She Had The Brilliance Of Saying She Was My Niece

So, I am a 23 y/o Italian male living in a not so small town in southern Italy,now it's not the most secure town in the world,in fact we have a long history of micro criminality-connected to local mafia,but if you are smart you can keep yourself our of trouble.

I need to explain my daily commute and context first,to make things better to understand,you can skip this if you want! Basically i live in the "old" part of the town,as here is common for every town to be built around it's antique part,and after an 1980 earthquake destroyed a good part of it it's very affordable to live here,and some parts are beautiful and well kept,others are not,so you find good families and great folks sharing spaces with more pesky dudes,doesn't help that the town's castle has been converted in a prison (yes,what the hell Italy) but luckily only for minor offenders.

Now to the encounter itself,happened just this January,i just came back from uni,it's just a 20 min drive in the car,but with shitty public transport it can take up to 1+1/2H to get home,and as i like to study in the library 'till it closes at 6.30 pm,i usually come back home at 8Pm or later,i get greeted by my dog (Name is Maya,a beautiful sweetheart and innocent 1y/o lab ) and i take her for a walk around this part of the town and the castle,since it's her favorite spot to meet other street dogs (Dogs that don't really have an owner,but everyone in the blocks feeds them).

So she was taking longer than usual to do her business and i was freezing,since i was wearing lighter than i should (I thought it would be a short walk as usually),plus it was snowing,witch is super rare here,like SUPER,and was the first time Maya saw snow,so she was exited too.

For that i decided to walk back home and grab a jacket to better take delight of this occasion,and on my walk home to cut shorter i have to pass this abandoned building under construction,it's pretty shitty,has just the pillars and floors done,but a lot of kids used it to play and climb around,now as i walk there i see this guy standing there,his back was facing me,still like a rock with,with his head facing up,to the 1st floor of this abandoned building,dirty beenie hat,heavy winter jacket and a tracker suit too wide for his build,and there he was,still.

At first i froze in spot too,but it wasn't an extraordinary encounter,since there are a lot of weird people around and i decide to pass on,but the first red alert light was on when i watched Maya,and had her back furr raised and was looking this guy dead,she never did this,as we walk to him she keeps this behavior,and as we were walking there she emits a low pitched growl,that makes this man turn around.

I never,ever saw his face around here,and if you aren't local,you really can't end up there if you didn't want to,and oh my god his face was creepy,typical greasy hair and undone 3-day beard.

He extended his hand to Maya

"Hey doggie,how cute are you?""

Stupidly that calmed me down a bit,maybe he was just a mentally ill person walking around,i know some of them around and they all pretty much looked like him (There is a "dormitory" for mentally ill people who's family cannot,or doesn't want to (yeah) take care of them,near there) but when he was trying to pet my dog,I hear something moving on the 1st floor's concrete,thought it must have been a cat,but Maya would already been jumping around trying to catch him,so i looked up and i see this little girl,around 10 y/o,she had only fear in her eyes,wide open,really desperate,and i am not exaggerating this detail.

She had a familiar face tho ,must have been one of the kids that play around this building,now she must have seen me walking my dog around,because as soon as she recognized me (or my dog most likely) she caught my eyes and tried to whisper "help" with her lips

After this i turn my head around,and the creep is watching me now,i would like to say he had the usual creepy smile,but he didn't,he just had a very serious face now,looking dead in my eyes. I don't know what to do, I am a 1.9M tall guy (6.2 feet? i think?) and kind of imposing,but i never fought anyone,and i am really,really peaceful guy. In a fraction of a second this guy looks up again and says

"Come down sweetie,we need to get home,the food will get cold"

yeah,sure,totally believable 10/10

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" i ask him

"I am her uncle,i need to get her home to eat" He says,with the most serious look

I was thinking what to answer to use as an excuse to bring her down and get her to safety,and being the sarcastic bitchy type in this situation i say

"That's strange,because i am her Uncle,this doesn't add up"

At this point the little girl has the brilliance to lean off and say

"Hey uncle! Can you help me get home? Mommy will get worried"

Now this guy didn't seem to threatening at the moment,just creepy,so i go under the building to take the little girl,and as i prepare to grab her,Maya (thank god,bless all the dogs) first growls at him,then barks,now she usually has a really femine high-pithed bark,but with this guy,it was really low pitched and scared even me.

To that i turn around and see this guy with a hand behind is back,reaching for something.

O shit i think,i cannot fight for shit hand on hand,if this guy haa a knife this would end up badly.

He stops his reaching motion as the bark is now continuous,and in the heat of the moment the little girl leaned off and i grabbed her with one arm,the other one keeping Maya at bay,as a deterrent,and while she was descending i asked if she had a phone

"No i don't have it" She said that,and you could hear she was on the on the brink of crying

So as soon as she touched the ground i unlocked my phone and gave it to her,she took the phone and immediately legged it,i should have been glad to it,but my immediate thought was "if she did all this to stole my phone i will be deadly pissed" after all it wouldn't have been unusually,but i basically asked her to take it,so would be impossible i think.

Anyways the girl is gone,i turn around and this dude has a fucking knife out,not a pocket knife tho,one of those big ass kitchen knife you use to cut bakery bread,and me being so careless in the kitchen,i know how damn sharp those things could be.

So i decide to run away too,but Maya decided "nope,i want to stand here barking at him" and i couldn't manage to pull her away,she is almost 30kg,but that was a grip too strong even for her. So we were there stalling,and this guy starts swinging the fucking knife in the air,i want to run,but if i leave my dog,i know she could end up really bad,and even if i manage to pull her he could run after us. And there we were,him swinging the knife with empty eyes,my dog barking,and me shitting my self not knowing what to do,and to make things worse,my hands were freezing cold from not wearing gloves,and the grip leash was really starting to hurt.

The thing that still surprised me in that situation,is the fact that i am absolutely sure that people around the block could hear that mess,but no one,not a single one decided to take a look,goddamn people.

Anyways after what seemed like a long time,but was probably less than 2 minutes,i hear heavy footsteps from the street i came,and from there a lot of people shows up,probably her dad and some of her relatives/friends,with a baseball bat.

This is not gonna end up well i thought.

As soon as the creep saw those man he fucking threw the knife in my direction (terrible aim,but i still had to move to not get hit,luckily) and started to run to me,trying to go in the street in my direction,i didn't even try to block him because i was still frozen by the knife undertow,but Maya bit his leg,ripping a piece of the track suit off(i still have it,she is so proud of it,one of her now favorite toy)but the dude didn't even care and ran for his life,with some of the girl's supposed relative behind him.

He eventually managed to get them off,but the girl father came to me,i thought to thank me,but instead he screamed

"Who the fuck was that guy ? HUH? " weaving the bat around

I looked at the girl telling him to calm down,but he only got more pissed,until the girl ran up to him telling that i helped her,and gave my phone back,after that he calmed down and asked sorry,he told me thanks for helping her girl,and offered me some to grab a coffee at his house (Don't worry,not creepy,it's the lease you can do to say thanks down here ) i politely refused and went home,deciding that it was already too much shit to be put up against for the night ( i still was tired as hell for uni) and slept it off. The next morning police ringed at my bell to take my statement,as the guy managed to run off,and showed me a book with all the signaled photo id's and stuff,but nothing came out of it,he probably wasn't even from nearby,you could tell from his dialect accent (it has slight variation from town to town) and that was the end of it.

I surely did not do the best i could,but i am still glad i could help that little girl,i don't know where she would be if me or someone else didn't show up

So,creepy uncle wanna be guy-let's not meet again.