Category: Ficktion Fridays

In the darkness, the skin seem not to burn as much.

Tonight it was an extension cord, and I can feel the welts crawling up my legs.

The extension cord isn’t bad; he picked up a stick of 2×4 for my sister, and she kept getting up. I don’t have anything to cry about, not really.

Keep on crying, and I’ll give you something to cry about!

I’m not crying. And in the bunk above me, my sister is not crying either.

The knob jiggles, and the blind eyes of the dark open a long yellow crack. I stiffen, trying to inhale as my breathing judders to a stop inside my throat. I can taste metallic fear in my mouth as I try and feign sleep. Nobody would be fooled by my quick, shallow breaths, by the fine sheen of perspiration on my body, by the stiffness of my limbs. I lie completely immobile, the perfect image of a child, one lying so still she could be dead.

He stands, silhouetted, searching our darkened room for what? Signs of rebellion? Signs of life?

My treacherous bladder suddenly tightens; I have to pee, and I want to squeeze my legs together. Movement would betray my wakefulness, so I don’t. I tighten inner muscles, will my feet not to twitch, my hands not to clench.

He waits.

“Daddy’s sorry.”

The voice is low and guttural, and I feel goosebumps spring up all over.

He waits, and chasms yawn in the dark silence.

I hate it when he speaks in third person, hate it more than anything.

If he’s really sorry, why can’t he say so? Why can’t he use that elusive pronoun?

“Daddy’s” sorry. Like it was some other person who swung that cord, someone else for whom he humbly apologizes. ‘Daddy’s sorry.’ It sing-songs in my ear, and I feel tension drawing me up, singing electrically through the air. If he doesn’t go soon…

He closes the door.

I used to ask my mother why, but she would look away, her glance flitting toward the door, even though I kept my voice low.

“Shhh,” she would soothe me, hand brushing over my mouth, finding my forehead where it would linger, perhaps testing for some kind of fever which compelled me to speak.

“Why does he do it, Mama? He isn’t sorry. If he was sorry, he wouldn’t do it again. If he was sorry–”

“Hush.” Her voice was firm. “Hush. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

On the back porch at Laura’s house, we scattered peanut shells, while the dog ran around the yard, energetically picking up the shells and tossing them into the air. Jack Russell terriers have way too much energy, but Aladdin is entertainment, and entertaining, and Laura’s yard is a refuge from my own, where my father is a shadowy presence in the shed, banging on something while he sulks. He has been laid off for three weeks now.

“I’m home!” I hear someone yell, and feel myself freeze as Laura’s father pokes his head around the sliding glass door. He is still dressed, full policeman’s blues, gold badge shining. He smiles and nods at me as he unbuttons his top button, revealing a white t-shirt collar.

“Hi, girls,” he says, reaching down his collar for something that turns out to be a snub-nosed Beretta, policeman’s issue.

“Hey, Dad,” Laura says disinterestedly, tossing up a handful of peanuts for Aladdin.

“Laura,” her father says, smacking the gun into his hand, cracking it, and dumping the bullets into his hand, “you’re going to clean up after that dog.”

“Da-ad,” Laura sighs. “I know that.”

My stomach plummets. Laura tosses another handful of peanuts, and Aladdin jumps, a particularly pleased expression in his crazed little eyes as he catches the peanut. He turns it over in his mouth and slobbers, then trots over and delivers it to Laura.

“Eew!” she squeals. She grins at me. “Isn’t that gross?”

I am mesmerized Laura’s father. He has stepped back inside, but I can still see him as he unlocks a large black box, then takes out a smaller black box and unlocks it. Into this he deposits the bullets, and locks it back. Into the larger box goes the gun. He unloads the gun in his side holster as well, then disappears further into the house, taking the locked boxes with him.

Aladdin yips, then growls and I turn to see Laura wrestling a wad of peanut shells from between his clenched teeth.

“The salt’s not really good for him,” she confesses, smiling at me. “Mom said he’s the only dog she knows who eats peanuts whole.”

“Our dog used to eat raisins,” I offer shyly. We had a dog, before Daddy gave him away. We have had lots of dogs, but none of them are quite right. Never quite right for my father.

“What are you girls up to?”

I jerk. Laura’s dad, in jeans with his white t-shirt, has caught me off guard again.

