Maya his girlfriend accepted his marriage proposal the day Zane brought Bitch home. “Babes, what’s this?” Maya was asking him when he walked in with the stinky tawny thing. “Meet Bitch!” Excited Zane was smiling from cheek to cheek like the comedy character Mr Bean. “Sorry, Sweetheart. Bitch stays!” His head bent, and a silly smile resting on his handsome face, Maya was convinced that she was indeed in love with a dashing imbecile. She always finds him weird. At 40, he could not sustain a relationship. His previous girlfriends left him for reasons as flimsy as his shedding tears when watching a movie. He has a bizarre taste in undesirable things. He would take his Lipton tea without milk or sugar and wear a Kente over his turtle neck to work. He never hugged her nor dreamt of sharing a kiss. Even his laptop had more friction with him than she does. He was not the regular Nigerian guy. Despite his striking features, he would wear his square-shaped glasses and look above them like scientists would look for microbes. He is a graphic designer and a lover of novels. He decorated his two-bedroom apartment with impeccable taste and one would expect him to be very romantic but he is determined to be the opposite. Perhaps, the women in his life had fallen in love with his apartment rather than himself. He is the only Nigerian guy that would talk about dogs on Valentine’s dates. Maya was willing to overlook all of this but bringing home a stray bitch was way too demeaning for her taste. Zane looked around at the decorations Maya had made for them to make up their last fight. The iridescent lights were shimmering around the living room of his two-bedroom apartment. He turned on the illuminating bulbs and the semi-darkened ambience of a romantic valentine dispelled into the night. He preferred it this way. Maya was a sweet girl and she had tried to live up to his ways but he wouldn’t date himself if he was Maya. It wasn’t his fault anyway. He had post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD), a condition that left him emotionally drained of love except for animals. The smell of lavender from the air freshener made him feel so at home. “Thanks, Sweetheart”, he flashed a set of beautiful teeth in braces at his girlfriend. Maya responded with a stiff smile and led Zane’s latest guest into the living room. The last time it was a lab rat he had brought home. Once, he slept off while he was fondling the glorified rodent. He had not washed his index finger after sticking it in a jar of peanut butter. He woke up a few hours later to find that his albino pet had bitten some part of his finger. The smart thing was able to escape without a prison break. Opening the carton of Sweets and co. Cakes, Zane could not resist the urge of poking his finger into the fluffy frosty pastry before him. Maya must have spent a fortune to buy this one. She might as well as, have had a proposal in mind, he thought as he fondled a bottle of Escudo Rojo she had placed in an ice bucket. He walked up to Maya, looked her straight in the eye and while the pretty psychologist thought she was going to get her first kiss, he turned his head to his Canine friend and said sweetly, “Come Bitch, Let Maya bath you!” Was he deliberately trying to be rid of her? Maya fumed as she thought of how to frustrate his plans. How did she get to fall in love with this enigma? It must have been a result of the story that led to his trauma. The story he put forth was like a typical Zeeworld serial. Bitch was a stray Labrador female dog and just like the rebellious rat, Zane was willing to nurture it back to health. As a child, a dog saved Zane’s life. His mother died before he turned 12 but he never forgave her for sending the faithful Max to an early grave. Max was a true dog. Zane’s mother and father had taken care of it as a puppy till it became full-grown. That morning when he was just 4 years, he woke from sleep and was heading towards the stairs that led to the sitting room downstairs. Zane was still dazed from sleep and Max knew this. There was water on the floor at the head of the stairs and Max tried to save Zane from falling off. Immediately Zane slipped, Max grabbed his left leg while his body dangled at the top of the flight of stairs. It had barked before Zane fell but Zane’s mother could not hear the dog because she was in passionate entanglement with Okon the errand boy when daddy was not home. Max did not let go even when Zane cried in pain. The Labrador’s sharp teeth dug deep into his flesh. It wanted to save its little master. It held on, prancing with his hind leg so his noise could reach the entangled couple downstairs but their inordinate moans subdued his stomps. Weeks later Zane’s leg was healing fast but not the wound in his mind. He became distant and hardly spoke to anyone. The doctor said it was trauma from the bite but the trauma from seeing Okon, the errand boy make pepper soup out of Max, was too much for poor Zane to bear. His father never found out the truth about his mother’s sexual escapades. The crazy Okon was thanked profusely for dealing with the dog. Maya’s gaze finally settled on poor Bitch who had been standing by the door, sceptical to take any step further. Fear was written all over its face. The poor thing was suffering from malnutrition. Zane found Bitch tied to a huge tyre by the roadside on his way from work one evening. Who