The World According to Lothar: Spooky Halloween Edition

Hello, my dear friends. My name is Lothar Von Rasmussen. I am a free thinking Neo-Kantist, Dominican cigar aficionado, connoisseur of Swedish women and equally fine French brandy, bidding salutations from Zurich, Switzerland, the world's cradle of refined taste and invention.

Happy Halloween to my friends and fans in the States. The great circle of life reaches terminus each fall, the amber golden tumble of crisply blowing leaves offer brief enchanting fascination before the cold, desolate winter months cloak the northern latitudes in a lifeless blanket of icy snow and frost.

Today, I propose a somewhat unhappy conundrum:

Would you like a new face?

Recent advancements in microsurgery have taken this seemingly impossible notion out of the realm of Dorian Gray and into medical reality. So, what would you like to be? Irresistibly Handsome? Chiseled and stoic? Strikingly beautiful? Think very carefully before you decide.

Consider the case of the world's first successful facial transplant recipient, Draco Czolg. Czolg, whose own face was virtually stripped from his skull in a motorcycle accident on New Years day, 1999, underwent 72 hours of surgery to have a new face painstakingly attached, suture by suture, one nerve ending, one muscle at a time onto the shattered remnants of his own.

After several healing months, doctors gently uncoiled the suffocating mask of mummy like bandages from Czolg's new face and held a mirror for him to see.

A brief look of elation illuminated Czolg's face as he saw, for the first time in 10 years, normal featured lips, eyes, nose and ears in the mirror, and then suddenly, in a blinding flash of recognition, the look of elation turned to one of horror.

The mirror slipped from Czolg's hand, crashing to the floor.

What had terrified Draco Czolg so?

Unknown to Czolg, the donor of his new face was someone he had known from his past. Someone he had tried all of his life to forget.

The face he saw in the mirror...his new face...the face he would don the remainder of his life, was posthumously salvaged from a Leopold Maxim, an old high school classmate whom Czolg had made a concerted effort, with great zeal and pleasure, of savagely beating every time they had crossed paths.

Maxim rarely escaped Czolg's wrath

On the deafening school bus, in the desolate halls, or on the forlorn walk home, when and where mattered not, Czolg had made Maxim his mark. When the hapless, slightly statured Maxim would pathetically plead "W-why me?", Czolg, in a roaring, sadistic voice would systematically respond with savage glee:

"Because I don't like your face, that's why!"

And now, the face that Czolg had sought out, taunted, and mercilessly pummeled with his powerful fists for so many years, now indelibly belonged to him.

The moral is, sit back, have a sip of gently warmed Cognac and a smooth smoke of your favorite choice. Think of your greatest, most passionate hearts desire...

Now, use all the powers of your imagination to conjure the consequences if your wish were granted.

Be careful what you wish for. Your wish may come true.

Happy Halloween,
Lothar