"Hi. Um. We need to talk."

The screaming flayed corpse in the center of the chamber had no objections, aside from, obviously, screaming. Spooky took this as a good sign. Step One in conflict resolution was initiating an open, honest exchange of feelings. She'd read that in a book she'd once looted off of a body.

"Great!" she exclaimed, floating closer. "The first thing I want to do is congratulate you. We're able to keep most of the specimens in place pretty easily, but not you! You're escaping like crazy! You killed forty-nine of my employees this week! You're an independent go-getter, just like me!"

The flayed corpse of a newborn god responded in its typical cryptic way, by clawing at its flesh and emitting an unearthly howl that could raise the hairs on the back of a ghost's neck. Spooky knew this because she was a ghost, and being able to talk to ghosts, she'd gotten a good idea of what their typical reaction to the Taker's howls were. Obviously she herself could never be frightened. You couldn't scare the queen of jump scares. You could, however, kind of gross her out, and that about summed up her feelings towards the way the Taker clawed at its form, which consisted of the flayed, cannibalized remains of thousands of dead bodies.

After all, there was being scary, and then there was being tacky.

"Anyway," she went on, "Though I approve of your can-do attitude, there are things I have to say about the way you're interfering with our operations here."

Step Two of conflict resolution was establishing an open forum for the airing of grievances. It was important to both clearly speak your mind and to allow ample opportunity for the other party to speak theirs. This was especially important when speaking to the Taker, who was, to the best of her knowledge, a conglomerate nightmare-entity consisting of the tormented souls of every corpse it had ever consumed. There were a lot of minds in there to speak for!

The Taker respectfully responded.

"TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO-"

Spooky listened solemnly for about a minute before it became clear the Taker was going to keep going in a loop. Or maybe it was a month. Or ten seconds. Time kind of stopped making sense when you didn't need to eat, sleep, or use the ladies' room. Although this went firmly against what she'd read in her book, she decided to interrupt the agonized entity.

"Excuse me," she said, firmly but respectfully, "But I'd like a chance to speak now."

The Taker went silent again, though for the Taker, this simply took the form of letting out ungodly howls without even the semblance of words. Spooky decided that was good enough.

"Thank you. While I understand your need to 'take the dead'--everyone needs a good hobby, after all—it's not really in keeping with what we do here in the Mansion."

The Taker didn't show any emotion, besides its eternal agony, but it did start bleeding profusely from its eyes and mouth. Spooky decided to take this as a signal that she should go on. "You see, here at the House of Jump—I mean, sorry, the Jump Scare Mansion, we also like to take the dead! But instead of taking the dead to take the dead to-"

"TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO-"

"-right, you see, what you're doing is sort of a neverending quest to assimilate more corpses into your being solely to gain more power and then assimilate more corpses into your being. What you're doing is an endless cycle of torment, akin to Sisyphus and his boulder, or having too little milk for your cereal, buying more milk, and then having too little cereal for your milk. Do you follow?"

"TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DEAD TO TAKE THE DE-"

"-right. You get it. You see, we're a little more forward-thinking here in the Mansion. Let me explain our general business model!"

Using a tiny portion of her potent reality-distorting ghost powers she materialized a crisp, mature business suit for herself, followed by a slide projector and a bedsheet. She would have preferred an entire theatrical set-up, but even reality-distorting ghost powers had a budget.

"Listen closely," she continued, putting on a pair of superfluous glasses and speaking in as grown-up of a tone as she could muster, "Our business model starts with the Mansion. We made it really cool and spooky and advertised it really well through something called the 'spider portal,' so it attracts all kinds of humans! Fleshy living humans are our consumer base, and also, our product. Once they're inside the Mansion they're the responsibility of middle management—you guys! The specimens!"

The Taker howled thoughtfully. At least she thought it was thoughtfully. It was hard to pick apart the emotions behind all the blind, writhing suffering.

"You, the specimens, were conscripted with a certain responsibility."

