It’s time for this week’s Song Title Challenge.

Write a short piece of fiction, around 300 words, using the song title as your story title but don’t listen to the song.  You can pick your own genre or use the one suggested to me.  Remember to link back to this post so I can find yours.

If you would like to suggest a song title for a future post, you can do so from the challenge page.  You can also leave a suggestion on the Facebook page.

This week’s song is Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye and the genre, as suggested by bumblepuppies, is Sci-Fi/Fantasy.  Genre is Historic Fiction.  I was wondering how to keep things PG13 with this particular title, but I think I managed quite nicely, though I’ll confess to drawing heavily for inspiration on the Dresden Files novel I’m currently reading (including the names of all my characters – no resemblance to the actual characters is intended 😉 ).

Sexual Healing

“You expecting a call?” said Harry.

“No, why?” said Thomas, glancing at his phone for the umpteenth time.

“Because it’s either that or you’ve developed nomophobia since I last saw you.”

“Nomo-what?”

“You really should read more. No-mo-pho-bi-a. An unhealthy attachment to your cell phone. You’ve been checking it every three minutes since we got here.”

Thomas at least had the decency to blush. “Sorry, bro. I was checking the time.”

“Double-booked, did you. And here I thought our monthly lunch was important to you. At least tell me she’s hot.”

“It’s not a date. Well, not exactly. I finally got in.”

Harry felt a sudden coldness in the pit of his stomach. “I hope that doesn’t mean what I think it does.”

His tone clearly went unnoticed by his brother. Thomas beamed. “It took me months to get an appointment.”

“Thomas, you can’t go there. I won’t let you.”

Thomas frowned. “You and your prudish beliefs. It’s the twenty-third century, Harry. And it’s not like The Palace is illegal or anything.”

“Thomas, it’s dangerous…”

“Not that again!” Thomas was raising his voice and other diners were looking towards them. “There’s nothing dangerous about sexual healing. You should have seen Murphy after he went there. I’d never seen him so relaxed…”

Harry leaned close and whispered through his teeth. “That’s because they’d sucked the life force out of him. That’s what succubi do. They’re predators and idiots like you are standing in line to be food. People have died in there.”

“That was determined to be from natural causes. But thanks for finally calling me an idiot to my face. The insinuations were getting tiresome.”

“Thomas, that’s not what I meant.”

“Sure it wasn’t.” Thomas got up. “Thanks for lunch.”

Harry watched his brother leave, and wondered if he’d ever see him again.

Copyright © 2014 Herman Kok

• Fiction
• Song Title Challenge