Garralous and Gregorius Cretensky (1885 - 1929)

The only recorded pair of Siamese twins known to have been joined only at the big toenail. Although minor scissor work in infancy could have easily separated them, their dust-poor parents, Merkus and Sally Cretensky, recognised their potential worth as sideshow attractions and immediately began to trail them, in a specially adapted handcart, around the freak shows of late 1800's America.

Billed as "The Uncanny Mirror Boys", the twins' routine consisted of co-ordinated dance movements, lending the effect of a corporeal mirror image of a fool dancing about pathetically in front of himself. They transfixed legions of slack-jawed American bumpkins, being, as it was, their first cultural experience that wasn't mud-based.

Doomed to face each other for the rest of their lives, the boys' early relationship was often fractious, and violent altercations were common. The day came, though, when they simply grew too far apart to land punches, and ironically, they became emotionally closer as they drifted physiclaly further from each other. By the age of 25 they stood some 14 feet apart, and the tiny stages of backyard America were no longer big enough for them. Unemployed and without prospects, the twins fell into alcoholism and ornithology respectively.

The Cretenskys were brought out of their depression with the happy occurrence of World War One. The boys courageously volunteered to become stretcher- bearers, and saw active service in the trenches of France. Their boots were customised by army boffins and the boys were able to carry up to five prostate soldiers at a time in a kind of mordant, crooked, back shuffle which was ironically suited to the treacherous conditions of the battlefield. The writer Ernest Hemingway, then serving as an ambulance driver and reserve crumpet toaster, became a close friend, immortalising them in the as yet unpublished manuscript 'The Toenails of Mercy'.

After the war, Garralous and Gregorius stayed on in France, becoming local celebrities on the Bohemian circuit of the Left, and simultaneously, Right Banks. Though both pursued promiscuous lifestyles, Garralous' eager exploration of his sexuality met with violent consequences. Gregorius awoke in their specially adapted hotel room to spy, through his mini-telescope, Garralous engaged in crazed sexual congress with the aspiring poet and philosopher, Petrograd Twond. Using the lucky revolver that Hemingway had given them at the end of war, Gregorius, a rabid homophobe, yet secretly jealous of his brothers success with tanned young men, shot Garrolous through the heart. Instantly appalled by what he had done, Gregorius then turned the gun on himself. Twond, who had had been behind Garralous at the time, escaped serious injury by hiding like a startled rodent.

After their deaths, the toenail was finally removed, and sold at auction to an anonymous bidder for an undisclosed sexual favour.

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