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Welcome to Your Nightmare: The Labyrinth is full of unusual haunted-house creations like this one. Printer's Devil Metro Santa Cruz's Staff Demon offers a glimpse into the Labyrinth--the local haunted house that will tear your soul apart ... with family fun! By Hexamorpheus, King of Demons, Sovereign of the Bottomless Pit GREETINGS, fleshy, succulent mortal readers of Metro Santa Cruz! All shall hear the demon roar of Hexamorpheus as he recounts the unspeakable mayhem he hath unleashed upon your feeble world in an effort to inform you about the Labyrinth, the annual Halloween happening that puts a clever spin on the traditional haunted house! But first, what's that inside your chest? A bloody slab of muscle thump-splatting, perhaps? The sloppy, pulsating meat of your soul ... which you won't be needing any longer. Mwoohahahahaha! Ahahhahaha! Ha ha! Where was I? Oh yes. The journalistic methods of Hexamorpheus are known and feared across all planes of existence. Empires have crumbled in abject terror at the mere mention of his incinerating fire breath, merciless plagues and probing, provocative interview technique. This is the head-exploding standard which I, Hexamorpheus, reached once again when I snatched Labyrinth co-producer Daniel Mollner from his pathetically cheerful human life and chained him to a cold slab of steel in my filthy, horrifying dungeon. As King of All Demons, my first impulse was of course to eat his moist red heart, but I find the way he talks when I poke him with this electric cattle prod quite amusing! Perhaps you will enjoy this Q&A I tore from the depths of his soul! Hexamorpheus, King of Demons, Sovereign of the Bottomless Pit: Tell Hexamorpheus the secrets of your Labyrinth and perhaps I will spare your meaningless human life! Daniel Mollner: After having done haunted houses for 15 years out in Las Vegas, they weren't interesting for me anymore, and I quit. I was sick of it. I felt like there was so much more to do with my imagination. Then I got to Santa Cruz and I met this amazing woman, my partner and co-producer Anna-Lisa, and we started talking with people about it and she said, "I think we can reinvent this thing," so we came up with a new way. Ahahahhaha! You are rambling nonsensically from the electro-prodding, but you will feel no pain once I remove your heart! Again! Hexamorpheus will poke you again! It's a four-dimensional theater experience. It's like walk-through theater with a funhouse twist. You get all the thrill and chill of a Halloween experience, but you also get story and meaning and laughs. People are very much encouraged to be a part of the show. Part? Which part? The main course? Hahaha! Now, tell me more tales of your gruesome Labyrinth! There's no blood-and-guts stuff. I just started getting really bored with that. I couldn't see the meaning or the purpose of it. There are literally 500-page catalogs of blood-and-guts stuff, a whole industry of latex entrails being mass-produced and marketed, and we're supposed to be like, "Cool! New guts!" What? No gore? Raaaaahhhhhhhhhhh! This makes Hexamorpheus angry, and yet intrigued! Explain! I love plays, I love the imagination and I love adrenaline rushes, and haunted houses are a great place for that. I remember as a kid that Halloween was about make-believe, and not just Jason and Freddy and that kind of stuff; it had a full spectrum of possibilities. It wasn't just limited to the macabre. So we're trying to bring that back. Ah yes, nostalgia--Hexamorpheus would like to bring back the good ol' days when I used to play a game called "Look, I'm Tearing Your Heart Out of Your Chest With My Bare Hands!" But alas, I digress; let me get down to the heart of the matter. Ahhhhhaha, Hexamorpheus makes joke, but remains terrifying! Now, speak of Entropia and the World Beyond, the worlds which are created inside the Labyrinth! Civilization is in decay in Entropia ... a bunch of world-gone-mad machinery are taking over. But the World Beyond is like a dreamland. What if we looked inside ourselves and our imaginations, and came up with a different and better way to live? Ho ho, that's deep, Daniel! But not quite as deep as I am going to reach into your chest to pull out your warm, still-beating heart, haha! Yes, I laugh, but it's not a bad thing, Daniel. Once it's gone, fear itself will be a thing of the past. It's in own your best interest to surrender it to Hexamorpheus, King of Demons, Sovereign of the Bottomless Pit! Thanks! [ Santa Cruz | Metroactive Central | Archives ]