With a click of a button the slide projector swapped from a crayon drawing of the Mansion over to the word 'RESPONSIBILITY' written in huge fun letters dripping with blood. Spooky was fairly certain the Taker was paying close attention to the presentation, though since its eyes were only red glowing pinpricks inside of raw and hollow sockets, it could be hard to tell. The fact that she had to guess at its emotions so much was probably where a lot of their communication problems had started, come to think of it.

"Your responsibility is to do what you do best: spooking people so badly they die from spook, and if they don't die from spook, horribly dismember them to death. That allows them to become ghosts, for my ghost army!"

Her slideshow was now depicting a picture from her latest troop inspection, featuring a number of shadow people with awkward smiles posing with her for a selfie. That was what the kids these days called it, right? When you disconnected your own hand and used it to take a picture of yourself from a distance? She was pretty sure 'selfie' was the right term. She'd read it through the spider portal.

"But see, that's where the problem comes in—when you horribly dismember people to death, you consume their flesh and forcibly incorporate their struggling spirits into your very being. You commit the ultimate act of violation against their bodies, minds, and their very essences, and most importantly..."

The slideshow now depicted a cartoon ghost with a 'no' symbol pasted over it. 👻🚫

"...they don't become ghosts, meaning they can't join the fun ghost army I'm going to use to terrorize the entire population of the planet," Spooky finished, giving a pronounced pout. "We have the same problem with Specimen 11—you know, the King of Burgers—but I feel like I can talk to you about it. You're so much more open than he is."

The Taker gnashed its teeth and howled, a sound so bloodcurdling that if Spooky still had any blood, there'd probably be at least one or two lumpy curdles in it. As it was, she simply beamed and nodded.

"You do get it! I'm really relieved to have this conversation with you."

Step Three of conflict resolution. With grievances aired, come to an empathetic mutual compromise that allows both parties to-

The Taker suddenly created a dozen giant hands made of pure shadow energy and tried to attack her with all of them at once.

It was a sudden attack, one that most entities would have been surprised by. But as a ghost and powerful supernatural being in her own right, Spooky had a way of detecting this sort of thing. Different groups through history had called her sense by different names. 'The Sixth Sense.' 'The Third Eye.' 'Extrasensory Perception.'

She called it 'SpookyVision™.' With the power of SpookyVision™ on her side she was easily able to see the paranormal attack coming, and made the appropriate move to avoid it—gliding away with an indignant squeal.

"Hey! That's not polite! Violence doesn't solve anything, you stupid by-product of Japanese war crimes!"

The Taker ranted and gibbered in the tongue known only by those who are tortured beyond death. It continued to send beams of energy hurtling towards her, which she began to deflect by flicking her fingers. The Taker probably couldn't actually destroy her, being a ghost and all, but supernatural beings could really discomfort one another.

Spooky sniffed haughtily, floating higher and closer to the ceiling. "I'm trying to be reasonable, but you're making it clear that you don't care about anyone but yourself! Or, you know. The thousand screaming souls that make up yourselves."

"TAKE THE DEAD TO-"

"SHUT UP! We get it!" Spooky groaned, massaging her phantom forehead in frustration. "See, now you're making me act all mean. I just wanted to come to a mutually beneficial compromise, that lets us murder people without having unnecessary conflict make our lives bitter. But nooo, you want to 'take the dead to take the dead' forever. You're an insult against God and upper management."

To that there were only howls and repeated attacks with misshapen shadow hands. Spooky rolled her eyes harder than any mortal being could manage and floated out of the chamber.

The nerve of some eldritch beings. She tried to be nice, and look where it got her! The worst part was, she couldn't take on the Taker all on her own. Oh, she was way too cool to actually be in danger from it, but she couldn't kill it like she could a roach or a GL Labs employee who frowned too much. The creature was made of too many suffering souls covered in spiritual scar tissue for supernatural attacks to have any effect, and her only physical attack was a knife. She'd need a mortal for the job, and a tough one.

...as she floated away from the chamber, an idea began to come to her. An idea which would have definitely warranted a light bulb coming on over her head, except she didn't light this portion of the Mansion to save on electricity. Even so the idea illuminated her day and brought a wide smile to her face.

Step Four of conflict resolution.

Find a protagonist to murder your offender with an axe.