I awoke with a chill. I found myself outdoors and lying on the ground. My teeth chattered as I wrapped my arms around my naked body for warmth.
“Where the hell are my clothes?” I muttered, my eyes squinting from the light.
“I’ll never drink so much again, ever.” I swore to myself. I’ve made this same vow many times in the past. However, this unusually strange morning seemed so real, I felt it might drive me to change my ways. Experience told me I shouldn’t move too suddenly, the headache from a hangover could creep up on you.
Wherever I was, I was definitely dreaming. In this dream it appeared to be very early morning- maybe four or five. In this odd dreamscape, I faced south. The Sun, heralding its imminent arrival, was just changing the Eastern sky to an eerie gold-tinged gray. On the Western horizon, an array of stars was still visible.
Still trying to recall something, anything from the night before, I wiped the sleep from my eyes and turned my attention to where I lay. At first it appeared to be a smooth concrete driveway or street. Then I focused my eyes. I could see spread out in the distance before me a vast desert plain. Randomly dotting the desert floor were dozens of huge boulders. The size of buildings, the boulders were all shaped like marshmallows- round, squished-flat on top, and bulging around the sides. They were scattered about for as far as I could see. I assumed I was on top of one of them.
I relaxed my body from its curled position, and rolled backwards preparing to stand. Suddenly, my shoulder touched what I immediately recognized as another person on the rock behind me. Startled, I convulsively scrambled to my feet. I looked down at the other person while I stood shivering in the breeze. It was a stranger, a woman, and she too was naked. “What the…?”
Then my eyes panned up and across an astonishing sight. I was on the outer edge of a large group of people, all curled up and sleeping on the rock. Continuing my slow-motion visual pan upward, I saw in the distance the strangest wall of twisted and distorted rock formations I’d ever seen. Backlit by the morning Sun, this huge, mountainous mass of multicolored, striped, sandstone consisted of large twirled spires, bizarre geometric shapes, and looping fingers stabbing into the air.
I consciously brought my attention back down to the people on the rock before me. My eyes were still blurry. I calculated there were maybe forty or fifty of them. They all lay huddled together in small groups of three or four, each group only a few feet from the next. My mind was reeling now. Who were these people, why was I there with them, where was this place, and why were we all naked?
Then as the morning light became brighter, I looked down at my own body. I’m sure my jaw dropped. My entire body was covered with stripes. I threw a wide-eyed, horrified glare back to the still dimly lit bodies spread out asleep on the rock in front of me. They were all covered with stripes. I blinked my eyes and scanned my body again. My arms, my legs, and my chest and belly were all covered with dark green stripes of varied width. I couldn’t stop looking at myself. I rubbed the stripes on my forearms as if that would remove them, but it didn't.
Confusion squeezed my mind tighter and tighter, like a painful, over-powering handshake. Panic gripped my nervous system and I began to shake uncontrollably.
I realized the person I’d been sleeping next to was now awake and staring up at me.
She seemed to be calmly, if not curiously, observing me in my bewildered state. Her body became visible in the increasing morning light. With no hair on her head, her skin color was olive with hot-pink stripes all over, attracting and directing my eyes to some very personal parts of her body. Her eyes were very strange to view. They were not as I knew eyes to be- white orbs with dark colored pupils. Her eyes were the exact same color as her skin, down to having a stripe slash right across them. This had an eerie camouflaging effect. It was very difficult to see her eyes, let alone tell where she was looking.
It felt awkward, she and I staring at each other. I turned my gaze away to see a tall striped man walking toward me from the group. All I could do was stare at this huge stranger as he approached. He startled me as he spoke.
”Roak!”(I don’t know how you’d spell it, but that’s how it sounded.)
“Roak, you’re here! You’ve returned! How are you my friend?”
He stepped right up to me and quickly embraced me with a hug. It didn’t seem at all malicious, and he released me before it became uncomfortable. Then he stood facing me and continued his broad smile. He too, had the strange camouflaged eyes. However, he had a kind face. He seemed to genuinely consider me his friend. I hoped I was right. I had to clear my throat before I could speak.
”I’m sorry sir, this is very strange,…I, I don’t know where I am,…”
I paused. “…or who you are.”
