Art by Kate Miller @kateandtheworld on Instagram

Deep down, do you really want to ask questions? Isn’t it infinitely more comforting to live with the answers we have, even if they are the wrong ones? If only I had the foresight to understand that a week ago before I started micro-dosing everyone at the police station that I work at.

Everyone in the station seemed so tense all the time. There were a lot of heated exchanges behind closed doors; arguments over budgets and resources, lethal force, and how to catch the person who kept microwaving bullets. And frankly, things had become a little right-wing for my taste. You could feel it in the common area, it was a bad vibe, and I don’t do bad vibes. I actually own a hilarious shirt that says as much. I knew I had to change things, and after I had been laughed out of my boss’s office for suggesting the installation of a nap room, I knew that I had to be a little underhanded about it.

I had been complaining about the heavy atmosphere to my good friend Maze when he had a brilliant suggestion. Maze had been battling a serious case of depression since recently losing his entire leather pants collection in a blades-related stovetop fire, but he found that he had cured his case of blues by micro-dosing psilocybin mushrooms. He claimed that in just a few weeks, his mood began to lighten, fears and anxieties felt “washed away,” and he was able to turn a few pairs of the once thought-to-be-ruined leather pants into leather shorts.

“Hmm,” I wondered, staring at the leather shorts. “What could be the downside of a collective mood change in a small town’s only police detachment?”

Free of angst and worry, imagine the change we could make not only within ourselves but in our community?

Maze was kind enough to act as the middleman between myself and the fungiculturist, who he called his “mushman.” We were able to meet up with him forthwith in his mobile office, a 1993 Econoline van. The invisible hand of the market dictated that I had to go a little deeper into my coffers than I felt comfortable with, but Maze assured me that the shit was “good” and that those squares would get “goofy as hell.” I once again reiterated my mission statement to de-stress and slowly evolve the vibe state, but Maze and his mushman had grown preoccupied with the number of purple hairs on a bud of marijuana and were no longer listening to me.

As for a delivery apparatus, I figured that the best way to cover the ghastly flavour of the mushrooms was to steep them in the communal morning coffee. I was able to get Maze into the building under the pretense that he was a toilet repairist, and he assisted me with the first dose. I was concerned about the lack of ceremony and expressed my feelings to Maze, but his only response was to whisper “Safe as fuck” as he dumped in three times the dosage that we had agreed on into the coffee filter.

I loitered around the break room to keep an eye on the first few subjects. Stetson, a mild-mannered school resource officer, was the first to sip on the great spiritual awakening. I breathed a sigh of relief when the taste didn’t bother him. He grabbed his keys and headed out the door. He was in for an interesting drive.

I was expecting a slow shift in consciousness, but as more and more people filled up their mugs, changes became immediately apparent. The sound of music and laughter blared through the stationhouse. They sat on cushions on the floor and asked each other beautiful, thoughtful questions. Art supplies were ordered. Punisher stickers were peeled off of personal vehicles and replaced with “coexist” stencils.

The changes were not all positive, however. Davidson shut his door, but we could hear his mantra through the walls. “WHY AM I THE WAY I AM? WHY AM I SO BROKEN!?”

He was having an ugly spiritual confrontation. Another unexpected consequence of the experiment was the amount of work not getting done by anyone but me. I expected a bit of extra paperwork, but soon I was handling actual police work, which was a lark at first, but I have seen a few things that I may never forget. It turns out a rather savage serial killer had picked this week, of all the weeks, to begin a rather heinous rampage. By the end of the week, I noticed my personal vibe had shifted considerably for the worse. Something had to change.

I knocked aggressively on the beads of my boss’s door, but when I heard no answer, I barged in. My patience was running thin. I found him staring at a blue mouse pad. It looked like he had been at it for a while.

“How can I help you brother?”

I appealed to the man, stomped my feet, and reenacted all the terrible things I had witnessed from the various murders happening in our small town. Nothing phased him. He sat on his bean bag chair. When I was through, he stood up and gestured for me to follow him to the main “hang terminal” that used to be the officer bullpen. Free of cubicles and office equipment, the room had been transformed into the ultimate chill space; most everyone was standing in silence on yoga mats, finding their inner mothers and fathers. My boss made a quiet declaration to the group.

“Well everyone, Paul here suggested we should do some police work.”

Some gasped, and others shook their head. Slowly, they all began to sit down.

Oh no.

Finally, it was just my boss still standing. He gracefully plopped down on his ample posterior.

It was a sit-down strike.

“FUCK!” I yelled, grabbing the nearest keys to a squad car and taking a handgun out of the garbage. “I guess I’ll catch this serial killer all by myself!” I yelled to no one in particular as I left the station.

All cops are bastards.