”
“This makes that go away. For a minute, at least.”
“So. Future cocaine.”
“What’s this ‘future’ bullshit? I’m not from the future. I don’t do time-travel. I’m not a hack.”
“Alien cocaine then.”
“It’s a full-body orgasm. It’s a pair of rocket-boots for your soul.”
Everything about this screamed bad idea. Whatever he had there might just as easily kill BoJack as get him high, and he shouldn’t want to be high anyway. Not now. He should go home.
Home to his guilt, his loneliness, his bad habits, his depression, his mistakes, the memories of the people he'd hurt…
Fuck it. A few minutes ago he’d been ready to jump off this bridge and now he was being careful? He was long past careful. Nothing mattered.
“Okay. Give me some.” He held a hand out. Rick sprinkled some of the powder in his palm. “So then—I just—”
“R-right up the nose.”
He snorted the powder straight out of his hand. It burned his nostrils, and he felt something right away. A rusty scratch inside his head, a kick, a dry, crackling energy. Pastel colors washed over the world. A buoyant, clarifying energy filled his chest—like a grand symphony swelling in his soul, a doorway into a greater reality opening and sunlight flooding in. “Whoa. Okay. Whoa. That’s—yeah. That’s better than cocaine.”
“What did I tell you, man?” Rick grinned.
The world glimmered. Every object thrummed with life and possibility. The desert sang. The deranged, drooling, babbling old man in front of him transformed into a magical, whimsical creature, a benignly eccentric spirit-guide, like the angel from It’s a Wonderful Life.
BoJack had sent up a prayer and it had been answered. He'd been rescued from his own folly, found worthy and given another chance. Now he was on a journey. He would learn the true meaning of life, and nothing would ever be the same.
"Thank you," he said, tears in his eyes. He gripped Rick's shoulders. "Thank you."
"N-n-no problem." Rick snorted some of the powder. A blue tinge spread over the whites of his eyes. His grin widened. “Oh yeah. Motherfucker.” He climbed into the spaceship and gestured for BoJack to follow. “C’mon.”
BoJack got in. “Where are we going?” he asked, but he didn’t really care. He’d go anywhere this man wanted, as long as he gave him more of that marvelous powder.
“Karaoke,” Rick said. “W-w-we’re gonna find a karaoke bar. Can you sing?”
“Uh—”
“Sure you can. E-eh-everyone’s a musician.” He cranked on the radio and flipped through the stations until he found something with a driving techno beat. “Yeah!” The spaceship rose into the air. He yanked on the wheel, veering to the left and knocking over a telephone pole. It crashed into the crowd, wires frayed and sparking.
“Whoa!” BoJack flattened his back against the seat. A razor of anxiety cut through the candy-colored haze of euphoria. “Is—is that okay?”
“It’s fine, don’t worry about it.” The ship shot forward with enough force to make the skin on his face ripple. “Yeehaw! Give-give-give a yeehaw, BoJack!”
“Yeehaw!”
“Yeehaw!” The ship veered to the right, then the left again, Rick laughing wildly as they careened through the sky. “Hey where’s—which way is San Francisco?”
“Uh. South? I think?”
BoJack’s fingers dug into the upholstery. The high was already starting to fade a little, the sharp edges of reality poking through. Only then did it occur to him that he’d left his car behind on the bridge and gotten into an aircraft with a complete stranger, one who was currently tripping off his ass.
“We’re gonna—I want some fuckin’ waffles. Are there Waffle Houses here?” Rick snorted more pink powder out of his palm, then wiped it on his lab coat, sniffling. “Are there porpoises? Like hu-human-humanoided—sea mammals with legs?"
"Sure."
"I wanna, I w-wuh-w-wanna fuck a porpoise.”
“Why?”
“You mean—for what porpoise?” He tilted back his head and laughed.
I’ve allowed myself to be kidnapped by a maniac, BoJack thought. I am going to die.
And then he started to laugh too. The sound echoed through the interior of the spacecraft as they blasted through the sky.