Instagram story viewer> @corpseonpumpkin> Posts
JARET FERRATUSCO(@corpseonpumpkin)'s profile avatar HD Profile

JARET FERRATUSCO

@corpseonpumpkin

4.3K
followers
1080
following
Photographer & writer.
I like art & drinking.
Portland, Oregon
POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED
“There’s five of me,” she said, falling back in her seat at the table. The rest of our group was talking nonstop in a flood of voices, indistinct from one another except that I was seated so close to her. She looked different, now appearing spacey. Dazed. Frightened. She took a drink of her beer and said it again, louder: “There’s five of me in the restroom.” At this, our table grew quiet. “I mean it. There’s five different versions of me in the restroom. Five whole people. All of them are different versions of me.” Suddenly our table erupted into laughter, queries and cheering. I sipped at my beer, studying her face as our group splintered off into various splintered conversations. “Didn’t you hear me?” she blurted. “There are five of me.” One thing about Megan that I always admired was her enunciation, the deliberate manner of speaking. It stuck, reeling me in like a fish. The sweat on her forehead and the redness of her face. “There’s five of me,” she said. “I can’t stay here.” Mesmerized, I stood and went to the bar to pay my tab, assuming we should leave. When I got back to our table, I was surprised to find there was a whole round of fresh beers set down. “What are you doing?” Megan asked me. I don’t know, I told her, gesturing at the fresh round of beers. She gripped my elbow and shoulder, digging both hands into me. “Don’t go.” Confused, I promised I wouldn’t leave, and so went back to the bar and opened a new tab. “There’s five of me in the women’s restroom,” Megan repeated as I walked away. While pouring a fresh beer, my eyes ventured from the bartender to the women’s room door, which had been left ajar, and to the visible portion of the sink and mirror. For just a fraction of a moment, I could see another person in there, somebody who looked exactly like Megan, right down to the mint green pleated halter top, right down to the sharp black bangs pasted to her forehead, and the solid amber of her sparkling eyes in the mirror, staring back at me as a second Megan came into view, also watching me, who closed the door on the restroom full of Megans. person / @jessaraymuse things / @corpseonpumpkin taken in Vienna, Austria by @corpseonpumpkin
32
a year ago
Download
A terrifying sound from the hall. My gaze falls long and drones with it, growing haltingly slow like a dying battery-powered radio, warped and distorting. The sound slows to a halt in the blur of shadowy hallway light, until all is quiet, and I can once more focus on what I see in it. Goddamned hospital waiting rooms. The massacre of valuable time. If I had any practical sense I’d be somewhere else, but I can’t seem to remove myself for too long from this uncomfortable vinyl chair. Even the coffee machine is out of sight from this room, and that hallway my twin sister disappeared into. The gulfs of silence emanating from the empty hallway leading to wherever she is trapped unconscious on a table, leaden weight under the close personal scrutiny of total strangers. When the door swings open it makes such an awful sound, becoming more intolerable by whomever bursts out from it, some person or other smeared in pasty light and out-of-focus horror, not looking at me, not knowing who I am. I’m waiting for somebody to look at me and know what I need to hear. But I can’t focus my eyes. The sound of that door opening, and the absence of my twin sister, who I need to see emerging from within the damp corridors beyond. The need is bad, as bad as these vinyl chairs. Are you dead, I ask her, in my head. But she is put to sleep with anesthesia, and she can’t answer. person / @floofie things / @corpseonpumpkin taken in Los Angeles, California by @corpseonpumpkin
40
a year ago
Download
Whole stalks of wheat crunched underfoot as I walked toward the center of a vast circle, scribbling notes on a pad of paper. Against the constant barking of dead wheat, the scratching of pen to paper served to call attention to the void apparent in this lonely, otherworldly silence. It was incredible. The information I was given on the phone had been accurate — a measured geometric clearing had been tamped down, and no one knew why, or how. A woman with her hair piled under a wide-brimmed hat stood not far from me and called, “Are you from the newspaper?” I nodded. With the pen still moving, my stunned hand withered from the page, sketching awed silence into the wind. I grimaced at the three jagged question marks scribbled there. The woman opened her arms, as if for a hug, dreamily walking backward and further away from me as she did so. “Well,” she said. “What’s your take?” I had to admit my tongue was tied. “All of this happened in one night.” She said it with a sharp snap of her fingers. The point hit home. “This is the first, leading north. The diameter of each one is perfect, and as we walk, you’ll also note that each consecutive circle is larger by exactly five feet. In all, there are five circles.” I searched her face for an explanation, but instead, an odd expectation in her own expression signaled she was reading my face for some semblance of the same. “So what do you think about it,” she asked. I could only, lamely, shrug my shoulders. In this, she did sense an answer of some kind, but not the one she wanted. Still walking backwards, the crunching of the destroyed crops prickled the crisp, still air. “Hell of an article, you got there,” she smirked. Who was she? As I was about to ask, she turned away, changing direction, and disappeared into a narrow corridor tamped in the wheat leading to the next in this series of mysterious circles. I closed my pad of paper, and followed her lead. person / @wenspeakinglove things / @corpseonpumpkin taken in Seattle, Washington by @corpseonpumpkin
