7. We’ll know at the autopsy

Witness accounts describe what happened next in very different ways. Police records are equally vague and indicate some sort of undefined struggle having taken place. A type of emotional fight, which despite not being a physical one, seemed to had left physical marks on both the moon and the boat. There appeared to be no clear indication as to who had initiated the episode, either. What was certain was that the scene was messy. Not a crime scene per se, but a place where an incident had happened, all the same. Detectives quickly decided to drop the case and did just the basic leg work, convinced this was a weird one bound to take up too much of their valuable time. They dropped it at the coroner's lap and wished him, sardonically, good luck.

The medical examiner's official report does provide some more concrete information on the story. It makes no reference to a moon or a boat, but mentions one, single, unresponsive body composed of two fairly distinct "elements". There appeared to have been a fusion at some point between the two of them. They had become one strange-looking mélange of different body parts. What's more, the merging of the two bodies was not apparently caused by outside forces. The state they were in, would befit conjoint twins rather than two different bodies joined together as a result of a freakishly gone-wrong, bizarre experiment. It was as if they had been born like this, together in one, co-created like that, right from the start. They had solidified in that shape, at creation.

Strong physical indications existed showing that parts of one of the two elements were in fact responsible for inflicting fatal blows to the other one, despite the lack of any physical struggle. And strangely enough, parts of the other element were responsible for inflicting fatal wounds to the first one. What shrouded matters in an even greater fog of mystery was the fact that vital body parts were missing from both, whilst at the same time certain body parts appeared to had been used by both elements simultaneously. And no, there was no heart to be found, anywhere.

The coroner and his assistant lifted gently the near-amorphous mass of the two-in-one bodies and placed it in a black plastic zip lock bag. They closed it slowly, having had a last look at the expressionless faces of the two heads. Bruised and battered and deformed and light gray, with strong pen strokes of the sickest pink imaginable. Some light-blue veins were visible, no eyebrows, one ear left in one of them, none left on the other, their lips scratched and hurt and sinister-looking. They placed the bag on a metal tray and pushed hard to insert it inside a cool-storage unit; yet another fridge unit on a wall of endless fridge units. They cleaned the operating table, then the sinks and finally placed their surgical tools inside a large washing container. They made for the door without either of them saying a word, switched-off the neon lights, thus sparing the world of the awful sight of pale-green used tiles and alien-looking shining instruments of torture. They shut the unit's door with a thud and locked it, twice. "Under Lock & Key" said the protocol for similar cases.

Several hours later, deep into the night, in the outwardly stillness of the room, the silence within the fridge unit was interrupted by a quiet simultaneous crawl. The moon and the boat, both seemed to be trying to move their respective arms. After inconceivable effort, the tips of their fingers connected and then they came in proper contact. Slowly, the hand of the moon locked firmly on the hand of the boat. One could have sworn there was a sound, a groan, a moan, a sigh. In the medical examiner's operating theater, inside a wall-fridge unit, cocooned inside a zip-lock bag, there was some sort of unidentified noise. It was nearly imperceptible, like a low-frequency momentary hum. It was in fact a heartbeat. One single heartbeat, produced without a heart being present. And after that, there was once again absolute silence.

The official findings were made public three days later. The autopsy showed cause of death: inconclusive. After all, what medical process could possibly explain what had taken place? How could logic possibly explain the effects of a supernatural effort made by two different beings in order to be together? And how could reason possibly explain the potentially great destructive result produced by the desire of two "elements" to become one? It was quite simply impossible. It was impossible, because in all their scientific approach and methods and analysis, their techniques and instruments and procedures, they had missed that one vital bit of data. That single, momentary common heartbeat, which did not require the physical presence of a heart. That clandestine, heart-free, single heartbeat of theirs, which made them one.

THE END.

(Thank you for reading and hope you liked this short novel. The next chapter "Get the most out of this story" contains additional info and insights on this story which hopefully you will find interesting and useful)