Ooter's Place: A Sampler

by Karl El-Koura

He tried to nod but couldn’t—he was in a neck brace.

  “Yes,” he said. “I think so.”

  He was in a hospital bed, select body parts wrapped in casts. Flowers and cards filled the small, private room.

  “How much do you remember?” she asked.

  He was Matt Peber, actor. They had been filming on location for a scene in his latest project when an explosion sent him flying; he landed in a large dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant. When he awoke, he found himself in a costume and believed he was a superhero. A few days later, he had an encounter with Zortran, played by Bronson Skeet. He remembered everything.

  “Thank God,” Ann said. “We were afraid there might be permanent memory loss or brain damage.”

  She kissed him on the cheek and he winced in pain.

  “I don’t know what I would have done if you woke up thinking you were still Alpha,” she said. “That was my biggest fear.”

  “Why?” he asked, trying to prop himself up but failing. “I was helping people.”

  Ann had a sad look on her face. “No, you weren’t,” she said. “You were just making a fool of yourself.”

  “I was helping people,” Matt said stubbornly.

  Ann shook her head. Did she think he was still crazy? He didn’t want her to think that. But he had helped people, hadn’t he? That old lady, and the careless mother? And those kids he’d given the talking-to? The storekeeper and the screaming lady held up at gunpoint?

  “Are we still shooting the movie?” he asked, trying to change the topic.

  Ann shrugged. “Not sure,” she said. Was it his imagination or was she suddenly cold? “Maybe later; right now we’re on indefinite hiatus.”

  “Where’s the costume?” he asked, trying to make the question sound innocent.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “In storage, with the rest of the props, of course,” she said, definitely displeased. Then, almost to herself, she added, “I was afraid of this.”

  Matt reached out his good arm and ran his fingers through her hair.

  “Don’t be cold,” he said. “Please.”

  Her face softened and she planted another painful kiss on his cheek. “Please tell me you don’t think you’re a superhero,” she said.

  “I don’t think I’m a superhero,” he answered reasonably. “I just think that I might be able to help people, if I were given the chance. That’s all.”

  Ann got up. “We’ll talk about it later,” she said and left him all alone in the room. It didn’t escape his notice that she hadn’t kissed him good-bye.

  Forget Ann, he told himself. He was surrounded by cards and flowers and candy from other people, people who cared about him. He gathered up the cards he could reach and read through them. Most told him not to feel embarrassed about what happened. It wasn’t his fault. It was all in the past, anyway, and worrying about past embarrassments, even when they were played out so publicly, was a waste of energy.

  He pushed the cards off his bed.

  He picked up the remote control and turned on the television. He surfed through the channels absentmindedly—until he saw his name. There was a panel discussion on him. One of the panelists thought the whole thing had been some kind of advance promotion for the film. All the panelists agreed that, whatever it was, the idea of some guy running around in his underwear, trying to help people, was just hilarious. “I wish I’d been there to see it,” one of them said and they all laughed. On another channel, an anchorman related the story with a smirk, shaking his head as if he could hardly believe it himself. The anchorman reminded his viewers that it takes all kinds of people to make up this world of ours.

  Matt had a lot of time to think in the days he spent recovering in that lonely hospital room. He had been a fool, hadn’t he? He really hadn’t helped anyone—except to a good laugh at his expense.

  Was he finished as an actor? Could anyone take him seriously again? Or was he forever a laughing stock, the crazy freak who for a short time thought he was a superhero?

  It didn’t matter. The only thing he could do was to put the whole experience behind him. The public had a short memory and they’d soon forget all about it. Soon, newscasts and editorials would stop ridiculing him. Soon, comedians would take their shots at someone else.

  He didn’t want to make the movie anymore. It would only serve as a constant reminder of his foolishness, his moment of temporary insanity played out so publicly. He wanted to put the Defender—or Alpha or whatever he was called—as far behind him as possible.

  He couldn’t wait to tell Ann the good news.

  Part III

  Stories of Love

  They Came From Ooter’s Place

  FOREWORD

  “They Came From Ooter’s Place” is the first story of mine to be paid for and published.

