Patrick Bateman and the Poisoned Toffee Apple

Welcome back to Stranger Than Flicktion, our Flickr-inspired column. We provide writers with five random food-related Flickr images and ask them to construct a fictional short story in under five days. In this Halloween special, we hear an American Psycho-inspired tale of cam girls, cats, and candy apples.

The truth of the matter was they still lived together because of the body in the freezer. Christie and Evelyn had split up over a year before, following the passing of their beloved cat Patrick Bateman, who died from what could only be described as an overdose of icing. The grotesquely hued candy apple at the centre of the unfortunate homicide last Halloween was as much a testament to America's dodgy food colouring laws as it was to their amateur decorating skills, which, thanks to thousands of practice hours, had greatly improved since the cat's untimely demise.

What hadn't improved was Christie and Evelyn's relationship. The seed of the end was planted that very day, with them both blaming each other for the death of their furry friend. While Evelyn had made the blue icing, Christie concocted the white and since Patrick consumed a more or less equal amount of both, they fought to the death of their union and long after the last breath of the cat as to who was responsible.

Because of their common problem of authority issues and compulsive lying, neither of the two could hold down a regular job. This was how they ended up doing what they were now doing. While Evelyn spent her days in the kitchen baking goods for food fetish parties, Christie worked as a cam girl, eating online for money.

The upside was that the apartment always smelled of everything but the dead cat in the freezer.

With another Halloween coming up, the pair were busier than usual. Although these days Christie despised Evelyn most of the time, she couldn't help but be impressed by her ex-girlfriend's latest creations for a Kardashian-themed swingers soiree. Her favourites were the "Khloés"—each piglet a fun-sized doppelgänger Christie was sure even Donald Trump could comfortably fit in his hand.

While Evelyn got ready to deliver her goods, Christie sat down at the computer with a platter of pommes d'amour, which she'd shove in any given hole of her body for the precise sum of €2.50 a minute. She'd blocked out all of the eastern states and the whole of England just to be on the safe side of any possible familial connections. Thanks to a few enquiries she made via the dark web, she knew it was from her uncle Paul Allen that she'd got her enthusiasm for food-based prostitution and it was either in New York or London that he spent most of his time.

Surprised by the extreme demand for apple candy-based inanimate action, Christie was out of fruits after a mere 27 minutes. As she'd seen a street vendor selling some down the block earlier, she ran out of the apartment for more. Still, she couldn't help but take a look at herself in a shop window as she ate one of the apples she bought, hungry because up until now, she'd been doing everything but eating the darned things. She winked at the two potential customers who glanced at her, then returned to the site of her solo boning for Bitcoin.

Here, she got a shock from the presence of an uninvited guest.

"Who are you?" she asked the boy no older than 11, who sat very still on the edge of the bed.

Wearing an exceedingly smart suit, he'd have looked remarkably unchildlike, if it wasn't for the red candy around his mouth and apple in his hand.

"Did you return the videotapes?" he asked.

"Sorry?" Christie said.

The boy reached inside his pocket and handed her a business card.

"Patrick Bateman?" she said as she delectated in the card's fine quality.

The boy nodded. "Mergers and acquisitions," he told her.

"Wait," Christie said. "You're not our Patrick Bateman reincarnated as a manchild, are you?"

The boy looked at her for a long time.

"Well, I do hear you're an expert in murders and executions."

It was then that Christie fainted.

When she came to, Evelyn was standing over her.

"The party was awesome," she was saying. "Kylie was having sex with Rob and Kourtney was breastfeeding Chyna's baby, then Khloé was having sex with Scott and Kris was riding Tyga. It was so screwed up, I fucking loved it."

"Where's Patrick Bateman?" Christie asked.

A sour look formed across Evelyn's face. "You know where he is," she said ominously.

"No, this kid."

"Who?"

"He was here."

"Well he's not here now," Evelyn told her. "It would have been a trick or treater."

"I didn't let anyone in. He was sitting on the bed when I came back from buying more apples."

"Maybe you left the door open," Evelyn said, though soon her attention turned to the computer.

Christie looked up too then screamed as the words, "FEED ME A STRAY CAT," flashed across the screen in the colour of blood-red candy.