It all started when Marcus brought out the baggie with a sly grin. “Albino Penis Envy,” he said, holding it up like it was some sacred artifact. “They say this stuff’s no joke. You in?”
I glanced at the others. There was Marcus, the eternal dealer of chaos; Sofia, who claimed to be the “trip babysitter” but usually ended up worse off than the rest of us; and Darren, the quiet wildcard who always laughed at the wrong times.
We were sitting in Marcus’s apartment in downtown Detroit, the kind of place that smelled like old pizza and broken dreams. But hey, the vibe was right. The lights of the city blinked outside the window, casting an electric hum over everything.
“Alright,” I said, trying to sound cooler than I felt. “Let’s do it.”
We split the shrooms like a bunch of high schoolers sharing a stolen bottle of vodka, each one trying not to take too much but not wanting to seem weak either. They tasted like chalky death, and I chased mine with a warm PBR. Classy.
At first, nothing happened. Typical.
But then, about 30 minutes in, the walls started to shimmer, like they were breathing.
“I think it’s kicking in,” Sofia whispered, her pupils already as wide as dinner plates.
Marcus just started giggling. He always hit the weird phase first.
”“Are the walls melting, or is that just me?” Darren asked, staring intensely at the cheap wallpaper like it had personally offended him.
And then it hit me. A wave of pure absurdity. The kind that makes your entire existence feel like a cosmic joke. I looked at Marcus, and his face seemed to stretch and warp, his grin becoming cartoonishly wide.
“Why are you smiling like that?” I asked, panicking a little.
“I’m not,” he said, which made no sense because his face was all smile.
That’s when Sofia announced, “We need to go outside. The city is calling.”
“The city?” Marcus asked, already halfway to the door.
“Yeah,” she said, dead serious. “Detroit. She wants to talk to us.”
I don’t know why that made sense, but it did. So we grabbed our coats and stumbled out into the night.
Outside was… different.
The air felt alive, like it was hugging me and laughing at the same time. The streetlights were halos, and the shadows on the ground turned into little dancers, swaying to some unheard rhythm.
We ended up at the abandoned Packard Plant, because of course we did. Darren said he wanted to “see where ghosts live,” and no one thought to argue.
The place looked like it had been ripped straight from a post-apocalyptic movie. Graffiti-covered walls, broken windows, and an eerie silence that was somehow comforting.
Sofia started talking to the graffiti.
“This guy gets it,” she said, pointing at a neon-green skull with sunglasses painted on the wall. “He knows the truth.”
“What truth?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“That life is just… a giant mixtape,” she said, twirling in a circle.
Marcus was on his knees, laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe. “A mixtape? Oh my god, she’s lost it!”
But then I looked at the graffiti again, and it hit me. Life was a mixtape. Different songs, some good, some bad, but all part of the same album. It was genius.
Meanwhile, Darren was convinced he could hear the ghosts talking. “They’re saying we shouldn’t be here,” he whispered, wide-eyed. “They’re warning us.”
“Dude, that’s just the wind,” I said, but secretly, I wasn’t so sure.
At some point, we decided to leave before the ghosts—or worse, Detroit’s cops—caught us. On the walk back, everything felt huge. The buildings stretched into infinity, and the stars seemed close enough to touch.
Back at Marcus’s apartment, we collapsed on the floor, staring at the ceiling like it held the secrets of the universe.
“Okay,” I said finally, breaking the silence. “That was insane.”
“Detroit spoke to us,” Sofia said, still tripping but sounding oddly wise.
“Yeah,” Marcus added. “And she said we’re idiots.”
We all laughed until our stomachs hurt.
By the time the shrooms wore off, the sun was peeking through the blinds, and we were just a bunch of tired fools in the middle of Detroit, trying to make sense of a world that didn’t need to be figured out.
And honestly? It was perfect.