DRECK

ERICA SARDA

JIN SAINT JAMES / FOR THE FAINT OF HEART - CHAPTER I: CAYENNE

Lapis lazuli were her veins as she lay in the middle of the icy field. Sand granules filled her mouth after getting hit in the face with a soccer ball. She liked crunching down on them like pop rocks. The air was dry and choking, but for Jin Saint James, she liked the feeling of her brittle lungs clinging to her protruding ribs as she inhaled. Mortal, she was, but pushing her body to the brink made her existence feel less futile, and her mind more conscious of her eventual demise.

Jin was just eight winters young. Her mother suffered from pica while she was pregnant, and never fully recovered. She resented her mother, for when Jin was six and tasked with caring for the classroom betta fish for the weekend, Ms. Saint James devoured the entire jar of fish flakes, even licking the leftover brine off the rim of the bowl. To mask her impulse, Ms. Saint James flushed the poor starving fish down the toilet, drew Jin a bath, and told her that he was ill and needed to be put out of his misery.

Sometimes, when Jin’s long, curtain-like sheath of black hair shed and clogged the bathtub drain, she pulled it out in one big wad and curled it with her index finger atop the head of her white rubber ducky. The few wayward black strands she fashioned as dental floss, and sawed them between her teeth one by one, back and forth.

But like any third grader, Jin spent most of her time at school. And at school, it was normal to be enamored by peeling the dried white glue off your fingertips, or licking the warm, salty snot off your upper lip at recess. Penetrating skin with pencil lead was so last year, and by now, Ms. Lockwood’s entire fifth grade class was blood brothers and sisters. School was the one place that Jin felt in control, but it was going to take a miracle for her to continue surviving by merely adhering to the status quo. She needed more.

At around 11pm one Monday night after reading Goosebumps: The Scream of the Evil Genie to reach her nightly reading requirement, Jin crept into her mother’s bedroom to complete her nightly book raid. In the pitch black, Jin blindly grabbed a gentle hardbound book still large enough not to be missed from the decrepit walnut shelf, and silently slung it back to her room to read under her thick beaver blanket.

Tonight’s selection was The Tragic Legend of Marchesa Casati. Jin was totally enthralled by the infamous Italian muse’s striking features that resembled her own: crude oil hair, parchment skin, and slight, feeble build, like a frayed rope. “Casati was known to primp excessively before photoshoots,” Jin read. “It was routine for Casati to drop beads of toxic belladonna into her eyes to dilate her pupils, enlarging them to read better on film. This gave Casati her signature, haunting gaze that we recognize to this day.”

Jin closed the book and crawled into the kitchen like a salamander scurrying under a streetlamp. She swiftly sifted through the lazy susan using only moonlight to discover an expansive collection of herbs and spices. Like an apothecary, Jin dutifully sniffed each canister to decipher what she needed. Finally, her nose tingled as she discovered a small jar of cayenne pepper that her mother never touched. With her sinewy and nimble fingers, Jin slipped the jar into the side pouch of her black backpack that hung on the front doorknob, and trailed off to rest.

When morning fell, Jin fashioned her school uniform: pleated black skirt, white shirt, buttoned and tucked, and tall white socks enveloped by shiny black oxfords. She informally draped a burgundy crew neck sweater over her bony shoulders that held up her body like two wooden stakes. Backpack slung, Jin walked coolly to the bus stop. She thought about how she loved her mother lightly, and not enough to say goodbye.

Jin’s bus always arrived about thirteen minutes early to school, giving her time to comb out her tangles in the bathroom and wash her hands. If you saw Jin’s hands separate from her girlish body, you would think they belonged to a 90-year-old woman who pruned roses for a living. Her bulging knuckles were incredibly dry, cracked and bloody from her constant need to run them under scalding water after being out in the cold. Her natural body temperature was about two degrees cooler than average, and her classmates would tease that she was actually an amphibian disguised as a girl. The blue child propped her backpack on the bathroom windowsill, and twisted on the creaky steel faucet to perform her compulsive winter ritual.

With just five minutes remaining until the last bell rang, Jin did not lose focus of what she set out to do. The cayenne pepper jar stared tempestuously at her. She thoroughly dried her hands and slid it out of her backpack’s side pouch, dumping its contents into her clean, icy palm. Like a mound of red desert soil, Jin swept the cayenne into a dome shape using her longest nail. The minerals stained her fingers like rust, lightly burning the young flesh under her enamel, causing them to itch. She roughly rubbed her spicy fingertips over her dainty lips, embedding in them tiny red particles. They caused her pucker to look starkly oxidized against her alabaster skin. Jin felt beautiful and delectable, why stop there?

In a swift, thoughtless motion, Jin flicked the remaining cayenne pepper into her cavernous, black currant eyes, wide and unguarded. An electric sensation coursed up her spine like a long needle and shocked her body into a state of submission to the substance that now seasoned her eyeballs. The bell clanged five times, and Jin, being a studious child, grabbed her backpack and rushed to class to begin her morning cursive practice.

As she sat at her desk, it became clear that cursive practice was no longer in her wheelhouse. The excessive tearing of her eyes doused her loose leaf paper with a vile, savory orange liquid that left her tablemates stunned. Jin closed her eyes in excruciatingly silent but visibly alarming agony, and pressed her sticky fingertips over her sockets to ease the burn she felt in her entire body. There was comfort in petting her thick feathery lashes, but Jin could not bear the thought of them living on her scorched lids any longer. In one quick pinch, Jin ripped her lashes out from their forever home as easily as tearing out the pages of a book. She sprinkled them over her practice papers like a bloody black garnish on a white layer cake.

Jin exhaled ephemerally. Her mouth tasted metallic like her tongue was made of copper, and her jaw was clenched ferociously. She could not smell anyone nearby, and the frosty air stung her lungs like the penetrating jolt from an eel. Jin opened her eyes slowly, and stared up at the grey sky, squinting from the brightness of the sun seeping through the overcast. She sat up, drenched in sweat and covered in sand that had caked into her skin, scratching its delicate surface. As Jin Saint James licked her lips, she could taste her fantasies, realizing that surviving another day had brought her closer to her truest form.

Erica Sarda is a Geneva-born actress and writer living in New York City. She received her Bachelor of Science in Communications with a minor in History of Art from the Fashion Institute of Technology. “Cayenne” is the first chapter of her debut coming-of-age novel, Jin Saint James: For the Faint of Heart, set to distribute in 2027.