“Just teaching Ali a trick,” Laura says. She tosses up another peanut. “See?”

Laura’s dad nods, then smiles my direction.

“Is your friend always this quiet?”

Laura’s father is a policeman.

Clutching the edges of my cardigan, I stand in the doorway, next to the narrow gas heater set into the wall. If you press your face against the metal slats, you can see through to the next room. I don’t need to see, though. I can hear.

“I’m not stupid!”

The sound of a hand striking flesh.

“I’m not stupid!”

Again.

“I’m still not stupid.” A sob in her voice this time.

“Let’s all just calm down.” My mother.

Her father is a policeman.

I hear footsteps, and turn back into my room. In this family, we don’t see. We don’t talk. We don’t tell.

My sister isn’t crying when she climbs up into her bunk.My sister isn’t crying, but I am, even though I have nothing to cry about.

We take off our clothes. We turn off the lights. We hush, and go to bed.

No picture this week but blankness, and the theme is censoring – in all kinds of ways. Read a few different takes on the word from the usual suspects on Ficktion.ning.com

Every once in awhile, I come across something that rings so loudly as a One True Thing that I am made slightly ill by the reverberations.

In choosing my life in print, I tend to skew toward YA stuff, of course, and it’s easy enough to target that I am reliving, relieving, regretting, wishing. And of course, it’s also the writing/literature I choose because I just like it, it’s a funny, quirky time of life when one is free to do just about anything and go any direction without fear.

But.

Shouldn’t every time of life be like that? And so, I found this latest Flickr/Ficktion.ning to be one of those queasy reverb times when I am sort of wall-eyed and nauseas from a good clock on the head. This is me: this is the me on the chasm, on the lip of a great big crack in the earth. This is me, for the nine millioneth time, drawing back from the crack because I’m not sure whether I would fall in or up or down.

Please, God, this is me for once taking a great big leap.

---

Sandstone

6.9.07

“I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me. I have accepted fear as a part of life, specifically the fear of change, the fear of the unknown, and I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back, turn back, you’ll die if you venture too far. “ — Erica Jong

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:

Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

“Second Fig,” 1922 – Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am muted by desire, wavering here, on this freeway overpass. If I took just a few steps up, grasped the edge of the cyclone fence, I could be right out over the traffic, at the end of my world. The wind, which teases soundlessly, would shrill in my ears, making a malevolent tangle of my hair. If, If. I won’t do it, though. I’m only here for symbolic reasons. My therapist friend, Bev, says I need to be “in the wind” more often, and learn to enjoy it. Bev says I should play with blocks of sandstone, holding them and carving at them, letting them crumble and shatter beneath my hands. Bev says that art should learn to live with impermanence. Bev should’ve been a Buddhist.

It is windy today, and the poisonous clouds of oleander along the freeway are thrashing wildly. I squint down at the ribbons of hazy asphalt, then squeeze my eyes shut to block out the endless rush of cars. This is a stupid place to stand. If it weren’t for Bev, I wouldn’t be here.

Bev says that my random destructive tendencies are a result of my inability to cope with chaos. Bev says I have to “face my fears,” and let go of my death grip on my life. Bev says that once I see that every life is at the mercy of the Fates, at the mercy of the winds of change, I’ll be better able to understand my place in the universe.

Of course, Bev could be wrong.

What could happen is that I will stand here in the wind, and realize that I am a speck of dust in the universe, and that is my place. What could happen is that I will realize that nothing I plan may happen, that I spend too much of my life making lists of things marked ‘Eventually’ and ‘Someday’ and that I wrestle each day to convince myself that eventually and someday are guaranteed. What could happen is that I may realize that everything I do doesn’t matter, that chaos is the way of the world. What may happen is that I come down from this perch, screaming.

Instead, I think I will just tear up my university applications.

They will take longer to fall than I would.

He wandered off the Interstate in search of a cold drink and a clean restroom when he passed the brown clapboard building with the words “Friends of Bill, Meet 7:30 Weeknights,” in faded letters on the marquee.

Friends of Bill. He could be a friend, too, though he held none of the requisite addictions to qualify. Decisively, he circled back, found a diner that served hearty portions of meatloaf and plain brown bread, then, finishing, strolled slowly through tree-lined streets, looking up through gold dusted air, listening to the quiescent sounds of a small town settling in for the evening.

