Under the Knife

By Matt Pagourgis and John Borges

How do you escape a prison that is skin deep?
In 1950’s Hollywood, Kate Ulrich is a desperate starlet who doesn’t have “the look.” Plastic surgery is the answer...until she wakes to discover the doctor has turned her into his dead wife! Kate endures unspeakable horrors as a prisoner in his mansion. She fights to get free, yet learns that escape will bring certain death. Not only is her captor a wanted Nazi surgeon, but the wife he’s recreated in Kate is none other than Sofie Strauss, “The Demon Doll Of The SS.” As a dead ringer for Germany’s most savage war criminal, she becomes the target of ruthless Nazi hunters. She also realizes she has an inescapable responsibility. Looking the way she does, Kate is the only person who can infiltrate and destroy the burgeoning Fourth Reich. From struggling actress to mankind’s last hope, she is cast in the role of a lifetime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: American Pulps LLC
• Release date: Feb 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985740400

Book preview

A cleansing bloodbath…

Kate opened the razor and brought it down on his right forearm, severing muscles and tendons until he couldn’t hold the pistol anymore. It landed on the bathroom tile with a clank.

She dropped to the floor of the shower and slashed at his leg. The razor whispered through his skin, and blood welled from the wound like a mouth spitting jelly. A rush of burgundy coated the room.

Their gore-soaked, naked bodies wrestled over the gun, until she sent him crashing through the frosted shower door. Just that morning, they had held each other as lovers. Now, Kate watched the glass devour him like the jaws of a transparent shark.

She had no time to reflect on fate’s cruelty. The Chancellor would arrive at any moment, and her luxury suite was slick with carnage. Could Kate invent a story that would maintain her cover, or would this be her last stand against the Fourth Reich?

Anyone who doesn’t like Hollywood is either crazy or sober.

— Raymond Chandler

Prologue

Hollywood, California: 1947

Marylin Monroe lay strapped to the operating table. She looked radiant, even with her lips peeled back to reveal bloody fangs. Fresh out of surgery, she thrashed in a frenzy of fear and rage. She was perfect, the doctor could not resist one last caress. His gloved hand dwarfed her fragile features. She couldn’t have been more than a foot tall, but she fought his touch with the ferocity of a cornered beast.

Shrieking, she sank her teeth deep into the doctor’s hand. Blood swelled up from under the latex glove and stained Marilyn's face like a perverse rouge. 

The doctor fought the urge to crush his creation and swallowed the pain, determined not to damage his finest work to date. He wrestled Marilyn into a gilded antique cage, locked the door, and exhaled a disappointed sigh. Despite all her beauty, she was merely an animal just like the rest. They could never appreciate what he had done for them.

Marilyn’s bleeding fingers reached in vain for his throat. The doctor pressed a cattle prod to the bars and shocked her cage, sending her into convulsions. Soon, she would accept the futility of escape. She would submit like Greta, Ava, Rita, and Lana had before her. 

As the world’s most accomplished plastic surgeon, Dr. Thedrick Polk’s passion was bending the quaint savagery of nature to his will. Beauty and pride fueled the Hollywood machine, and he was its invisible Svengali. 

As he presided over the laboratory, he radiated a severe kind of elegance. Dr. Polk was tall and wiry with long gaunt fingers. His mustachioed face was ruggedly handsome and seemed to be hastily carved from rock. His eyes, like his hands, were remarkably still—they were always examining, evaluating. When looking into his eyes, one felt like a cluster of balloons tied to a ship's anchor, whipping, and wobbling all around while those eyes remained unchanged.

It was very late, but the night’s success had filled him with desire. He strolled across the sprawling estate to his private zoo, opened the primate cage, and plucked a shapely specimen. All the other monkeys chattered with protest, but the one he held froze with terror.

If the rich and famous were the doctor’s canvas, these monkeys were his treasured sketch pad. Once transformed, the monkeys became what he would call, a Darling. Dr. Polk was immensely proud of his Darlings, but he would never show them to a soul. Not even his adoring wife Sofie knew about the Lilliputian army of starlets cloistered in their basement laboratory.

