It was weird growing up with Mikey. For years, nobody else believed he actually existed.

I learned Mikey existed within the first year of my life. I could sense his thoughts in addition to my own, and we learned about the world together.

When I got to the age where I got to feed myself, at least some of the time, I realized Mikey was very hungry and wanted to eat, too, and I started trying to slip him some of my food. I am not sure how I figured out his mouth was located between my legs, but somehow, maybe in thoughts that came from him, I figured that out.

Mom didn't like it when she saw me put food down there, so I learned to do it secretly, in any moment nobody was looking. And Mikey didn't have any teeth, so I could only feed him soft things. Peas were great, and most of the food they gave me when I was 1 also worked because it was already cut into pieces that didn't need chewing.

It wasn't until I started learning to spell and write that I learned my name was spelled K-I-M-B-E-R-L-Y or K-I-M for short. And it was only then that I actually named Mikey. Since he was kind of upside down, his name should be, too, I figured. And turning K-I-M around gave M-I-K, which made a name if I added some letters.

A bit later in life I came to understand more about Mikey's anatomy, when I started learning more about my own. By the time I was 4 I'd learned to use the toilet, and I'd gotten a brief lesson about my anatomy. The slit between my legs was where I peed from, the hole in back was where I pooped, don't get the poop into the slit when wiping. Fine. But that slit between my legs was also where I fed Mikey, and when I wanted to learn more about it, Mom gave me the technical details.

So then I knew the slit and everything inside it were collectively called my vulva. The hole near the top (which Mom thought should be more in the middle, but I knew where it really was) was my urethra, where I peed. The hole at the bottom was my vagina, where babies come from, and nothing would happen for years. And the big hole between them, when Mikey moved his tongue out of the way, wasn't supposed to exist. But it did exist, and Mikey did eat food I put in there.

Later on I learned about my period, and eventually started having them. And like almost all teenagers, I started exploring the newly developing parts of my anatomy. Yeah, I masturbated. And one month I didn't get my period, but a couple weeks after it should have happened, I felt sick, and it was only then, after several doctor visits, that we actually figured out what was going on with me. And with Mikey.

I had only rarely mentioned Mikey to my parents. Despite feeding him little bits of my food for more than a decade, I still took it as a rule that my parents didn't like me feeding him, and I always did it in secret and never talked about it. When I mentioned Mikey to them, sometimes saying I had lunch with Mikey, they assumed he was one of my classmates at school. So when I explained in front of Mom and a doctor about Mikey, Mom was a bit surprised but did remember my vulval feeding rituals. The doctor was very surprised, but in one of the examination rooms, they brought me a slice of bread which I ripped into small pieces and fed to Mikey for them.

The doctor said, "I don't know where that bread is going, but I know it shouldn't exist."

"How come you never told me about this?" Mom asked.

"Because you told me you didn't want me putting food down there. But I knew Mikey was hungry."

"How did you know?"

"I just do. He's always been there and we share thoughts. And I did mention Mikey to you, many times."

"Oh! That Mikey. Your best friend from school who you always ate lunch with... was actually between your legs."

Our conversation stopped at that point, and the doctor next said, "I'm going to want to run several tests to figure out just what Mikey is, but first I want to give Kim here a pelvic exam. Kim, do you understand what that means?"

"No."

Mom spoke up, "It'll be all right, honey. It's something all women get eventually. He's going to put a tool in your vagina that lets him look inside and see how things look in there."

The way she said it made it sound like it was not going to be the most pleasant experience, and it wasn't, but once I got used to the cold metal tool he was holding me open with, it wasn't too bad. He put another tool in here he scraped something off the side of my vagina with, and put whatever he scraped in a little jar. Afterwards, he also looked inside Mikey's mouth and took a sample of something in there, too.

The doctor said once he was done, "In a normal girl, I'd say she's pregnant. With what we have going on here, it could easily be something else unusual going on. But I'd like to get a urine sample to run a pregnancy test and perhaps other tests. Speaking of which, how do you urinate, Kim, with that big mouth there?"

"The urine comes out above the mouth."

"Can you produce some urine for me now, Kim? Normally I'd give you privacy, but your case is special and I'd like to see it."

"I'm not sure, but I can show you where the urine comes out."

I flipped back the gown I had only just covered myself up with again, and pointed it out to him.

He examined me closely and then said, "The placement of the urethra so high is unusual, but I have seen other cases where some unusual situation causes body parts to get displaced, and in these cases the body adapts remarkably well. Given what I have seen, this seems reasonable. OK, we'll try to take a urine sample before you leave, or if you feel the urge to go, ask any of us for a urine sample jar and we'll provide it."

