Aloe recalls a distant memory. He was about six years old then.

One day, after class, one of his friends from primary school approached him.

“Hey Aloe, what happened to your second daddy?” he asked him.

Aloe groaned. Ever since his father left home, he hadn’t been feeling well. 

Every time he thought about his home, he felt dizzy to the point of puking. Because of that, he’d been more withdrawn, too busy trying to calm his beating heart and his aching stomach.

He gripped his stomach, trying to calm down his nausea. “I don’t know…Mommy won’t say anything about him.”

“I think I know why.” One girl approached him. Another one of his friends. 

“How do you know?”

The girl huffed, tilting her head up as if looking down on him. It annoyed Aloe, but he was also curious. “Because my mom said your second daddy stole your first daddy.”

“Huh?!” Aloe jumped from his seat. He nearly tumbled over from the sudden intensity of his dizziness, but he tried to keep his wits about him. “Why would second daddy steal him?! You’re lying!”

“Nuh-uh! Mom said so. Your daddy hates you and your mommy now because of him. That’s why he left you.”

As she spoke, more of their classmates began to surround them. They mumbled amongst themselves, and it made Aloe feel overwhelmed. He clasped his hands together, trying to keep himself calm.

Suddenly, one of the boys snickered. “And Aloe was being so annoying about his second daddy.”

“You kept bragging about having three parents, but now you just have one.” Another one chimes in.

“Yeah, and it’s freaky to have a second daddy, right?”

The more the people around him spoke, the more he felt dizzy. His eyes dotted from one side of the room to the other, searching for an escape, but all he saw were the mumbling figures of the other children seemingly towering over him. 

His ears began to ring, drowning out their words, and his heart raced at a rapid beat. Even breathing became a difficult feat for him.

When he tried to speak, no words came up. Instead, his anxieties built into debilitating nausea, with bile rising from his stomach and out of his mouth.

Aloe couldn’t remember much after that. But he knows it’s a memory that affects him well into his twenties.

Even when other people pay him no attention, Aloe’s mind tends to play tricks on him. It makes him believe that all eyes are on him, mocking and mumbling about his every mistake.

Aloe yawns.

He checks his watch for the time and sees it’s 7:15 AM, still enough for him to get to his 8 AM class. He pockets his phone before adjusting his grip on the handle of three leashes.

His three dogs bark and pull at their leashes, seemingly urging him to hurry up and keep on walking. However, when he looks up at the sky, the looming dark clouds signal to him it’s time to call it a day.

“That’s enough. We should go back home,” he tells his dogs as he directs them en route to the exit.

They whimper, but because he’d trained them since they were pups, they easily follow his lead. As they walk back home, the people around them try to avoid their little pack.

Aloe doesn’t question it, he’s fully aware of how scary the sight of his three towering hounds can be. One is an excitable labrador retriever named Mary, the other a loud husky named Bella, and the last is a scary-looking rottweiler named Fidel. 

Altogether, they tend to keep people away.

And Aloe prefers it that way.  It’s enough that only he knows just how lovable these three goofs can be.

Once they're at home, Aloe lets the dogs loose, and just as expected, Mary and Fidel begin running around and tugging at each other. Bella, however, seems content in lying on the couch and plopping her head on a pillow.

Aloe sighs fondly at the three hounds, but he goes to quick work in preparing for class. There’s still a lot of time, and it’s not like he lives that far away from campus, but he doesn’t like the thought of too many people being gathered in a room before him.

Once he’s at the door, he calls for all three of them. In the blink of an eye, the three are lined up in front of him like little soldier boys.

“I’ll be back by noon to feed you guys, so behave, okay?”

They bark in response, and though Aloe doubts they really understood what he says, he’s confident that they’ll know what to do.