From the slinking side streets came a slippery serpentine man of five three. His hat leaked glossy hardened teardrops where it hit his head, like it was fastened on to hide something lurking under its surface.

The man had eyes of soup, which swirled around his head and hardened into irises only when he looked back at you. His jacket was waterproof and he carried an umbrella, a clear sign of foreignness in this wet city where we all accept the inevitability of wetness, knowing we will once again be dry.

He tapped the umbrella along as he walked, the rhythm creating a hum like a Tibetan singing bowl. This hum dismantles buildings and rewires digital devices with its frequency, one which is almost imperceptible to human ears.

I came upon him one day by the Richard Harris statue where he perched on King Arthur's head. the only point of contact between the gracious copper deity and the alien specimen was the millimeter round tip of his umbrella. His limbs wrapped around its sheath in tender grasping and he called out to me in (what i assume was) his native tongue.

Though the sounds he produced were ones I've never heard and could never reproduce with my human mouth, they were as clear to me as a pint glass. He beckoned me toward him and told me of his home planet, where they walk upside down and eat spaghetti for breakfast. He lamented the loss of his home and cursed the politicians who forced his leaving with their unfit policies.

He cried out -

“I come from Shantaria, my beauteous motherland, I am nowhere now, in this world of otherness, I was disheired from my promised wondrousness and thrust to earth like a common homunculus.”

As his words filled the air on Bedford Row, people flocked to watch him in his preaching. I was overcome with a sense of community, as we all became entranced with his manner of speech which we had never before heard, yet somehow intrinsically understood.

He opened his vacuous mouth to continue when a pigeon was flung from behind me. It spun through the air, confused at the velocity and unable to coordinate itself to avoid its upcoming collision. The thud of its body against the shaft of the umbrella which platforms our great speaker sent shivers in between my vertebrae.

For a split second, the preacher moved not, and the crowd held its breath in anticipation of his levitation.

That split second was gone suddenly, and all that fell to the ground was the umbrella, leaving no trace of the soup-eyed man who had been wrapped around it a moment previous. A chorus of elated voices behind me began;

“serves him right, dirty fucking foreigner” said one,

“go back to your own planet, cunt” says another,

and the voices echoed and culminated into a raucous mob, who promptly broke the umbrella and began hunting for my wonderful Shantarian friend.

He was never seen again, although very few know what ever happened to him.

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Thank you for your time in reading my experience, please if you see this man speak kindly to him and as always, report any supernatural occurrences to the good folks at lmao061 who are doing the work to keep Limerick safe.