He retrieved one from a cabinet. "It looks like this, and you just unscrew the lid and pee in it. You don't have to fill it up, but 1/4 of the jar full is probably enough and half full is plenty for anything we would do. Generally we let you do it in the bathroom, and you can either stand, or sit forward on the edge of the toilet, whatever is most comfortable for you."

"OK, I'll pee in the jar for you when I am ready to pee."

"Meanwhile, I'd like to run some other scans to find out more about your internal parts. Have you ever had an MRI, a CAT scan, an X ray, or other internal scans?"

"I had an X ray once, but it was only of my arm when I broke it."

"Yeah, that wouldn't help. I am going to assume that your pelvic and abdominal regions have never been scanned by any technique that would reveal your abnormalities, and I am going to try to get you all these scans today."

So I spent a few hours, most of it waiting for scanning devices and the people running them to be available. After one of the scans I did pee for the doctor. And then they let us go.

"Until we get the chance to examine these scan results and understand what is going on, Kim, you go ahead with feeding Mikey like you normally do. It doesn't seem to have hurt you any, your current issues notwithstanding. By the way, how much do you normally feed Mikey?"

"Usually Mikey eats about three times the slice of bread I fed him here over the course of a day, though it's usually not all bread. Mom gives me a sandwich in my school lunch and I tear off three or four small bits for him, and I feed him a similar amount of my breakfast and dinner. But since he ate all that bread, I probably won't need to feed him any of my lunch. I am certainly ready for some lunch, though!"

The doctor asked us to come back in at the end of afternoon. With me and Mom both listening, he explained:

Kim, we think you have a conjoined twin. Usually, when twins develop in the womb, they each develop in a separate sac with a separate placenta, and except for growing within the same womb they are completely separate. But sometimes they get stuck together, and what usually results looks like two babies that are joined at some part of their body, sometimes sharing a part. For instance, they might be joined at one leg, so it looks like people running a three-legged race, but there's really only one leg in the middle. In even rarer cases, one twin gets stuck inside the other and doesn't develop fully. Sometimes these are diagnosed at birth, but sometimes the twin is hidden and not noticed until later. That seems to be the case here. Kim, you knew Mikey was there, but didn't understand what he was, and we can't blame you for that. We can only move forward with where you are now.

In many cases, we try to remove the remnants of the conjoined twin. In this case we think that is going to be dangerous and we won't attempt it, but let me explain what we have seen, first, so you can understand why we are thinking this.

First off, you only have about two-thirds of the length of the small intestine which most people have. That is probably OK, but it means you get slightly less nutrition out of your food, maybe 5 to 10 percent less. Most of Mikey's organs take up the space where this missing intestine normally goes.

He had a tablet computer and brought up several pictures in the next part of his explanation.

Here is the part of you we X-rayed. You can see your pelvis here, and the tops of your leg bones. Your lower spine and the last couple ribs appear normally here. But there are some other floating bone structures here which we think are incomplete bones left over from your twin.

In this scan, you can see more of the internal organs. This image from the side shows how the tongue is rooted to the outside of the vaginal wall, part of its underside being exposed and covering the opening of the mouth. What I suspect is that he opens his mouth by pulling his tongue back, similar to the way you do when you pronounce an L sound. And Mikey is eating the food by scooping it up with his tongue and pushing it into his esophagus, which is here. Except for not being joined with the windpipe, the esophagus seems normal, though inverted and short. It goes to a stomach here, separate from your own stomach. It's probably this stomach that gives Mikey the feeling of hunger.

Mikey's gall bladder is here, and there's a short section of intestine that joins with your own small intestine here, about halfway through the length of your small intestine. Beyond this point, your body processes what he eats.

We think this organ is Mikey's brain. The lobe that would normally process sensory input is absent or so tiny we cannot see it, but since Mikey does not have sensory organs apart from possibly taste, this is probably to be expected. But this is the thinking part, the part you are communicating with internally, and there are strong connections to your spinal cord here. This is the main reason we do not want to remove Mikey, because he is strongly tied in with your nervous system and we don't think we can remove him without risking damage to your mind or senses.

Now here is the other area of concern. This is what your reproductive system looks like, and here is a normal girl's at your age. Where normally the ovaries are this size, you appear to have much more here. We think that Mikey's testes have formed here, directly adjacent to your ovaries, probably together with the other organs that produce semen. Either through wet dreams, which are when a man ejaculates in his sleep, or when you yourself were masturbating, Mikey ejaculated directly into your Fallopian tubes at some point when you were ovulating, and got you pregnant.

Mom and I both gasped, but we let him go on.