The building smelled faintly of spaghetti dinners and mothballed clothing; an old Elks Lodge or community hall. The “NO SMOKING” sign predicted the air filled with the familiar blue haze in the corridor, as desperate lungs took in their last tar-laden breaths. Anonymous faces old and young drifted in from the gold touched evening. A coffee urn dispensed a blackish, brackish brew, a liquid replacement for the courage so many needed to attend each night, and he took a bracing sip.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The words to the Thomas Simmons prayer, murmured in soft cadence with the man beside him, relaxed him. A feeling of relief swept over him as the meeting slid through the familiar paces – he had been here before, and done this before. He had never stayed so long, and friendly eyes turned to him as introductions were made.

I’m Mitch, he thought, choosing a name at random. Or Jason. Gordon. The names stuck in his throat, and he averted his face as the Anonymous began to speak. They would not withdraw compassion for his pseudonym he knew. That travesty a hundred thousand others had already taken up and worn as a mask, the real Mitches, Jasons and Gordons caped in opaqueness as Bobs, Mikes and Dans. Only when they were able to discard their falsehoods – it was their addiction to that which held them – could they reclaim a real identity. He would not suffer for that untruth, but from others, worse ones. His presence here was the greatest lie of all – he had the courage to change nothing.

It was easier, with a razor, than she had expected.

After all, it was a word already branded in pain on her soul.

‘If,’ always followed closely by ‘only.’

Enough of regret. She would make a bit of ink when she had finished, out of walnut hulls, charcoal and the like and rub it into the narrow chasms of opened flesh. The red weals would heal, but the scar would remain. Like a prayer on her skin, she would be reminded, and throw her dreams out further, to arc beyond the gravity of the reality of her life. And, if she breathed the word, and lived it, and dreamed it long enough, she would break free of her little orbit, and maybe her own wobbling star would shoot out into a new trajectory.

She needed to feel the weight of a new gravity, if only she were not afraid.

If.

---

So. IF is now the property of The Skin Project and was taken by Flickr photographer Miss Hagg. This evocative photo will likely be the Ficktion.ning subject of a number of other stories found with: The Gurrier, Ms. Teaandcakes, Elimare, Chris, Aquafortis, Valshamerlyn, and Miss Mari.

---

Every once in awhile I write a story that seems like a bit too little like fiction, and a bit more like throwing up. I think I need a good lie down now. If this has been more information than you needed, that’s what you get for reading the fine print.

I.

“There are fairies at the bottom of the garden,” Mame said suddenly.

Dad guffawed.

“Yes, Mum,” Mom said absently, peering down at her crossword. “Derek, do you want the last of the toast?”

“Yeah, I’ll take it,” Dad said through a mouthful of crumbs. He glanced up at Mame from the sports section in the newspaper. “She’s off with the fairies today, then, is she? Next thing she’ll be saying is she saw something nasty in the woodshed.” He laughed again, and Mame stared straight ahead, as if she couldn’t hear him.

“Oh, stop it,” Mom said, smiling tolerantly. “She’s never that bad, not yet. Don’t be cruel, love.”

Kristin pushed back her hair, tilted her head and smiled in that utterly condescending manner she had perfected since Year 9. “Do they have wings, Mame?” she asked sweetly. “What kind of fairies are they?”

“They’re the kind that live at the bottom of the garden,” she said tartly, suddenly turning mad, dark eyes in Kristin’s direction. “There’s a unicorn, too, not that the likes of you could get near him.”

Kirsten’s complexion chalked, and she drew back, her smile crumpling.

“Girls, get along with your breakfasts,” Mom said, shooting Kirsten a keen glance. “I’ll drive you if I have to, but I’d rather you got a bus to the orthodontist this morning.”

“I’m finished anyway,” Kirsten said, pushing back from the table and picking up her plate. “Will you get me a note for first period? We have some kind of assembly.”

Mom followed Kirsten down the hall. Dad turned a page in the paper.

“Where?” I whispered.

Mame’s glance darted toward me. “Where,” she said with no inflection, and my throat constricted.

“Where, Mame?” I whispered again. “Where are the fairies?”

Mame’s opaque gaze was a thousand miles away.

