Reign of Dilemma

A beaten up phone in the entrance hall was ringing. It could have been just a junkie in need of a fix, but it turned out to be something more sinister than that. Its incessant ringing created painful vibrations in the depths of my brain and what happened next was a blur. Flames and violent shapes appeared from every direction of the hall and slowly engulfed the whole restaurant  the laughter of Hades becoming prominent one moment and then fading away in the next. The sequence never changed, and the scenes kept repeating themselves like a reel stuck in the cassette player.

      
The nightmare was always the same. Violent shapes moving in darkness, old and ugly. The killer's mad laughter was a riddle filled with wicked innuendo. Somewhere the baby was crying.

"Hades's restaurant" had seen better days. The night groaned with cold, the garden lights flickering nervously. In their light the falling snow was dead white before the darkness ate it up. The numbing cold of the broken night followed me in, the pistol was now a frozen lump in my hand, piercing the skin, gnawing at my hand. The door slammed shut behind me like a prison gate rattling on it's rusted hinges, shutting me inside. The air inside had a sickly, sweet smell, like that of incense. Silence reigned in the room and amidst my confusion, i saw some tarot cards strewn on the floor. Perhaps i had come to the wrong place, this wasn't the place where Alex wanted to disclose the details of the case. Definitely not. I gripped the pistol firmly and coughed loudly to announce the inmates of my presence...if there were any inmates there. Something really is demented here, i  thought, and took a step forward but the muffled ringing of a phone in the hall rooted me to my spot. The incessant ringing of the phone slowly increased in its volume and broke the silence. The lights grew dim and i recoiled in horror. "Oh God, not again", i thought, and tried at the door handle. Beads of sweat accumulated on my forehead, my arms and legs became powerless in the frenzy of fear and with no other alternative, i raised the gun to my temple and pressed the trigger. The gun coughed once and i sank to the floor, eyes staring into oblivion.

The orange ball of fire slowly rose in a bell-tolling sequence and heralded its advent by shooting its rays in multiple directions. 

"All's well that ends well, my friend. Ha-ha-ha". 

This was the only sentence he heard before being dragged into the abyss..again.