Every time I drive by the roadside sign "Corn Maze", I point at the sign for the benefit of fellow passengers, and verbalize the grim addendum: "With Minotaur." My audience usually misses the sign completely, or takes no interest. Maybe it's just not funny, but the obstinacy of tradition seems to sustain its own comedy and, while I'm less excitable with each successive encounter of "Corn Maze" signage, my commitment never wanes.

Tradition attenuates with time, symbol more and more resembling symbol. I am considering a change, after many years of imagining a (mere) Minotaur at the heart of all corn mazes. "Doom Minotaur", suggestive of an especially pernicious beast, a Minotaur's Minotaur, perhaps that could freshen the tradition. "Doom Minotaur! Rise and SEIZE YOUR REVENGE," I could cry out to the fields as I drive by, chilling the children of the maze, parents drawing them near, love stoked by fear, as I catch their shrieks in cups of gold.

But "Doom Minotaur" is not scary enough. Blood Minotaur? Skull Minotaur? Skin Minotaur, Master of Crete, Guardian of Black Fate? Ah, but we are getting carried away. To justify so much thought and consideration, we first need a cornfield to accommodate our deranged autumnal labyrinth. And we've yet to engineer the beast, or devise the elaborate subterfuge by which we will entrap children in the green-yellow hell.

The nefarious beast would naturally prefer to feast on innocent children. For Skull Minotaur, dining isn't so much a means of sustenance as it is the loving process by which he expands his collection; so resplendently polished the relics of past feasts, witnessing his joy for life and hobby fills our own hearts to bursting.

Blood Minotaur, accursed and venerable, singular beast, one thing he does not do is kill. Queerly, it is rumored that one cannot die in his presence. His prisoners he refers to as "fountains", and none who escape his lair (or are discharged by him?) ever command mortal language again.

We must summon the diabolical craft and cunning of the ancients to populate our amazing maize maze with tasty human treats, to best enjoy our cold-served revenge. Last night, I sought congress with demons; I covered my naked body in peanut butter and wandered out deep into the forbidden wood, where I burned a lamb and flayed myself half to death with a cat o' nine, honoring ancient tradition. I intended to sacrifice the lamb, but it started to freak out after I set it on fire, and it managed to kick its way free, escaping into the night, a mobile torch of confusion and fear, burning still in the ever-distant darkness.

It was quite warm, the night sky was clear, but lightning blazed down around me with the suddenness of lightning, enveloping me, the peanut butter coalescing with the blood of my flayed wounds into creamy epiphany: thereby delivered unto me a demon the boundless wisdom of hell, the perfect plan for the perfect corn maze signage, as only the glorious genius of evil could discern and render:

"Corn Maze, with Skin Minotaur. Children Welcome! Candy!"

Let us now embark upon that plan so perfect it seems not even to need us.