“Robyn,” Dad said, pulling himself away from the hockey report, “Now, you know she can’t understand whatever it is you’re going on about. We talked about all this before. Go get your books now, or you’ll be late.”

“Yes, Dad,” I said glumly, and rose from the table. I took a last longing look toward my grandmother, and out the window to the back garden.

“See you, Mame.”

At the door, it was the usual fast forward as Mame’s bus pulled up to the curb and Dad grabbed a last cup of coffee and went out to his real estate office. Mom had a deposition at the courthouse, so she was headed downtown in a hurry, teetering down the front steps in her good crocodile pumps. Kirsten checked her hair one last time in the mirror and sauntered toward the bus stop, hooking her iPod cords down the front of her hoodie. I grabbed my backpack and edged around the man from New Realms as he maneuvered Mame’s wheelchair down the ramp.

“Have a good day, Mr. Lin,” I called. “Bye, Mame.”

As the caretaker gently turned Mame’s wheelchair, she spoke again. “Red shed,” she said clearly, staring at the wall of the house. “There are fairies at the bottom of the garden.”

“Oh, good for you, Mrs. Donovan,” the stooped, gnarled man patted her arm as he expertly kicked the wheelchair lift into action. “I’ve got fairies in the flower pot on my front porch. I wish I had them in my garden.”

I hesitated. Mr. Lin sounded like he was dead serious.

“Robynnn!” Kirsten was shrieking. The bus was coming around the corner.

I’ll look for them, I thought, running down the sidewalk. Later. I’ll look for them later.

“Red shed!” Mame shouted agitatedly. “Red shed!”

“I’ll find them,” I shouted back.

“Hurry!” Kirsten screamed.

Tightening my braces produced, as always, the feeling that a vice had been tightened around my whole head. For the ten thousandth time I wished my mother wasn’t such a fan of the perfect smile. My overbite had been slight, and the space between my two front teeth minimal, but since Kirsten was having work done, my parents had thought to get me “all squared away” as well.

As we walked away from the orthodontist’s office, Kirsten informed me that she was going downtown.

“Fine,” I muttered, blinking as I saw my sister with a shimmering haze around her person. “I’m getting a migraine, so I’m going home.”

“Good,” Kirsten said, unruffled and unfeeling. “I’ll tell Mom I had to walk you. Okay?”

I agreed miserably. In a way, I wished she would walk me home. The sunlight seemed to be stabbing through my eyes into the back of my brain. The sixteen blocks home seemed impossibly long. I staggered onto a bus, and slumped into the seat, cringing at each bump.

When I walked into the house, I thought I heard the printer in Dad’s office.

“Dad? I’m home.” I walked into the room but only found the fax blowing noisily as pages sifted into the hopper. I wandered into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of milk. Finding my migraine medication, I swallowed it with down, stumbled to my room, pulled down the blinds, and collapsed into bed.

II.

What woke me was the light.

It was warm, sleeping in a sun puddle at the end of a long autumn afternoon. I stretched and turned over, luxuriating in the warmth of the sun on my face. The migraine meds had left me a little bemused and fuddled, fuzzy, but in a comfortable way. I stumbled to the window and looked out, rubbing my eyes.

The shimmer around the trees made me squint. Things seemed to be moving, occasionally jumping, shifting. The shed at the bottom of the garden seemed almost a living presence, crouched and watching from its position at the very end of our long, narrow plot of land. The light touched the building oddly.

“Red shed,” I murmured aloud, and blinked. Mame had been on about it just this morning. What had gotten her all wound up?

Fairies. In the bottom of the garden.

Galvanized, I shoved my feet into a pair of moccasin slippers, and headed into the hall. Outside, everything seemed suddenly too bright, so I picked up a pair of Dad’s old sunglasses from the kitchen counter, and slipped them on, stepping out the back door.

As the screen slapped shut behind me, all was breathlessly silent in the garden, as if the wind itself had drawn in a great breath. I waited, oddly unsettled, for the birds to continue cheeping, and the traffic from the road down the hill from us to resume. After a moment, the wind sighed once again in the tops of the trees, and a magpie croaked from the crossbeam of the roof.