This mass in the uterus is clearly a fetus of some sort. However, the pregnancy does not appear to be proceeding normally. Mikey has DNA the equivalent of your brother, and you share some recessive genes which make it impossible for you and Mikey to have children normally. The likelihood of problems of this sort is why incest among siblings, between parent and child, and usually among people one more degree removed, such as cousins, is generally forbidden in almost every tradition, historical and modern, around the world.

The discomfort you felt recently was likely the first stage of detachment, when the body separates from an unviable fetus. Probably in the next day or so you will feel a stronger case of the same, associated with some cramps, which are uncontrolled and sometimes painful muscle contractions. This will push the fetus into your vagina. After that, your body may push the fetus out on its own, or you may have to use your vaginal muscles to push it out, or in the worst case we can use a tool to extract it. But I'm going to send you a link to some free Lamaze videos. These are classes that help you learn to use your vaginal muscles. Women normally take these classes to try to improve their ability to give birth, and that's essentially what you are doing, except that the fetus will be very small, about the size of a chicken's egg.

This is likely to happen again if we don't do something, and since you likely have an elevated level of male hormones, traditional birth control pills may not work or may be harmful to you or to Mikey. Condoms are clearly useless, and spermicide may also not work because your eggs may be fertilized before the semen even enters the uterus. So there is really only one contraceptive option we think can work for you, and that is the surgical removal of Mikey's testes. This is a standard procedure for men who want to permanently remove their ability to cause pregnancy. For you it will be a bit more invasive because of their location deep inside you, but it should be no more difficult. We would like to perform this 7 to 14 days from now, which should allow your body time to shed the current pregnancy but ensure you do not have time to become pregnant again.

"OK, that makes sense," Mom said.

"Yes," I agreed. "I can't go around becoming pregnant every month. Mikey is a little scared but I think he understands that too."

"Mikey understands that much?" the doctor said, incredulous.

"Mikey learns everything I learn. We quiz each other and reinforce what we learn, including things learned outside of school."

"Then you are dependent on Mikey, and it's even more important to avoid doing anything that could cause harm to Mikey. You are going to need to be careful with medicines you take, perhaps trying them in child-size doses before building up to a full strength dose to make sure they are not harming Mikey, and never drink or take tobacco, marijuana, or other drugs."

"Thanks for the advice," I told him.

"Any other questions?"

"No, I think I understand it all," I told him.

"Agreed," Mom said.

"My receptionist can help you schedule the surgery. It won't be here, and I won't be performing it, but I'll be present to help explain your situation to the surgeon."

We scheduled it on the earliest possible day and left.

I didn't get a chance to learn the Lamaze skills before I felt the cramps start the next morning, but I started studying the videos and was able to push the fetus out of my body by noon. It was clearly dead and hard as a rock, but we wrapped it up and took it in for the doctor to examine. He was eventually able to find some DNA to test and confirmed it was the child of me and Mikey.

So I got Mikey's testes removed, and about 2 months later started having periods normally again. That went on for 3 months before I missed one, and we consulted the doctor again. Amazingly, his tests revealed that Mikey's testes had grown back.

"Well, this is a difficult case. Other contraception is either unlikely to work or likely to be harmful to Mikey. His testes grow back. I have one last strategy to try to keep you from having this problem with some regularity. We can leave the testes in the body, but move the entire set of organs, the testes and the other organs involved in producing semen, so that the semen exits via your urethra, the way it does in a normal man. Of course, you won't have a penis, so it will spill out over your vulva. You should be careful to avoid getting it up into your vagina, but it's unlikely to get you pregnant that way, anyway. It has to get into the uterus, either by the initial ejaculate hitting and passing through the cervix, or more commonly by the continued thrusting action of the penis pushing it through."

"Mikey could eat it," I suggested.

"Yes, Mikey could eat it. He'd be unlikely to catch all of it unless you are helping with your hands, but it's unlikely to cause harm in there."

It took a month and a half before they could schedule this more involved surgery, but that allowed the new pregnancy to complete and for me to give birth to another rock before it happened. Afterward, I got used to the ejaculation every time I masturbated - I had no idea it was happening every single time until then - and to feeding Mikey the semen.

And this worked for a while, before another missed period. The doctor was having trouble believing what he saw, but the evidence was incontrovertible. Mikey grew another set of male organs next to my ovaries, and I still had the ones attached to my urethra.

"Well, I am running out of options here," the doctor admitted. "I can remove your ovaries, rendering you permanently unable to get pregnant, but given your history I would not be surprised if they grew back, too. Or you can simply get used to giving birth to stillborn children every few months."

And that's how I ended up where I am, giving birth to rocks about 3 times a year. It wasn't all bad. I ended up marrying a woman and we were able to impregnate her with Mikey's sperm, and she had a normal child.