The tiny shack with a tiny window (Wattys2016)

Alive (cleaner version)

Warnings: Torture

Laugh. A harsh, derisive one, delivered at a living body's futile attempt to flee in terror. The laugh comes from the boy, now a teenager, the thirteen-year-old boy who lives in the tiny shack with a tiny window. The body is strung up by the wrists, which are bound above its head and attached to a hook dangling from the ceiling. It's blindfolded, gagged, and completely starkers.

Starkers. A new word in the boy's vocabulary, used in informal British slang, either meaning "naked" or "crazy." Now, this particular body is crazy; it's thrashing about on the hook, trying to touch its feet to the ground when they're clearly ten centimetres above it. The boy thinks that the body must not know, so he tells it so in a matter-of-fact tone. The body falls silent. The boy appreciates the silence and pulls out, seemingly from nowhere, a lollipop.

Lollipop. Something that usually sounds happy, like a child who's given one. In this case, it promises pain, pain and suffering and blood. For the body, of course. By now, the boy has a major in anatomy and cell biology—he's a prodigy, it being uncommon for children his age to graduate. He knows where on the body it hurts the most, where it hurts the least. He unwraps the lollipop—loudly—and pops it in his mouth, sucking for a while before pulling it out and letting the body smell the candy. The body strains forwards, forgetting it's bound, and the boy laughs as he pulls the candy away. He pulls out a knife and tries something different, careful not to become jaded.

Jaded. Adjective: dulled or satiated by overindulgence. The boy remembers this; he knows that, if he repeats something too often, then he won't achieve the same effect the action gives him, that rush of adrenaline, that feeling of happiness and pleasure he gets from seeing red, red blood, red blood turn to black as it dries out in the sun. He knows this, so he changes what he does every so often, and this time, he trails his tongue along the knife's edge and uses it to smash the lollipop into tiny sharp slivers. He cuts open the body and wedges the slivers between flesh, watching blood coat the green-apple-flavoured lollipop pieces. The green goes well with red, red blood, he thinks. It tastes good, too. He then takes out another toy, a small lighter, and flicks it near the body's torso. The body, obviously sensing heat, tries to dodge, but it's bound by the wrists and can't move anywhere. It emits a muffled-but-loud shriek upon having its skin burnt, and the boy carves pretty designs as the body wiggles in a strange dance.

Dance. It's another one of those happy things that turn out not to be so happy after all, like life and death and lollipops. As the body dances and writhes and twists and turns, all in vain, to evade the small lighter, the boy laughs, laughs happily and mockingly at the body's attempts. Throughout the night, the shack, the tiny shack with a tiny window, emits happy, mocking, harsh, derisive laughs and muffled screams of pure agony.

The body's still alive. 

A/N: This version isn't much different, but what's done with the lollipop is. It's a somewhat cleaner version, for readers who don't want to experience borderline-sexual activity.