I sat down on the stairs and looked around. The morning glories had died back some, but their vivid blue blooms were still weighing down the fence between our garden and the neighbor’s. A warped picnic table with a cracked terra cotta pot graced the other side of the yard, sad proof of one of Mom’s attempts to save Mame’s porch garden. The late rain had left the trees along the edge of the yard shedding their reddened leaves and the wind had scattered twigs all around. In the middle of the yard, a drift of golden brown leaves in the thick green grass seemed to undulate, as if …breathing.

“Weird,” I said, crossing the yard to peer at them. “That’s not the wind, is it?” As I bent toward the leaves, the movement stilled, and I drew back, startled. “Oh, gross, don’t tell me it’s some kind of bugs,” I muttered to myself. I reached out a hesitant hand, daring myself to flip over the leaf and see what lay behind it.

“One… two… three!” My fingers flicked at a piece of bark, and I squeaked. Nausea roiled inside as I fought to keep my feet. It had been tiny and brownish pale, and twisted – probably just a piece of some kind of root, but for a moment… a moment… wild, beady eyes, long, sharp fingers, a bulbous, wrinkled abdomen…

I shivered. The migraine medicine, I decided, wasn’t finished with me. I should go inside.

Ugh. Shouldn’t have gotten up so fast, I thought, rubbing my arms and tottering back toward the house. Should probably see if I can keep down some lunch, see if I can sleep off the rest of this buzz…

My foot had touched the bottom stair, when a movement from the shed caught my eye.

Dad’s knights. Hadn’t they been all in one piece the last time I’d looked?

He’d been so proud of them, putting them together for Kristin’s Year 5 history faire. Finding bits and bobs of old metal, he’d fashioned one a serviceable hauberk and a shield, a broadsword for the other. Now one of the knights was headless, but held only the bottom of the hauberk, while the other retained his head, but his arms ended in rusted stumps.

I peered at them, frowning. It could be that I just didn’t noticed when they’d begun to fall apart, I reasoned. School had been going for the last six weeks. It had been awhile since I’d come out to the yard and just sat.

I trotted up another stair, and had pulled open the door when I heard a screech. Startled, I turned back.

The door of the shed was wide open now. A strange light emanated from the old red building, and the rusted figures of the knights seemed to stand closer now, their truncated limbs stretched out across the door.

As I recoiled, I heard the doorbell ring.

“Robyn?” Mr. Lin’s voice was calling. “Hello? Donovans? Is anyone home?”

I risked another look over my shoulder at the shed, and heard Mame’s shout. “Home! Fairies!”

“Robyn?” Mr. Lin’s voice sounded relieved as I opened the front door. “Thank all Gods. She’s had a difficult morning.”

“Are you bringing her home?” I sputtered. “I-I’m home sick. I can’t take care of her by myself. I can’t understand her. What if she needs the toilet?”

Mr. Lin looked uncomfortable. “Of course, I wouldn’t leave you to cope without anyone. It’s just…” He cleared his throat and ran his finger along the color of his spotless white shirt. “She seemed so… worried.”

I blinked. “Worried?” And Dad’s words echoed in my thoughts, Now, you know she can’t understand whatever it is you’re going on about. We talked about all this before…

I bent down and addressed Mame’s expressionless face. “It’s all right, Mame. I’ll just get my bag and come back with you. If it’s okay,” I add, looking up at Mr. Lin.

“Fine,” he said, relaxing a little. “We’d love to have you.”

“I’ll come back with you,” I continued, “and Mr. Lin will tell me what you want me to know. About the shed. And the fairies. All right?”

Mr. Lin looked down at me with a fathomless expression, his dark eyes hooded and distant. I met his gaze and waited until finally he nodded, a single decisive bob of his head.

“Right, then,” he said, turning Mame’s chair. “Grab your things, then.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lin,” I said.

“Might as well call me Tam,” he said, kicking the wheelchair lift. “Everyone else does.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Photographic Inspiration Courtesy of nikpawlak, more stories from the usual suspects can be found on our Ficktion-Ning site. Cheers, and beware of fairies!

We could have gone to the beach, and it might have all gone different, I suppose, but Marlee worries about stupid things like sand fleas and the wind drying out her skin, and Mum and Jonah always listen to her, since she’s “at that difficult age,” and they don’t want to hear her whine.

