text: The teleporter malfunctioned, as it always did, except this time it hurtled the atoms of its small, skinny inventor, Alfred Macadamia, through space, through time, and then through the ribcage of his smaller, skinnier next-door neighbor Petunia. Through the strange magic of the teleporter, Alfred was reassembled with his torso horizontally through hers, and their rib cages were atomically welded together into one large, agony-and-organ-filled cavity. Alfred stuck out of both sides of Petunia like a pencil shoved through the side of a fish, and the two of them had a conversation that went something like this: Screaming, Heavy Breathing. Wriggling Around, feeling one another’s organs bump and scrape together. Further screaming (louder, really making use of the double-diaphragm). Introductions, followed by weeping, followed by an apologetic explanation by Alfred that his teleporter must have malfunctioned, followed by a slight injection of hopefulness, explaining that At Least No One Died, And Perhaps They Could Go Back To His Place And Extricate Themselves from One Another (Please Excuse The Mess). After Petunia wiped her tears and Alfred stopped her from wringing his neck (“Do you really want a *corpse* stuck in your midsection for the rest of your life??”) The two of them waddled to Alfred’s dingy little house next door, Petunia impaled by Alfred, Alfred doing his best to support her with his hands and feet when he could reach the ground. Petunia opened Alfred’s door and, still not used to having a grown man shoved horizontally through her middle, slammed Alfred’s head on the doorframe. After some hasty apologies, they proceeded inside and spent the next four hours fiddling with Arthur’s stupid-looking little teleporter, failing to separate themselves from one another. It seemed they were hopelessly stuck like this, feeling their organs smash together in their somehow-combined rib-cage, feeling their blood mix and slosh about. They hated each other with a passion for around four months, but in time they got used to their new living arrangement. A time after that they decided that they might as well get married. Although they once had essentially nothing in common, living in the same body changed all that. Now they could carry on for hours about how strange it was, and tell each other inside jokes that were only funny to people who had been fused together by a poorly-designed teleporter. Sex wasn’t really on the table because of the angle they were conjoined, but they both had working hands and did enough for each other to get by. They were always right there, anyway. That was the thing--the other person was always, always right there. After a long and happy enough life, Alfred and Petunia lay on their deathbed, and Alfred looked up at his beautiful wife. She looked down to him and smiled, then he smiled, then she asked him if he teleported through her on purpose. Alfred said no, but he should have. This whole experience had taught him that the most important part of love wasn’t genuine affection--it was just helplessness at the hands of the universe to not be together. How could they not have fallen in love? The universe hadn’t given them a choice. How could they not have stayed in love? They never had the option to leave each other. The universe had simply given them their roles and they had lived them out as they had to. Petunia thought of a couple solid arguments against Alfred, then decided against them and laughed to herself. She couldn’t decide if this stupid man had ruined her life or made it better, and after a while she stopped trying. Whatever it was had already happened. She ran her fingers through Alfred’s thin grey hair, and he reached up as high as he could and rubbed her freckled, wrinkled shoulder. A while after that the two of them fell backwards into the eternal hands of the universe that had shoved them together, for some unclear purpose they both felt they were better off not knowing.