Once sedated, the new specimen lay unconscious, ready for its metamorphosis. Dr. Polk relished the total control of these moments. The wretched creature was lush with possibility, a blank slate. Soon, it would awaken, beautiful and uncomprehending. 

Was he a god? No. His many failed experiments glared down from formaldehyde jars and reminded him of that. Their looks of preserved horror admonished him to remain humble. He was merely a vessel for the divine alchemy between the scalpel, subject, and the guiding hand of inspiration. 

Down in his private lab, he was away from the expectations of hospitals and studio heads. Under this cloak of darkness, he could allow his creativity to run wild. All the famous faces he ever crafted were initially perfected in this dungeon.

Stabs of lightning—a rarity in Southern California—bathed the otherwise dim room in a pool of silver, sparking it to attention like a movie set’s klieg lights. For an instant, the flash gave the Darling a skeletal and accusing look, as if the innocent animal’s soul was able to protest one final time. 

The process for each living sculpture was as fresh as the first time, and the desire to push his abilities could be overwhelming. It was best to break the transformation down into simple, manageable tasks. In due course, he would focus on an eye, a hand, a lip, a breast, and so on.

During his formative years, he had learned the virtue of repetition and discipline. This monkey would become his tenth version of Marilyn. The studios demanded perfection, and when he crafted the real thing out of an unknown named Norma Jean, his practiced hand would need to move without the burden of conscious thought. 

He worked quickly. The monkey was small and could only handle the anesthesia for a short time. He'd melt the fur off with chemicals, remove the tail, break bones and reset them. 

While Wagner operas crackled from an old record player, Dr. Polk would spend all night cutting, stitching, injecting, plumping, and plucking. As a finishing touch, he would stitch a wig onto the creature’s head and use a tattoo gun to apply permanent, glamorous makeup. 

The end result would be another miniature silver screen siren whose former monkey-ness would only be revealed by her snarling and spitting disposition. 

•••

Dr. Polk was a thriving testament to the American Dream. Through tireless dedication in the old country, he’d developed a craft. The war had brought him unspeakable tragedy, yet he persevered. He pulled himself back from the brink of death and in a very short time he found salvation in the entertainment capital of the world. 

He’d built a life of opulence and influence, even if the bombs and burning ghettos were always fresh in his memory. Most importantly, he was able to start over with a wife he adored. This miracle could not have happened anywhere else. Yes, Hollywood was truly fertile soil for the hope and triumph of the human spirit. 

PART I: TINSELTOWN

Most of the successful people in Hollywood are failures as human beings.

― Marlon Brando

Chapter One

Hollywood, 1953

He’s gonna want tears, she thought, giving the script a once-over. Kate Ulrich looked at her reflection, surveying her looks. She was done up Monroe style, complete with the mole, her naturally flat hair was sculpted into deep waves. 

Kate loved being blond, the new color was courtesy of Miss Clairol and had been financed by more than a few skipped meals. She caught a shadow on her nose and decided to start her makeup over. 

Eight years of auditions taught her there was a fine line between frigid and clownish. With these peroxide locks she felt she could be the sexy girl next door they were looking for.

•••

Growing up in the coal town of Glouster Ohio, Kate could never have known she was plain by Hollywood standards. That certainly made her former titles of Miss Teen Glouster and Miss Southeast Ohio seem like a cruel joke. In retrospect, those honors not only came with small cash prizes but a lifetime supply of unrealistic expectations. 

Back then she was the belle of the ball, destined for greatness. She never thought there would be a million other girls moving to Hollywood each year with the same story. 

Throughout her career—if you’d call it that—she’d landed a few roles that nobody would remember, and was always relegated to parts that could be described as inconsequential girl number three. The only big picture she’d been in was Sunset Boulevard a few years prior, but she was just in the background for one scene at Schwab’s Drugstore for that, blink and you’d miss her. 