35
a year ago
Download
Lamplight crept around my grandfather’s chair in the ominous form of a hazy yellow aura, at its brightest in the soft glow hovering just above the shiny mask of skin stretched over his scalp like a withered glow-in-the-dark bathing cap. Head down, arms limp, and palms curled upward on his knees, it was impossible to tell if he was still breathing. Ever since I returned from a year up north, he’s behaved as if I’d been away on the moon. Slumped forward, not moving. He does this each time I’m getting back to the house, pretending to be dead — it could be the real thing any of these nights, so I’m forced to take it seriously every time. Once, it fooled me to the point where I’d telephoned for help. Grandfather can slow his pulse, a trick he learned as an underwater technician when he was my age. It’s just him and I at the house now that my twin sister is gone. I miss my sister more than anything, and grandfather has made it clear he feels the same way, to the bold extent that I’m not to be considered a suitable remainder. He won’t use my real name, instead referring to me as “Blood Martha.” This poorly expressed reference to what he perceives as my grasping familial connection to sister Martha requires an effort to look past. It’s only slightly different than what he used to call me growing up . . . “Martha Sampled.” He’s always regarded me as a carbon copy, not a separate person. A lesser form of biological add-on. Now, snapping out of this fond memory of my sister’s influence over him, I stepped through the gloom and into the dimly lit interior of my grandfather’s study and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m home,” I said. For a long moment, grandfather’s body did not move. Bearing much patience on my part, ultimately there came the low hiss of his letting out a phenomenally held breath. Even at his age, he had amazing tenacity. “Of course you are,” he said. person / @melancholic_model things / @corpseonpumpkin taken in Portland, Oregon by @corpseonpumpkin
38
2 years ago
Download
I used to be pen pals with someone across the hall. It began when I’d mistakenly received some of her mail in my lockbox. Not to intrude upon a neighbor’s personal space, I’d opted against delivering the misdirected letters by hand, in favor of repackaging the errant mail with a short note of explanation and postmarking it back to her at the correct address just across the hall from my door. In kind, she replied also by post, hand-sketching an image of what I presumed to be a facsimile of her, hugging the lost-and-found pieces of rediscovered mail over the postcard’s glossy landscape a barren moon surface. Christmas had been just around the corner, and so we’d sent each other small gifts. Our notes and trinkets gradually expanded toward longer and more conversational letters, continuing on for quite a stretch — all the while our schedules were so polarized we never actually met in person. When I moved out of the building, she’d been away on vacation, so we hadn’t said goodbye any closer than we’d said hello, but remained in contact for a few years after that as well. Though it would not be quite the same after we were no longer neighbors. As time passed, our correspondence slowed; the exchanges became less animated, more trivial, and finally – I could not even recall at what point — it trickled to nothing, like a tiny stream in the woods that one day disappeared. Upon infrequent occasions lately when I pass my old building, these thoughts come to me almost like a cool breeze, and I stop for a moment to look up at what used to be my window. How many lives a building knows, and how many people we grow into and out of, is a message written on letters sent not to us but to subconscious dimensions of physical being we might never recognize. Except for the cool breeze — I’ve felt that. person / @dirtysynth things / @corpseonpumpkin taken in Portland, Oregon by @corpseonpumpkin
30
2 years ago
Download
I braced myself for the next chapter. This was becoming increasingly difficult with each more recent entry. At last I reached a breaking point, placing one hand over my heart before closing the cover. Like a dead weight. Like the slow grind of a concrete slab over a tomb. After reading this, I needed to collect my thoughts, and breathe. The handwritten diary — remarkably anonymous, as if the writer had never known a person by name — was something I found in the desk drawer, in a bedroom where I was standing, at odds with how to proceed in the world. It was not my bedroom. Or my apartment. I’d only gained access via the street-side window, which was open. And if not for the moral code I adhered to regarding other people’s stuff, I’d have deposited this poorly mapped-out diary where I thought it truly belonged, the nearest wastebasket. Sometimes a person’s life is an