Then, of course, Katherine had started coming back from the grave, and Bruno had been able to satisfy himself with her, expending copious quantities of sperm in the many lovely bodies that she had inhabited. He still had most of his sex alone, with himself, with his other self, his other half–but it was wildly exciting to thrust into the warm, tight, moist center of a woman every once in a while.
Now he stood in front of the mirror that was fixed to the door of Sally’s bathroom, and he stared with fascination at the reflection of his penis, wondering what difference Tammy had sensed when she’d felt his pulsating erection in that massage parlor cubicle, five years ago.
After a while, he let his gaze travel upward from his sex organs to his flat, hard, muscular belly, then up to his huge chest, and farther up until he met the gaze of the other Bruno in the looking glass. When he stared into his own eyes, everything at the periphery of his vision faded away, and the very foundations of reality turned molten and assumed new forms; without drugs or alcohol, he was swept into an hallucinogenic experience. He reached out and touched the mirror, and the fingers of the other Bruno touched his fingers from the far side of the glass. As if in a dream, he drifted closer to the mirror, pressed his nose to the other Bruno’s nose. He looked deep into the other’s eyes, and those eyes peered deep into his. For a moment, he forgot that he was only confronting a reflection; the other Bruno was real. He kissed the other, and the kiss was cold. He pulled back a few inches. So did the other Bruno. He licked his lips. So did the other Bruno. Then they kissed again. He licked the other Bruno’s open mouth, and gradually the kiss became warm, but it never grew as soft and pleasant as he had expected. In spite of the three powerful orgasms that Sally-Katherine had drawn from him, his penis stiffened yet again, and when it was very hard he pressed it against the other Bruno’s penis and slowly rotated his hips, rubbing their erect organs together, still kissing, still gazing rapturously into the eyes that stared out of the mirror. For a minute or two, he was happier than he had been in days.
But then the hallucination abruptly dissolved, and reality came back like a hammer striking iron. He became aware that he really was not holding his other self and that he was trying to have sex with nothing more than a flat reflection. A strong electric current of emotion seemed to jump across the synapse between the eyes in the looking glass and his own eyes, and a tremendous shock blasted through his body; it was an emotional shock, but it also affected him physically, making him twitch and shake. His lethargy burned away in an instant. Suddenly he was re-energized; his mind was spinning, sparking.
He remembered that he was dead. Half of him was dead. The bitch had stabbed him last week, in Los Angeles. Now he was both dead and alive.
A profound sorrow welled up in him.
Tears came to his eyes.
He realized that he couldn’t hold himself as he once had done. Not ever again.
He couldn’t fondle himself or be fondled by himself as he once had done. Not ever again.
He now had only two hands, not four; only one penis, not two; only one mouth, not two.
He could never kiss himself again, never feel his two tongues caressing each other. Not ever again.
Half of him was dead. He wept.
He never again would have sex with himself as he’d had it thousands of times in the past. Now he would have no lover but his hand, the limited pleasure of masturbation.
He was alone.
Forever.
For a while, he stood in front of the mirror, crying, his broad shoulders bent under the terrible weight of abject despair. But slowly his unbearable grief and self-pity gave way to rising anger. She had done this to him. Katherine. The bitch. She had killed half of him, had left him feeling incomplete and wretchedly empty, hollow. The selfish, hateful, vicious bitch! As his fury mounted, he was possessed by an urge to break things. Naked, he stormed through the bungalow–living room and kitchen and bathroom–smashing furniture, ripping upholstery, breaking dishes, cursing his mother, cursing his demon father, cursing a world that he sometimes couldn’t understand at all.