I think Jonah wouldn’t have cared about whining, but Mum is still trying to make it up to us that she stepped out on Dad with Jonah, then left him, and dragged us with her. Mom is always trying to make it up to Marlee, because Marlee talks. When she’s mad, Marlee says words like ‘betrayer’ and ‘cheater’ and ‘immoral.’ Mum can usually buy Marlee off, give her the car keys, or some money for the mall. Mum’s scared of Marlee, but she’s not scared of me.

I’m eleven, and I don’t talk. I can’t find anything to say about Jonah, or Mum, or anything.

Mum says I’m just like Dad, and the way she says it, it sounds like it’s something bad. Dad never says much to anybody either, but he’s Dad, and that’s how it is. He’s Dad.

And Jonah is Jonah. Jonah thinks he’s one of the Good Guys, like in the Captain American comics where there are Perilous Evils, but the Good Guys always win. Jonah says he is an EcoWarrior. I should have thought Jonah would have cared about the things that Marlee says, but he is busy being eco-moral. He thinks people are moral and good when they’re saving the Earth and ‘thinking green.’

Oh. And when they look after their fellow man. That’s me, as far as Jonah is concerned. Somehow, he missed thinking of Dad as a fellow man.

Because Mum told him that Dad and I have ‘trouble communicating,’ Jonah’s taken it on himself to be sure I get “male companionship” that he’s heard boys need. He’s subscribed me to Boy’s Life, and himself to George. Now he’s started bugging me about having ‘man time’ with him, and ‘family time’ with Mom and Marleee, which is how we ended up at the park.

It is generic enough, on the face of things; acres of green, manicured lawns and big green trees. Eco-Jonah is thrilled, despite the fact that this is as tamed a “natural” space as I’ve ever seen. “Nothing like a nice walk on a sunny day,” he says expansively, throwing his arms wide and poking me in the arm. “Get old Mother Earth beneath your feet, toss around the pigskin a bit; you’ll feel like a new man.”

There is nothing to do when Jonah talks tripe like that to me except tune him out. I walk away from him and head toward a stand of trees at the top of a rise. His voice and Marlee’s whining sort of filter out and fade away. At the top of the hill, I see a paved plaza up ahead. Intrigued, I speed up, heading for it.

Mum is puffing along behind me, trying to keep up. “Marty?”

“[ no reply]”

“It’s nice of Jonah to bring us here, isn’t it?”

I keep climbing. There is nothing to say to that.

Artsy stuff was never Dad’s thing, and I’ve never much liked Art Period at school except if Mrs. Cordiss lets me do comics, so when I found out the plaza had nothing but a bunch of stone sculptures, it wasn’t that interesting, except I still look, because they are naked. The people are all twisted up on each other, and some of them are playing, and some of them look like they’re attacking. Some of them look dead, and there are babies there, too. They are huge, which I like. I feel small looking up at them. It is weird looking at stone that can be thought of as so hard, but the bodies look so real.

I wander around staring, sometimes wanting to reach out and touch the smoothness. Down a small flight of stairs I come to a sculpture that stops me cold. It’s Dad. It’s just like him. Dad, and someone else. Maybe me.

The immense figures sit back to back, leaning against each other, but straight. Taking strength one from another, they touch, but strong enough, too, on their own not to lean too hard. I circle the figures, running my hands along the base of the plinth, trying to name the feelings boiling up inside of my stomach. It’s just two guys, back to back, but they’re so big, they could take over the world.

“Marty?” Mum materializes at my side, holding onto my arm with clammy hands. “You can’t keep wandering away like this. Jonah’s taken all this trouble to bring you to a nice park. Don’t you want to tell him thank you? Jonah has been very nice about how you’ve treated him, Marty, but it’s got to stop. Don’t you — “

“Mum,” I interrupt her. “I’m moving home with Dad.”

Mum’s mouth moves. “What? Marty-?”

Dad’s name is Martin. I am Marty.

Mum always used to say Dad and me were just alike, like bookends. This is how we should be, back to back, holding each other up. Dad and I are two halves of the same, set in stone.

I look up at the sculpture. Mum is still saying something, but rocks don’t hear.

---

Flickr Fiction is out, Ficktion Fridays are in! Visit the websites of the usual suspects: The Gurrier, Ms. Teaandcakes, Elimare, Chris, Aquafortis, Valshamerlyn, and Miss Mari, and find us on find indiviual pages on Ficktion. Ficktion: a new experiment in wordplay.