The average man would think Kate Ulrich was very pretty, but the men in Hollywood had brains like birds and were programmed to look for shiny things. Or, as one casting director said when he didn't realize she was within earshot, With a better nose and some decent tits, she'd really be something. 

Sometimes, with the window shades pulled, and the lights off, Kate would pretend to be the other girls she saw at casting calls and imagined how it felt to spill a cascade of sexuality into the camera lens. When morning came, she was once again armed with only her ambition. She was a damn fine actress—Stella Adler herself had said so—but, what good was all that training when she was more ballerina than bombshell? 

She never made any apologies for wanting to be famous, even though pride was one of her mother’s dreaded deadly sins. Ambition and drive were the lifeblood of her adopted hometown, there was no place for piety here. 

As her schoolmates went on to start lives and families, she realized something that a lot of girls in Hollywood learned the hard way. When you first sit in a darkened theater as a child in your backwater shit town, you imagine yourself beaming from that wall with great stars like Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum, showing the small world of your girlhood exactly who you've become. You envision boozy dinners, red carpet premieres, and a transformation only guaranteed to butterflies and swans. But then, after several years of botched auditions and devils’ bargains, you are clambering simply for a role that will prove you didn't waste your youth.

One man had proposed marriage to Kate, and she had turned him down. That was back in Glouster and reciprocating that boy’s devotion would mean spending an eternity as a nobody housewife. Without any exaggeration, she’d rather die.

There had of course been Lloyd Singer, the gifted and struggling screenwriter she dated during her first two years in Tinseltown. He was sensitive and nothing like the controlling roughnecks her childhood boyfriends had grown into—or, Kate assumed they'd grown into. 

Together she and Lloyd would sip wine from a basket-lined bottle in Griffith Park and read his scripts out loud. Kate would perform the female parts and Lloyd would tell her which aspects of the roles were based on her. When she moved into his bungalow, she kept it secret from her parents, the thought of their daughter living in sin would have killed them both. 

In the end, Kate’s premarital cohabitation never had a chance to scandalize her folks. This wasn’t because Lloyd eventually became head of the MGM story department and left Kate for his buxom secretary, he did, but that was later. It was because a gas leak killed both of her parents during the holiday season of nineteen-fifty. Kate often tortured herself with one thought: if she had only come home for Christmas as she’d promised, she could have saved them. 

She instead took the opportunity to earn extra money performing at the many studio holiday parties. She was in high demand because her boyishly shaped body made her perfect for playing the role of an androgynous elf. 

•••

She checked the script and went to work. 

I know you can never love me. A little over the top, she thought. She addressed the mirror as if she was looking down the barrel of a camera lens, I know you can never love me. 

The reflection gave her second thoughts. This character wouldn’t have a Monroe mole above her lip. She dabbed at it with a handkerchief, erasing the only similarity between her and the sex symbol. After reapplying blush to her cheeks she looked at the script’s next few pages. 

Another take: more tears, less hysterical, I know you can never love me. Because radiation makes me crave human blood!

She grimaced. Who was she kidding? This is a piece of B-movie trash she would have been too good for years ago. The casting director wasn’t gonna want tears, he was gonna want ta-tas. 

Kate pulled a handful of tissues from a floral print box, folded them with practiced precision, and placed them into the left cup of her bra. She repeated the ritual with the right cup and looked at the improvement without expression. She’d merely gone from a set of plums to tangerines. 

Today she was trying out a new dress for this audition since her lucky dress hadn’t been so lucky the past five years. This one was a red halter number with matching heels and an adorable red scarf. The dress was worth depleting her funds for. Kate looked good and she knew it.

As she skimmed the script for her next line, there was a loud bang at her door. It sounded like someone was knocking with an elephant’s fist. 

Ulrich! It was her landlord, Ms. Bowman. Kate froze, afraid the ancient floorboards would creak. 

