“Mirrorman”
by Eric Del Carlo
The saving grace of Syd’s dingy studio apartment in a dilapidated building, which stood in a hardscrabble neighborhood was this: the enormous mirror. One wall of the single room was his “kitchen”; his bed went in the only space where it would fit; and the big sliding door of his closet was opposite the bed.
Someone at some point had faced that entire door in mirroring glass. It was as high as the ceiling and covered the whole wall.
And so, whenever Syd had some hot guy or gal over for sexual frolics, he got treated to the breathlessly erotic sight of himself and his partner going at it with wild carnal abandon. A few playmates had hesitated on seeing the mirror. Fewer still had actually walked out on him.
But mostly the free sideshow garnered a positive reaction. Some of the boys giggled, watching themselves sidelong. Some of the girls growled with predatory delight, gazes fastened on the duplicate images as they coiled and lunged and entangled.
Syd himself loved the mirror. He wiped the total surface with Windex every few days. Though he was making much better money than when he’d moved in here, he kept his tiny apartment. He didn’t want to leave his mirror. So many good memories, so many acrobatic and emancipated sexual episodes. Here, in this room, before this reflecting glass, he had at last allowed himself to fully explore his dual sexuality. He felt that those momentous chapters of his life were somehow recorded in the gleaming glassy depths.
And when he didn’t have a partner for the night, he liked to stand naked before the reflecting window and let the sight of his own body arouse him; and then proceed to take himself in hand, and work his cock in the timeworn manner, and lead himself to the glorious eruptive peak.
He was engaged in this activity right now, his twangingly hard member in hand, fist moving in a blur, eyes slightly slitted so that he saw his image through his eyelashes. A sweet masturbatory haze softened his thoughts. The tensions of the workday were oozing away. He breathed in shortening gasps.
About halfway to orgasm the pleasure became so intense that the mirror seemed to warp. Immediately opposite where he stood the surface…bulged. He blinked his eyes, but didn’t stop jerking his cock.
The strange warping continued, growing more pronounced, as if the hard quicksilver surface actually were distending. Impossible.
But the distortion increased, and the two-dimensional plane was breaking out of its confines; and incredibly (impossible…impossible!) a three-dimensional shape was emerging from the mirror.
Shock jolted Syd. His hand froze, still wrapping his organ. The shape stepped out of the mirror. Into his room. It was as reflective as the mirror, throwing back shifting images of the studio and of Syd himself. The figure was Syd’s height, human in shape. It looked around the room, as if it could see. As if it was alive. As if any of this could actually be happening…
He was too stunned for panic. He stayed frozen.
That stillness gave him the seconds to study this creature. All of it was a mirror…but its form was unmistakable. It wasn’t just a human-shape. It was a Syd-shape. It was him, in a mirroring skin.
And like the real Syd, this one also had a hard-on.
Syd couldn’t help but look at the cock, configured exactly like his own.
All that sex in front of this mirror. That odd fancy of his that it was all somehow being recorded in the glass. His devotion, too–that probably figured into this in some way as well. He loved his mirror. Now his mirror was loving him back.
When the gleaming hand rose to brush his cheek, he waited for the cool rigid touch. But though this hand appeared to be glass, it had a fleshy softness to it. A warmth. And the touch was so gentle, the backs of fingers trailing down his cheek. He looked into the creature’s face and saw his own echoing back at him. The mirrorman was leaning toward him. Syd, without fear now, leaned forward too.
They kissed. It was tender and sublime; and when their lips parted, the glassy tongue was agile and moved with a growing eagerness.
Carnal heat licked Syd’s bare body. Boldly he reached for the creature’s cock. The mirror being did the same to him. Syd felt the urgencies coursing through it–through him. This life form had gender, plainly. He must have thoughts. He very obviously had needs. The same needs currently swarming in the flesh-and-blood Syd.
Together, in a coordinated stagger, they moved to the bed. They lay down together. Lust burned in Syd now. How many lovers had he taken onto this bed? How often had the mirror watched? Maybe it had envied Syd his sexual recreations. Maybe it had just wanted Syd, all this time.
They grappled. They struggled happily. Skin and mirror commingled. Limbs entwined, mouths busy, hands scrabbling. Syd found himself on his back, legs hooked over the mercury shoulders, feeling the sweet hurried thrusts. Later, amidst the carnal mayhem, he mounted his counterpart from behind. Hammering away, the penetrative plunges taking him up through the sexual scales, to the final octave, the crescendo.
He came in a frenzy, and lay twitching afterward, fantastically spent.
It would have been too much for the mirrorman to be capable of speech as well. But they kissed and embraced, communicating that way. And all was tender and friendly as he rose from the bed and, stepping as if into a vertical pool, returned to his mirror.
Syd gazed rapturously at the reflecting surface, knowing he was still there. Still watching. Surely he would one day return. Surely.
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Eric Del Carlo’s erotic fiction first appeared with Circlet Press in the 1990s. Since, he has had multiple appearances in Circlet anthologies. His mainstream sf has been published in Clarkesworld, Analog, Asimov’s and other venues.