DoubleDown V by John R. Little and Mark Allan Gunnells Read Free Book Online Page A

Michaels would wonder how his precious papers disappeared, but he’d soon enough find them waved in front of his face.
    When Karen was outside, she stopped, realizing that this was the first time she’d done anything while time was frozen that would significantly affect somebody’s life.
    “Feels pretty good.”
    She walked to the next house.  A woman was in the bathroom scrubbing a toilet with a toothbrush.  Presumably not her own.
    Karen didn’t recognize her.  She was in her twenties, skinny, dressed in floppy gray jogging pants and a matching sweater.
    The bedroom was messy here, too, and a framed photo of the girl and a man, both smiling brightly at the camera, lay on the floor.  The glass was cracked.
    Karen left, not feeling good about things.  She couldn’t do anything to help the girl.
    Why would that matter? I’ve never helped anybody before.
    She walked past several houses, wondering why the hell she should start caring about the people she spied on.  All she’d ever wanted to do was learn what they hid and add to her Secrets Journal.
    She had a lot of entries now, including her priest, who she watched reading pornography online; several people who took illegal drugs when nobody was watching; thieves; liars; adulterers; and many others.  Her little town was full of the seven deadly sins … and more.
    If she believed the Bible (and really, some days, she didn’t pretend to believe it, even to herself), all her friends and neighbors were doomed to rot in hell.
    She sat on a bench beside a bus stop and thought about her family.  She missed her dad, and her mom didn’t have any secrets that Karen had ever found.  She might be the one exception to ascend to heaven one day.
    Tina?
    Karen’s older sister was just dumb.  One day she would realize that giving blow jobs and probably screwing her boyfriend wasn’t going to help her accomplish anything.  One day Jimmy Berenstein would see some other girl and dump Tina without a minute’s thought.
    That morning, Tina had been getting ready for school with Karen, but there was something different.  She was too happy, too perky, and Karen realized now that she hadn’t seen Tina at school after all.
    She knew where Jimmy lived and walked in that direction.  It wasn’t far from Karen’s home, which Tina thought convenient.
    The house was a dump, a duplex, where Jimmy lived in one half with his dad.  Karen had no idea where his mom was, since she was never mentioned.
    Jimmy’s car was parked in front of the house, and Karen wasn’t surprised that the front door wasn’t locked.  She walked in as if it were her own home and looked around.  The living room stank of stale smoke, with several half-empty glasses on the coffee table.  A big stain covered much of the rug.  Four bottles of Miller Genuine Draft were discarded in the middle of the stain.
    She looked around but didn’t see anybody on the main level, so she climbed the stairs.  The master bedroom was empty, as was the bathroom, but Karen found what she was looking for in the other bedroom.
    Tina sat on a bench and Jimmy sat behind her.  They were both naked.  He had an erection.
    In his hand, he held a razor blade, and he was using it to slice lines into Tina’s back.
    There were dozens of other cuts in various stages of healing, left over from previous sessions.
    Tina’s face was full of tears, and she looked like she wanted to scream, but Karen imagined that that was the very last thing she would do.
    She knew that Tina would do anything for Jimmy, but this was worse than Karen could have imagined.
    She stared at them, anger rushing through her.  Even though she wasn’t on the best of terms with Tina, she was her sister, and she wanted to protect her.
    Karen didn’t hesitate.
    She grabbed the razor blade from Jimmy and sliced into his penis lengthwise, like gutting a trout.  Of course, nothing changed, but when time started, he’d never again hurt her sister.  All he’d care