Ms. Bowman’s bellow was tuned to the key of Pall Mall. I know you’re in there. I can smell the hairspray! Kate could hear the mechanics of a key being inserted into the lock. The doorknob was moving. 

She took one last look in the mirror, grabbed the script, a couple of headshots, and headed for the fire escape. Ms. Bowman opened the door as Kate hoisted her legs through the windowsill and raced down the grated steps.

Rent’s late missy, I don’t run a rescue for lost tarts.

•••

Manifest Pictures was located on Gower Street in Hollywood, rubbing shoulders with other small studios that made up Poverty Row. Even though they weren’t pumping out Academy Award winning content, it still buzzed with an intoxicating bustle that all studio lots had. She passed groups of cowboys, Martians, pharaohs, and deep-sea monsters all talking shop while a small-scale Roman colosseum wheeled past them. She felt like a seventeen-year-old girl again, remembering the rush of her first screen tests. 

Kate knew Manifest Pictures well and could have found her destination blindfolded. She ambled up the well-worn steps to the entrance of her personal dream purgatory—a door labeled casting. 

The casting office was up on the second floor of Building 38. It stood perched above the writers’ offices. The atmosphere made Lloyd creep back into Kate’s memory. From what she’d heard, Lloyd had three kids and a small estate out in Glendale now. 

Kate sat in the waiting room amid a gaggle of beautiful, Nordic women the writers downstairs would have called statuesque. Kate realized she was clutching her headshot against her chest and eased her posture.

A predictably busty secretary called her into the casting director’s office. Marv Barry had a legendary eye for talent, according to Marv Barry. He also had legendary octopus hands.

When Kate walked across the threshold, the rotund Marv was sitting at his desk with an annoyed look on his face. Next to a stack of headshots there was a tumbler glass filled with 4 fingers of whiskey, a half-eaten pastrami sandwich, and a smoldering ashtray with cigar butts protruding out. It was eleven A.M. 

Kate waited for Marv to acknowledge her. He simply grunted as he dug through a drawer. Kate remained poised as if addressing a rapt audience. 

I’ll be reading scene seventeen, I’ll be reading for—

Marv cut her off. Stand straight for me, doll. Push your shoulders back.

Kate stood with a perfect Sears model posture. Marv wrinkled his bulbous nose and gestured for her to turn around by twirling his sausage fingers. 

Kate complied, doing her best to remain demure while selling what she had. By the time she had rotated forty-five degrees, Marv was more interested in his cigar. 

Oh yeah, I remember you. I didn’t recognize you as a blond.

As a reflex, Kate touched her hair.

Yeah, it’s the new me. What do you think?

Yeah, yeah, real nice.

Marv put the cigar up to his lips and sucked in a few times trying to resuscitate the old stogie. Satisfied, he twirled his finger as if to say, On with it.

Kate placed a crisp headshot and resume on the desk. 

I’m going to be reading from the scene in the scientist’s bedroom on page 66.

Great, fine, go.

From the moment she started speaking, Kate’s focus was so intense, one could almost hear the film score punctuating the scene’s emotion. Darling Edgar, it would never work between the two of us. I’ve waited all these years to find someone like you. She walked towards Marv with her most seductive look. The look gave way to anguish as the scene took an agonizing turn for the character. And now I know you can never love me. . . Because radiation makes me crave human blood! She fell to her knees and wiped perfectly timed tears from her face. Oh, the shame!

The intensity of Kate’s performance briefly took Marv’s attention from his pastrami. He raised an eyebrow as if to say, goddamn honey, you didn’t have to turn this bullshit into a genuine moment.

Marv readjusted his poker face. He took a drag from his cigar and looked at her resume. Kate knew she’d hooked him, but the silence was suffocating. 

"It says here you played the nurse in War For His Heart."

That’s right.

War For His Heart was the perfect launching pad for Kate. She had landed a supporting role in the Humphrey Bogart film as a shy wartime nurse who pined for Bogey as he recovered in the hospital. It was the biggest and best role she had done by far. It was going to change her life.