enigma. To whom, I wonder. The emptiness of the soul, in this way, should not always be a template for self discovery. And so I tried to forget this unseen stranger’s diary, intending to spend as much time as I thought I needed before I could see fit to climb back out the window. You can sense when a place is empty, and you think it will cultivate an inner peace, or belonging, but you’d be surprised. I should get back on my way to the job interview I was headed to before all this stuff distracted me. I was still reeling, in a fog. But it was not the diarist’s fault. I know that. It’s me, I just can’t function sometimes. The lonelier I get, the less control I seem to have in channeling this growing dread toward something more meaningful than exploring some random disappointing apartment in the hopes of finding joy or purpose. JARET. taken in Portland, Oregon by @corpseonpumpkin
32
2 years ago
Download
A muted quarrel rose at the liquor store. Precise dialog was difficult to place, but the demanding undertone rumbled beneath the sounds of the shop. Voices carried. On tiptoe, I peered over the shelves, but the argument seemed to emanate from all areas at once. A scuffling of shoes honed my investigation, but the great reveal lead only to a dead end of sparkling wines. I took to searching the aisles row by row. No one stood in the rums and whiskey, the mixers, limes or lemons. Emptiness manifested wholly — at the seltzers, gin and vodka I was alone and almost out of options. I did grab a bottle of gin for myself, but nothing came of the anxious debate that was still carrying on. It’s not that big of a store, and yet here I was, navigating a forest. In sight of the front checkout, I was disturbed to find no one attending it; a stockroom visible from there revealed itself to be likewise empty. Still, the arguing ensued. I called, Hello? Irritatingly, my voice cut right through the chatter and it ceased immediately, followed by the recognizable squeaking of sneakers, and a barbaric shuffling of bodies. Then shattering glass, the shaking of aisles, and the rocking of the whole establishment. Bottles rattled and crashed. I threw myself down, slamming my face against the floor. And now I was crying. I cradled the bottle of gin, regretting to my core all moments to have passed me by in which I did not express my love and appreciation. Unscrewing the bottle, I sipped as like the first times I did anything. The sweetness of being in love. The sweetness of wanting to be loved. JARET. taken in Portland, Oregon by @corpseonpumpkin
30
2 years ago
Download
The loneliness gets to me. It’s the loneliness that makes going forward feel like cascading backward. This is what I tried to explain to my therapist. And all the above is what I just described to my bartender, at the bar halfway between my apartment and the therapist’s office. I’ve come here the past two times I was supposed to be at a session instead. Not on purpose, but who knows how a day will turn out? The bartender is older, reflecting an easy and timeless wisdom that is beyond the perimeter of my own experience, and yet she also reminds me of an English teacher I had in high school. The teacher used to mark up my papers with a red pen, scribbling, “I expected more from you,” and other things like that — her way of encouraging students to reach their full potential. In a way, I think that’s what my therapist would like to impart as well, the way she sets her coffee cup down while I’m talking and sighs until I stop mid-sentence and ask, what? She’ll say, “It’s nothing, only I thought we’d broken this wall down before, and quite naturally I expected a different you.” In describing these things to the bartender (the one who reminds me of the English teacher), I suddenly stopped when I could see she meant to interject, and asked, what? And the bartender said, “It’s nothing, only I thought we discussed this before. I’ve explained to you I’m not your therapist, and if you need to talk to HER, you should actually go to your SCHEDULED meetings with HER instead of coming HERE.” True. And lately it seems everyone I know is more “together” — again, it’s the lonesomeness of being the only one around me who doesn’t have a tighter grip, that I wished I could be like that, too. Assuming a new self-assurance, I ordered another drink and said, make it a double this time. The bartender asked me what time my next appointment was for, and I said it would have ended just about now, I think, if I had gone. She put her shot glass down, poured me a new drink, and sighed. “Excuse me,” she said, “I have to go and call my son.” As she walked away, I smiled, pulling the drink toward me with an accepting nod. I know she doesn’t have any son. Yours, JARET. taken in Portland, Oregon by @corpseonpumpkin
11
2 years ago
Download
