Not to Return by Solomiya Andrusiv

The dim lighting of the lamps
was complemented by multi-colored neon bulbs and signs. Together they're turning an ordinary hookah bar filled with white tobacco smoke into something out of this world. Having smoked a little, it was starting to seem that you're in some kind of fairy place where people don't walk on the ground, but sit on white clouds or slowly swim through them. This feeling was complemented by the calm music that came from every corner.
People were sitting and smoking their pipes, chatting about something, laughing, leaving and coming back. For it was impossible not to return to this place. “You'll be back, honey,” stated the sign above the bar. Another one, hanging on the wall near the stairs leading from the smoky basement to the fresh frosty air, promised that it would be your “highway to heaven”. However, the signs hadn't lied yet. At all, if you're interested, the hookah was called “the White Rabbit”. When he came down here for the first time and stepped on a chess tiled floor, memories of a children fairy tale about little girls, white rabbits, silver watches, smoking blue caterpillars and wonderland immediately surged upon him. From that day every time this reality was punching him to the gut, and he needed to hide in a hole to lick his wounds, his feet themselves carried him to the Rabbit. And this place, what a strange thing, was really healing.
His table was in a corner on the entrance side. So that he could exchange glances with familiar bartenders and hookah workers, clearly see the bar and have a little bit fresh air. Perhaps that's why he noticed a new visitor. A strange, confused guy with his shoulders down and some sort of hopelessness in his eyes. He remembered him firstly came here exactly the same, with shatters of broken dreams in his heart. So now boy you would have to get up, affably wave your hand and pull out another broken soul, as they once pulled out your.