  When I was a teenager, I suffered from rather severe facial acne. Facial acne is weird: you don’t see it unless you’re looking in a mirror, so often you forget that you even have it. But when you’re conscious of your acne, you can’t imagine that anyone who looks at you could be seeing anything else. On what must have been one of these “acne-conscious“ days, I had an idea for a story about a boy suffering from a progressively worsening case of acne. One day while sitting in his high school’s cafeteria eating his lunch, he becomes aware that everyone is staring in horror at his face. His pimples are growing, maybe even glowing. Then they pop explosively, and spaceships come flying out of them, shooting lasers at his classmates, killing everyone and especially the girls he wanted to date.

  Gross as it is, I still like the idea (and the title I came up with: “They Came From Ooter’s Face”). The problem, of course, is what kind of punch could a spaceship tiny enough to fit inside a pimple actually pack? Lasers notwithstanding, couldn’t one just swat them down and out of existence? So I thanked my brain for the idea but decided to pass…except the notion of an alien invasion wouldn’t go away.

  You don’t know Ooter, most likely. You don’t know about the invasion, neither, but that’s why I’m telling you about it. Anyway, Ooter used to be my best friend, and he didn’t know about the invasion till after it was too late, so there’s no use in trying to blame him for anything I’m about to tell you. Like I said, Ooter was my best friend once, and he wouldn’t want to hurt anybody that never hurt him. Ooter’s huge—taller than my dad, actually. If he’s around, the school librarian will ask him to reach books for her, on account of not wanting to haul out the ladder. Also on account of her being afraid of heights. I been on the ladder once, it’s not so bad. Anyway, Ooter’s huge, so all the bullies leave us alone, even though he never once beat any of them up.

  Like I said, Ooter didn’t know about the invasion at first, and I know you’re thinking that’s on account of him being a little slow, but there’s no truth in that, because, you know, he figured it out pretty quickly when he got the chance. Which I forgot to tell you—Ooter was a little slow some times. His family had moved down here from Germany or someplace like that, and Ooter was having a lot of problems with English, even though his parents could speak it fine.

  So even if he did know about the invasion, which, like I said, he didn’t, he couldn’t have told no one about it anyway. Except for me, but no one ever takes anything I say for serious—except for Marty’s dad, I guess, but that’s for later. Ooter and me understood each other, even though he didn’t really understand English, and I for sure didn’t understand whatever language he was speaking. We just kind of knew what the other was trying to say.

  Anyway, Ooter invited me over to dinner a while ago, after I had explained to him that, on account of us being best friends, we had to have dinner at each other’s house. His mother, who was very nice to me, had cooked some German delicacy or something, but it tasted okay anyway. After dinner, Ooter gave me a tour of the house, and in his basement was the biggest and weirdest looking television set I’ve ever seen in my life. It took up an entire wall all by itself.

  I could tell, just by lo
oking at his face, that Ooter wasn’t supposed to be playing with it. Now I didn’t want to get him into trouble or anything, but I explained that, when you’re still young, you’re supposed to do silly things, so you can learn and grow up.

  So Ooter went and turned on the television. But his dad had the Playboy channel or something hooked up, ’cause we only got this screen that wanted to know the password. There was a box full of symbols at the bottom of the screen, and we tried some of them randomly, but it didn’t get us nowhere. It was getting late, and I had to go home, so I told Ooter to keep cracking at it. But by this time, Ooter was thinking that maybe we should forget about the whole thing. So I explained to him about the Playboy channel.

  The next morning, at school, Ooter didn’t look so good. What happened was he finally cracked the password. But instead of beautiful girls dancing in the nude, what he saw was this really ugly insect-monster like they have in old science-fiction movies. And this monster starts walking toward the screen, and Ooter races up the stairs and spills his guts to his parents.

  But instead of getting angry, his father smiles and does nothing. And all of a sudden, this guy marches up the basement stairs and Ooter’s parents tell him, “Say hello to your Uncle Bob, Ooter,” or whatever, and it turns out that Uncle Bob brought his wife and two children with him.

  Now I mentioned that Ooter was a little slow, but he knew something was wrong right away. So the next couple of days, he watched his parents real carefully. And he had more family members march up those basement stairs in the next few weeks than I care to count.

  I decided never to go to Ooter’s place for dinner after that first time, on account of my thinking that maybe his parents were on an exchange program and I for sure didn’t want to end up in a world full of giant insects or anything. Ooter kept telling me all kinds of stories about how all these insect-things were coming through his dad’s television screen and then turning into people. At that point was when I asked Ooter if we should inform the authorities, call 911 or something, but him and I agreed that it was too late for anything to be done and that no one would believe us anyway. Of course, by this time, Ooter had figured out that at least a good number of the authorities in town were really insect-things disguised as people, and they’d probably be pretty ticked if we ratted them out. Ooter knew exactly who was an insect-person, because his father kept meticulous records or something, so he could make up library cards and stuff for them.