Marv belched his answer in a cloud of smoke. 

Delila Gladwell played that role.

Kate stammered. Well, I was originally cast.

Marv was serious now; he had adopted a scolding tone. I know. I re-cast you.

Marv stood up, breadcrumbs tumbled down his shirt and onto his desk’s ink blotter. He walked over to an alcove in his office and towards the private couch. 

Come on in here sweetie. 

This was new. Kate was very familiar with the concept of the casting couch, but only through other actresses' stories. She recognized the situation but did not know how to acknowledge it without insulting the man who held her future in his hands. 

Kate made a split decision to hazard the closed door. She told herself that she’d be able to handle any potential crisis. She’d vowed long ago not to be one of those girls, and she wasn’t about to start sleeping her way into roles now. 

Besides, despite the soft exterior, Kate was a Glouster girl. If Marv tried something unsavory, she’d strike out at any part of him that poked or dangled. 

Marv was already on the couch. He patted the fabric, instructing Kate to take the spot next to him. Kate paused but complied. She sat down—ankles crossed—and strained to affect an air of disinterested professionalism. She hoped to appear like she didn’t need the job. She was failing. Kate placed her purse on her lap. It gave her the dubious comfort of a flimsy barrier. 

Look sweetie, you’ve read for me a hundred times, but you still don’t know the game.

Marv leaned in. Kate’s body tensed, but he didn't move closer. She reached in her purse, grabbing her keys as a weapon. 

Marv laughed and a tidal wave of smells—pastrami, tobacco, unflossed teeth, and whiskey with bitters—spilled out of his mouth. Oh, trust me, I’m not gonna try nothin’. He opened the Venetian blinds a crack and ogled the bombshells in the waiting area. Don't get me wrong, I ain't no boy scout, I just don't wanna spoil my appetite. 

Marv leaned back and puffed his cigar. Look, you can act and you’re uh, kinda cute in real life. But you don’t have what it takes to turn men on. Not on the screen anyways. 

Thanks, Marv. As always I’m grateful for your candor. Kate said this in a kind of strained politeness of an overworked stewardess on a redeye from Newark, Thank you for flying PanAm. Have a nice day. 

Marv didn’t catch that she had stopped listening at this point. Her afternoon wasted; hopeless and jobless, she sat with a thousand-yard stare as Marv waxed poetic about himself. 

Hey, I’m cultured. I can appreciate a thespian without uh, he pantomimed cupping breasts with his hands in front of his chest, attributes. 

Kate interrupted, suddenly unconcerned with her standing at Manifest Pictures.    

 "Sure. But it takes a decent set-a-tits and a button nose to play Shelley in Atomic Age Frankenstein."

People ain’t watching this shit for the story, okay. It’s my job to cast women who will distract the audience from all the plot holes. It’s bad enough they blacklisted half our writers for being Commies, I sure as shit can’t let my talent slip neither.

He opened the door to let her out. Kate fumed. Marv made a half-hearted attempt at advice. I’m doin’ you a favor doll. Go back home while you can still catch a husband. He then put on his charming voice and pointed to a Scandinavian beauty bursting out of her blouse. 

C’mon dollface, you’re next.

Kate walked out; her face was on fire. Her heart was beating a mile a minute. Tears of humiliation boiled behind her eyes.

She surveyed the women. Competing with them was useless. Every audition was like challenging them to a game of rock, paper, scissors with only flippers for hands. She took a deep breath, grabbed a tissue from her bra, dabbed at the corner of her misting eyes, and walked out. 

•••

Kate had never considered giving up. But she had just given herself the first ultimatum of its kind. She would finally watch War For His Heart. If the woman that replaced her was a better actress, objectively better, then she would consider an alternative future. 

Kate had been avoiding watching this film for months. She avoided it when it first came out and thought she would be able to avoid it in the second run theaters. 

But, after walking from Gower all the way to the junction of Sunset and Hollywood Boulevard, she bought a ticket at the Vista Theatre for War For His Heart.

