“Who is the dog that brings a pack of hyenas to a man’s home?!” Nick walked amongst the group, eyeing each one without fear. His voice in Arabic hushed the small crowd, and Nick’s gaze singled out the leader in moments. “Ah… here is my bitch! Hello, dog! What is this all about that you need so many ankle biters around you to spew your crap at me?!”
The man he addressed, nearly three inches above six feet by Nick’s reckoning, with trimmed facial beard, in the range of two hundred and thirty pounds, stepped back as Nick singled him out. He looked around, only to find his flock searching his face for guidance. Nick knew a bought off crowd when he saw one. This was Hadad’s doing, and he planned to bleed it dry of all this visit’s accompanying signs of Islamophobic flavor.
“You have brought the news people, dog. What is it you plan to show them?” Nick inched closer to his correct choice of crowd instigator.
“You! You are a torturer of innocents!” The man tried to jet his arms out to push Nick back, but was slammed to the sidewalk instead.
“Do not attack me, dogs!” Nick said in deadly tones to the group, his body language one of preparation and readiness. “I am not some mouse fed to a snake. You have all followed this snake here to my home. See how the snake now grovels at my feet. See the message here in front of you. Would I need to torture anyone? I think not. Embracing murderous thugs as victims is stupid, demeaning, and casts doubt on anything you otherwise believe. Jamal Kader, and Aban Kassis broke into my home in order to slit the throats of me, my wife, and my nine year old daughter. Are they who you wish to proclaim as victims? If they are, then I am here. Come, dogs. Strike at the one before you, instead of in the dark, breaking into a man’s home with a knife. Come, dogs… I am here!”
The crowd gawked at their leader, still groaning his way into a seated position. A man of Middle Eastern descent walked over to Nick, his sign trailing on the sidewalk. “This… this is not as I imagined when called. I… I am sorry to have disturbed your day. I should have been more diligent in finding out why I was called to your home.”
Nick held out his hand, and the man shook it with a strong grasp. “As-salamu alaykum.”
“And peace from now on be with you, my friend,” the man replied in English.
In moments, the confrontation ended. When the man who had shook Nick’s hand walked away, the crowd followed, leaving only the minion who had started it all still on the sidewalk. Nick eyed the camera crews and reporters then with a wry smile. “It looks as if you parasites failed in having my home attacked today by a homemade mob. So, do you want to help your buddy here away?”
One reporter stepped forward. He was in a suit, with tie, a sharply trimmed mustache, and nearly Nick’s height of a shade under six feet tall. Nick looked down and grinned after seeing the man was wearing what looked to be two inch lifts. “Surely, Mr. McCarty… you’re not suggesting we had anything to do with forming a demonstration at your house.”
“Well… let’s see… we have a group of malcontents forming at my house with signs while chanting bad things in front of my home. Then, we also have you and your camera crews magically forming to record it all. Did you whackos coincidentally meet at a coffee shop somewhere, and suddenly wonder what a great idea it would be to go over to old Nick McCarty’s house and accuse him of everything under the sun? I don’t think so. I’ll bet the lead thug here knows what’s going on. Right, my little instigator?”
Nick helped the guy to his feet, where he continued to moan and groan, making hurt gestures at his back, while painfully stretching for the cameras surrounding him.
“Oh… poor baby… did you get a boo-boo while trying to push my face into the sidewalk? Apparently, you think I’d interact with you dolts without a separate recording of the events. Not so. Hey, Gus… did you get all that?”
Gus walked towards the group, still filming. “Yep. All in HD, and I didn’t miss a bit of it. It won’t be as good as the recordings produced by our professionals here, but I bet it will keep them honest, and not pissing the facts away on the cutting room floor.”
“Very good, Gus. We’ll upload that to every news site we can in the next hour, and make sure the public doesn’t get any slanted versions of what happened. I plan on hiring a neutral interpreter for a rendering of what was spoken in Arabic. Are we done here, folks?”
By then, the man who had regained his feet from where Nick had slammed him, stopped playacting for the cameras, and began edging past where he had been standing, to a point obliquely on the side of Nick.