  So Ooter and I would discuss what we should do about it, like how we should stop the invasion, right? But we weren’t no superkids or anything, and it’s not like in the cartoons. “If it weren’t for you darned kids, the invasion would have worked perfectly!” I once told Ooter, but he didn’t get it. We’d get really excited talking about what we could do, but we never decided on any definite action or anything.

  Some weeks passed, and Ooter was telling me who was an insect-thing on the inside and who wasn’t. So when we had this new teacher come in, Ooter told me that the new teacher was an insect-thing. His name was Mr. Bellemont, and he was pretty nice, except that he gave us too much homework. And that he got really mad when we didn’t do it.

  And that he made us read this book called “My Teacher is An Alien” or something, which is not a funny thing as far as I’m concerned. They should be afraid or something, you know? But they go around, practically telling normal people that they’re a bunch of insect-things.

  Anyway, about a week ago, I convinced Ooter to talk to his parents about the whole thing. But I guess that didn’t go so good, because he never spoke to me again. I mean, he’d just tell me to leave him alone and stuff, but I don’t really care. Marty’s my new best friend, and he’s not big like Ooter, so the bullies started bothering me again, but at least he doesn’t have insect-people coming out of his house, which is more than I can say for some people, right?

  A couple of days ago, I told Marty about this whole thing, after making him promise to keep it a secret. I had to say something, on account of him being my best friend. But Marty broke his promise and told his dad. He invited me over to his house day before yesterday, which is when I found out that he had told his dad. So his dad asked me if I could name all the people I thought might be insect-people, and he promised me a dollar for every one I named, so I really put on my thinking cap. I named only eighteen or something, ’cause those were the only ones I was sure about, but his dad gave me a twenty anyway. Marty wasn’t too happy about that, so his dad gave him twenty dollars too.

  That night, I went and did all my homework. And I come to school the next day all happy, on account of having done all my homework. But there’s this new teacher, and she starts talking about something completely different, so no one even checks that I did my homework, which makes a guy wish he never wasted his time doing his homework, you know?

  And another thing that ticks me off is that Ooter’s moved away or something, and he didn’t even have the decency to say goodbye to me. He wasn’t at school yesterday, and he’s not here today. I called his house yesterday night, but no one picked up. So I dropped by, completely forgetting about the whole exchange program thing with the insect world. But it didn’t matter. The driveway was empty, and I rang the bell till my hands dropped off, but no one answered.

  Did You Enjoy This Sampler?

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  Copyright Information

  Copyright 2011 by Karl El-Koura

  ISBN: 978-0-987-69386-0

  Cover art: “Heaven and Hell” by Olga El-Koura (acrylic on canvas)

  Cover design: Kirsten Appleyard and Karl El-Koura

  Publication History

  “How You Die” was published in Issue 2 (Spring 2005) of Surreal Magazine.

  “The Man Who Mistook Himself for a Superhero” was published in the Number 18 (July 2004) issue of Challenging Destiny.

  “They Came From Ooter's Place” was published in Issue 29 (March 1998) of SpaceWays Weekly and reprinted in The Annual Best of SpaceWays Weekly 1998.

  The author is grateful to the editors of these magazines for their support and encouragement, especially Rigel Chiokis and Dave Switzer.

  About the Author

  Karl El-Koura was born in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in 1979 and currently lives in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada). He has published more than sixty short stories and articles. Karl holds a second-degree black belt in Okinawan Goju Ryu karate, is an avid commuter-cyclist, and works for the Canadian Federal Public Service.

  Karl maintains an online home at https://www.ootersplace.com, where you can discover more work by him and keep up-to-date with his latest news. He can be reached at karl@ootersplace.com.

  A Note from the Author

  Now that you've read this book, please consider taking a few moments to post a comment on your favorite book review site to let others know what you thought. Reviews help readers discover authors they may be interested in, so even a quick line or two is helpful and appreciated.

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  How You Die

  The Man Who Mistook Himself for a Superhero

  They Came From Ooter's Place

  Did You Enjoy This Sampler?

  Copyright Information

  Publication History

  About the Author

  A Note from the Author