As Kate paid at the box office, she could feel a man’s eyes on her. He was across the street, an apparition in a fedora and long coat. She hurried through the doorway into the anonymous safety of the dark cinema.  

The movie started and Kate instantly forgot about the man. Chain-smoking and reciting the dialogue in a half-empty theater, bitter and heartbroken, she thought only of Delila Gladwell.

Tears, (on this occasion, terribly timed) welled in her eyes. Some Glouster girl you are. She thought to herself, You’d better toughen up!

But there was no time for those thoughts now. Her big scene came on, and although she knew what to expect, her heart abscessed. Katheryn Madeline Ulrich was not the actress on the screen.

She took a drag and said the line she delivered to the cutting room floor. Her replacement, the bimbo, came bursting into Bogart’s hospital room as graceful as a one-legged swan. 

I’m afraid I need to get a sample of your blood, Sergeant. 

To which Bogey replied, Then you better get an ice pack sweetheart cuz it’s boilin’ at the sight of you. 

If someone had put Kate’s cigarette out in her eye, it would not have broken her trance of fury. This actress was no garden variety bimbo. In fact, she was not a woman as much as she was a swelling explosion of flesh. A platinum blonde bombshell with ivory curves and fertility goddess breasts that rose like biscuits from the top of her nurse uniform. Her voice was breathy and vulnerable. 

Kate hated her. 

But there was hope. There was light. There was an excuse for Kate to extend her Quixotic quest for stardom. The girl on the screen was terrible. She delivered lines like a record player installed behind a set of double-Ds. 

Suddenly, some time during the bridge between the second and third act, Kate’s senses were alert. She could feel someone’s eyes on hers. 

Someone is not watching the movie; they’re looking at me. She thought. 

He’s in here.

Chapter Two

The man was watching her.

She waited until the bombing scene, where the good guys firebomb Dresden and smash the hun to smithereens. The bombers came roaring onto the screen in a cacophony of sound. That was Kate's cue, she walked down the aisle toward the exit at the bottom of the stairs, left of the screen. 

It was dark outside and poorly lit in the back alley of the theater. She was turned around and didn’t realize until she had walked a few blocks that she was going the wrong way down Sunset Boulevard. That was when she saw Monogram Pictures, a low budget studio where she once auditioned for the role of a school teacher in a B-Western. 

The streets weren’t desolate, but they were quiet. Only a few cars rambled down Sunset, most of them heading south to Echo Park and Downtown. Kate needed to be in the safety of a crowd. She walked up to the gatehouse and approached a dull-eyed guard. 

Kate clutched her portfolio and purse, adopting the harried look of an overworked assistant. 

Hi, I ran back from the printers with this stack of headshots for Mister Lionel, but I left my pass on the counter at Schwab's. I have to drop these off before tomorrow’s casting session or I'm gonna get canned. 

The guard smirked. He enjoyed his autonomy as sole gatekeeper. Just be quick about it, young lady. 

Kate thanked the man profusely and hurried into the studio lot. 

Kate thought, Let’s see Delilah Gladwell pull off that acting stunt. Of course, Kate knew the bimbo wouldn’t have to. The guard would have probably given her his car if she’d asked. 

Kate stalled on the lot for as long as she could, but she had to get home. She felt safe leaving Monogram Pictures, whoever was following her would have assumed she was going back to work and go find some other girl to scare. What she didn’t expect was that when she tried to leave from the side entrance further north up Sunset and closer to Vista Theatre, that her admirer would be standing there waiting. 

He had his back to her, but she recognized that it was the same shadow in a fedora. She closed the side door and walked across the studio lot again and exited the way she came in, waving goodbye to the security guard. 

As she made her way down the street she didn’t see or hear the man. She was safe. Regardless, Kate kept walking on Hollywood Boulevard as fast as her ‘lucky heels’ allowed. This residential part of Hollywood had fewer storefronts, streetlights, and