Author Archives: J.M. Menkiss

There was this time I saw a boy who rode inside a train; he rode alone, and read his book, in silence filled with rain. I peeped him through the windows while I walked along the tracks and, although I hadn’t seen his face, I knew his story front to back. Laid across his silkenContinue reading “The Boy Aboard The Train”

This story is an excerpt from my book, Curse of the NonSol Isles, which was pitched in early February and accepted for publication by Tales; Tales is an interactive story-telling platform that provides creators with data to find story/market fit and the economics to scale ideas into massive franchises. By downloading the app, you canContinue reading “Mirror To Another World”

Once, there lived a boy who fell sick. Due to his parents also being sickly, the boy was cared for by his elderly grandfather. After seeing him through the worst of the illness, the boy’s grandfather carried him out into the garden and sat upon a swing. Extremely tired, the boy sank deeply into theContinue reading “A Story about The Woman”

“They’re all dead!” A gust of wind blew hot and heavy through the yard, carrying his voice over it as his words fell like knives, their points burrowing deep into the grass. And my heart. Just beneath the window, I sat amongst the sunken stems and withered leaves of the garden as my breath wasContinue reading “The Succession of Seeds”

He consumed his feelingslike a child swallows mints:excited at the first taste buttoo hasty, too eager, to allowthem to settle too long. They rest,the dregs of an old half-drunk soda,left to bake in some car far too long. He wore moods like clothes;changed once, twice, or elsethrown in the hamper dirty themoment they touched hisContinue reading “Mystery of the Man”

Deafness fall upon me, foul words I’ll heed no more as you scatter them like Rapeseed at the Earth outside my door. – From bloom of sickly spindles, leaves of cabbage, white as milk, petals burnt a Yield-less Yellow, they asphyxiate their ilk. – Their nettles rise to meet my feet, draw blood like mourningContinue reading “Rape . Seed”

Frustration is a silent companion who sits in the front seat as you pump gas in the bitter cold, laughing as it locks the door with your keys inside. It hovers, just above your shoulder, as you hunch low over the stove; it chatters as you count spices, flicking flecks of spit into the potContinue reading “let it go.”

Some say there are days which will stick in our memory like how to a strip of brown paper a fly might become glued; In a child’s first words, on one’s gold-gilded birthday, or when another first tells them, “I do”: But as I am too young for that, I know My day comes onContinue reading ““on April 14th””

It was a daisy that killed the Vanterbombs. Prized from the Earth, stolen from its home, it had lived just long enough to bring down the house around it before it withered and faded. As for the family, they woke up one morning dead, with their legs in the air and their faces in theContinue reading “Wild Manswood Drive”

He reached for the cup, frowning at its lightness, before sucking down the last cold dregs to drop it into the bin beneath his desk. His eyes stung like bees; he pressed hard into them with his palm, massaging deeply. He felt as though he had been awake for a lifetime. He glanced at theContinue reading “Medical Component Specialist”