The Photograph 11.2: Smeared Lines  

11.2:

Something’s wrong.

Something’s different.

When I parted the curtain of air and stepped into O’Ryan’s, something was different.

The time, for one, said 10:35.

Second, Frank Hobbs was gone.

Long gone.

His chair at the table where we’d sat was empty.

I lost an hour and a half somewhere.

The program had changed.

The photograph had changed.

Panic squeezed the pit of my gut.

What's happening here?

An unsettling sense of foreboding settled about my shoulders, a sudden square peg feeling.

This isn't the same.

This is different.

The scents, the sounds, the sights of O'Ryan's were different. People were not positioned as they should have been, something I'd taken for granted in all the times I'd visited the photograph in the past.

The irony of that thought was not lost on me.

"Excuse me."

The voice came from my right, from the bartender, Eric his name was, a college kid working his way through Georgia State. I talked to him often.

“Note from the white haired gentleman,” Eric said. “He had to leave, but said you’d understand the note.”

I unfolded the napkin and glanced over the words scrawled in blue ink, Bob Quillan’s chicken scratching.

“The lines have smeared. Game’s over. You get one chance.”