He smiled even broader than before. “That’s ’trip-slip’ my friend.” He chuckled casually. He grasped my shoulder with his huge hand in apparent friendly moral support.
“It will come back to you in a short while. Have you eaten? Come, Mayzine prepares a meal for us now. The morning greet is just beginning.”
He looked down to the woman at our feet and smiled, “I’m sure you’re happy to see ‘Roak’ again ay?”
Never losing his smile, he turned and walked back toward the center of the group of sleepers, some of whom were now stirring and rising.
After he walked away, I turned my attention to the woman, replaying in my head what he had just said to her. She too had a broad smile on her face. Her strange eyes seemed to have a slight melancholy to them. The thought occurred to me, this woman might know me better than my memory serves.
She gracefully stood up and put her arms around my waist. Standing a foot shorter than myself, she put her face against my chest and sighed loudly. Just before she released me, she looked up into my eyes and gave me a huge smile complete with beautiful bright-white teeth. All I could do was nervously smile back as she quickly let go and turned to walk away, following the big man’s path. I stood dumbfounded.
”What the hell is going on here?” I asked myself.
Then suddenly from my right, out of nowhere, there appeared another striped man. As I turned my head quickly to look at him, he stopped abruptly and stood motionless beside me. With a smile, as if waiting for more privacy, he watched the girl walk further away. Then his smile instantly vanished. He quickly turned and approached me. We stood face to face.
“What the hell are you doing here?” He said in a low, menacing voice.
He didn’t move away but threw a scanning glance at the others, as if looking for anyone noticing our discussion. I stepped back and felt my body prepare for a fight. He followed my steps and remained very close.
”You’re not supposed to be here yet!” He stopped looking around at the group and stared into my eyes.
“Well, say something Roak. Tell me why you’re here!”
He was becoming angry, and so was I. He was startled and knocked off balance when I returned his aggressive stance and stood so close to him we nearly touched noses.
”I don’t have the slightest idea who you are, where this strange place is, or why I’m here!”
I took a step back. My vocal outburst attracted the attention of a few stripes close to us. He grabbed my arm and pulled me to the edge of the rock, away from the earshot of the others. ”Look, I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing here, but we’ve had this all planned for a long time. Hell it was your plan, remember?” He then looked at me with a softer expression, as if he were really confused by my words and actions.
I shook my head and said, “No, I don’t remember!”
A frustrated and fear-driven anger exploded from me. “Now get out of my face!”
I shoved him away, and in doing so, I stumbled backward. We were much closer to the steeply sloped edge of the rock than I’d realized. With surprise and concern on his face he tried to reach for me. My arms flailed in the air, our fingertips touched hopelessly as he tried his best to catch me. I fell backward off the edge to what must have been at least a fifty-foot drop.

Suddenly, as gravity did it’s work, there was a bright blue flash in my mind, and I heard the sound of heavy metal scraping. Instantly I became aware I was no longer falling. I was no longer in the land of stripes. I was indoors, fully clothed, on stage, and in front of the microphone with my guitar on my lap. I was in a bar. The crowd was applauding, and my band-mates with me were smiling. We’d apparently just finished a song- a song I don’t remember playing.
For a moment I felt just as disoriented as I did when I woke up on the rock. I turned away from the audience to regain some sense of control. I found my smokes and my cocktail beside me. I lit up, took a drag, and closed my eyes. The room became quiet waiting for us to play our next tune. I took a quick look at my hands and forearms- the stripes were gone.
Lee, the bassist in the group, leaned toward me and privately asked, “Hey man, you okay?”
What was I going to tell him, or anyone? I replied, “Yeah, I’m just a little tired. Let’s do one more and take a break.”

I’ve never minded strange dreams. I usually enjoy them and have even used their content for writing both song and fiction. However, I would really rather they not accost me while I’m trying to function in the middle of my day.
There is a part of me that wants to go back to that strange place and find out what the hell was going on there. I can still remember the fall, the bright flash, and that eerie scraping sound. I need to stop thinking about it. I need to play some music.
Please come and catch my performance. I’ll do my best to stay onstage.