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I am Conrad Nagel, some say I look like the film star of the same name, but I dont see it. I started writing horror fiction in high school after reading Mary Shellys Frankenstein. The book had a euphoric effect on me that I would later find in drugs - it made me want to control life, to be just like God. I didnt have the same knack for science that I did for English so I started writing, creating everything that my real world didnt have.
Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I might do it for a living. Oh sure it was a dream of mine, but I couldnt imagine getting to do what I love for money. It was a college professor at the University of Washington that submitted one of my fictional papers in to a horror magazine. He didnt even tell me until it was published and he handed me a copy of the magazine and a check for $5. I was officially a professional writer from that day on.
It was in Seattle that I made my first connection into the horrifying underworld, Skinny the Deformed Barber. I met Skinny at a girls house. I met her on the street; she said she was having a party and invited me to come. Not being able to resist my own curiosity, I went, and my life was never the same.
Skinny and I took to each other right off. His face, which had no nose to speak of, intrigued me. A stroke deadened the nerves in the right side of his face giving him a very sad look. Most people were afraid to look at him I, on the other hand, couldnt take my eyes off the human Halloween mask that sat in front of me. I talked to him just so I could get a closer look. As it turned out, a guy turned Skinnys own razor on him and sliced off most of his nose after getting a bad haircut. The way Skinny tells it, the guy was high on devils weed when he did it, but Skinny got him back. He blew the guys brains out with a shotgun several days later.
So it was at this particular party that I was not only introduced to Skinny, but what he had with him and why he was at this party, opium. Skinnys barbering was a front for his real trade, drug trafficking. After talking to him for a while he offered me some. Two seconds after smoking that stuff I was on another planet. People took on a melancholy hue that only drugs can produce. The world was doing just fine and I was in heaven looking down from the clouds. The world became a far more interesting place.
Skinny seemed to know everybody in Seattle. He was the dope supplier for most of the town, high society down the lowest crumbs on the street. People called him Skinny the Barber because he still cut hair as a hobby and a way to keep the heat off. Skinny also had a connection in all the papers and the magazines based in Seattle, one of which was Fiend. Fiend was a horror magazine that did cartoons as well as short stories. In one afternoon I became a staff writer who specialized in original short stories. My pay was $800 a year, which was fine with me. I became entrenched in the opium world and the rest of the wicked world mattered very little. I lived simply, well within my means, living on writing, girls and drugs.
It was during a high one afternoon that I fell in love with a woman named Donna. She was a hot blond with a great body, but what really did it for me were her feet. I dont know if it was the drug or the fact that I was just a sick bastard, but I was obsessed and fell head over heels with her lovely, lovely feet. I looked at those feet for two hours before even saying a word to her, not that I could if I even tried, but it didnt matter. When we started dating she said I was warped because when I checked out a girl the first thing I looked at were her feet. I could imagine them through stockings, through shoes, through anything and I had a compulsion to see them. My imagination kept me alive in more ways than one. But I did a good job for the rag, writing all the same. I always made my deadlines and developed a good reputation in the industry. Donna moved in with me after a few months of dating and life just got sweeter and sweeter.
Apparently my reputation went further than Seattle and after about a year I was offered a job in San Francisco as a staff writer for another horror magazine that offered a little more money called The Black Mask. I was sad to leave Skinny and all my friends in Seattle, Donna most of all. Yeah I left Donna. I was bored of her. One day after getting the call I packed up all I could in a couple of suitcases, mounted them onto my Harley, took a few uppers and rode into San Francisco to start my new life.
I called Skinny as soon as I got to SF and he told me about a speakeasy he used to go to when he was in town where you could get good drugs and nice, healthy women. It had everything, overlooking the San Francisco Bay. I got a flat nearby, which was close enough to walk to the speakeasy and a short ride to work.
It was in the back room of this particular speakeasy, on an intense opium high, staring at a young girl named Alices rotting toenails that I heard someone call my name. I had no idea who it was, but I could tell by the sound of his voice that it was somebody rich. |
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