Jude dreamt.
Jude dreamt terrible fever dreams, nightmares of ships crashing to shores. He had bad dreams more often than he had good.
Chris had always said that he enjoyed the bad dreams more than the good ones, because when you wake up from good dreams, you're disappointed by the world that is not as good as the world in your dreams.
Bad dreams, though, Jude thought, echoing something his better half had said ages ago, make you grateful when you awake.
Bad dreams.
~
He didn’t remember much from his time on the road. The drives with Chris, heading anywhere away from Raleigh.
They stopped anywhere they could get a night’s rest. Sometimes they stayed a few days. But never more than a week.
“We have to keep moving,” Chris would say. “We have to find somewhere safe.”
~
Jude awoke abruptly, shivering in the chilly wind.
“That’s plenty of that.” He said firmly to no one in particular.
Standing, Jude dusted off his coat and began walking, as he had so many times before. A pilgrim, in search of fulfillment.
Steeling himself, he wandered along the road, until he heard a small mewling from under an old junker.
Jude perked up.
“Kitty?”
More mewling.
Jude crouched down and peeked under the broken-down car, and found a very small white kitten wearing an appropriately-sized taupe cowboy hat.
“Sparks,” Jude said aloud, “aren’t you cute?” Half-puzzled and half-enthused, he chided himself. That was a silly Newcago expletive, and to anyone else would be completely idiosyncratic.
Then again, he thought, when was the last time I saw anyone else? When, in the past year of my life, has idiosyncrasy been a problem?
Jude did the rational thing and he placed the cat in his coat pocket.
“I shall call you… Bear Trap.” He said, but he didn’t know why.
And so, kitten in possession, he followed the signs that lead him to Portland.