The glowing x-rays pinned up in front of the light described a troubled tale. And if my initial estimations were exerted and exasperated, those of my physician — who’d had time to absorb the images before showing me — were nearly doubly so. I winced, hugging my belly against the unmistakable x-ray outline of a splayed human hand at the center of my stomach. How did it get there? “I should think you’d be the one to tell me,” the physician said. Me? All I know is I woke up this morning in such a frightful pain I could hardly move. Now here, and now this x-ray, showing a severed hand in my stomach. “Not severed,” the physician corrected. “There is no indication the hand is severed.” But if that is true, then where is the body? “Perhaps it is you,” she said. “Perhaps you are the body. You would not be the first to develop a third hand, of course — medical history details sporadic, if distanced, such cases. What is rather different with you, and THIS hand, is its nature and location. As one could not under normal circumstances expect to develop a new limb as this stage of their life, at your age, and especially not from inside the stomach, of all places, where hands do not and cannot suitably grow. At any rate, certainly not overnight.” So what am I to do about this? I can’t very well leave the hand floating in my stomach, I could die. Suppose a proximate organ is threatened, or if the hand continues to grow an arm. What then? A hand alone is bad enough, but where is there room in the stomach, or anywhere else for that matter, inside the human body, for another arm? I could die. My physician fervently nodded, apparently agreeing with my unpolished examination of the situation. She lifted her shoulders, and shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.” person / @_rant_ things / @corpseonpumpkin From 35mm film shot in Tulsa; hand-developed by @danfickle at his office in Portland. #filmallover #analogphotography #filmphotograph #thedaily35mm #grainisgood #ourcinematic taken in Portland, Oregon by @corpseonpumpkin
36
2 years ago
Download
The body had an open crevasse where the heart should fit back in, but the dimensions seemed now like round blocks and square pegs. Sighing with great effort, I stood back from the metal table with my arms crossed over my chest, looking at nothing yet hoping someone (anyone) would come to my rescue. A girl wearing a head mirror leaned her face into my peripheral. She gestured at the table with a subtle hand and asked if everything was going all right. Acting as though pulled from some great avenue of thought, I explained the situation with subversion, noting the basics of the problem were evident — perhaps even obvious — but not its solution — “not just yet.” This, of course, explained nothing at all. She asked again, did I need help? In *desperate* need yet entirely confident I’d botch the procedure regardless of assistance, I jabbed my finger at the body and complained that this probably wasn’t even the right corpse. The girl with the head mirror studied the tics in my face and, without another word, turned back to her own metal table. Another head leaned into my view from the other side, and I looked at this face, whose mouth began to speak, but the words were of such perplexing variety that I could make neither heads nor tails of it. I’m not drunk, I proclaimed too loudly. Then, quietly, I leaned toward the person and hissed, Don’t be silly, I’m not drunk. It was impossible, however, to look past my slurred voice, and I turned back to the body as if it should suddenly present itself to me in a different light. But it did not. Out of answers, I stepped back toward the table, grabbed the wet heart from the pan, and slammed it against the yawning cavern in the body, struggling to make things right. I could feel unwanted attentions shifting toward me. And now there was blood everywhere, even, I marveled, the low ceiling. Suddenly, I left the heart on top of the body and excused myself from the room. Your friend, JARET. #everything_bnw #blackandwhite_photos #bnw_and_noir #bnw_lightandshadow #friendsinbnw #oldfamilyphotos taken in Portland, Oregon by @corpseonpumpkin
10
2 years ago
Download
Towering over the field from the top of a round bundle of hay, she simmered in the breeze. She took a moment to hear me out, then another to let the wind howl. “Well,” she finally said. “I just don’t believe you. How about that?” She was leaning on a pitchfork with one hand on her hip. I liked that she looked so mysterious. At any moment, she would figure this whole thing out, and the day could resume. Against the backdrop of the bright sun, much of her form was a shadow, but from what I could see of her face, she narrowed her eyes into pinpoints. Whether from squinting or disappointment, I could not tell. I cleared my throat to express humility, repeating my sad and strange tale of hopelessly losing my way amongst the hay bales. The extra silence in the world felt as hard as her glare. “And I told you,” she said. “I don’t believe that for a moment.” I didn’t know what else to say. In every direction, it was nothing but wired-up bales. With a powerful enough breeze, they could all rumble away, charging across the field. On each one stood a different person, all of them bearing pitchforks. I couldn’t understand any of it. The one speaking to me reached for her back pocket, pulled something out, and tossed it down. I lunged to catch it as if she’d thrown a baby from a rooftop, and if I failed to catch it, this would all be worse. It was just a gardening trowel. I didn’t understand. What am I to do with this? I asked. “Really, Jaret?” It was not so harshly said, and that relieved me, though the others were chuckling to themselves in the grave auditorium of the field. For the moment, whatever it was I couldn’t understand would have to be. The sound of their amusements was like a sweet blanket, carried on the sigh of the wind. It rustled stray fragments of the rolled-up hay and carried along in the distance. person / @_rant_ things / @corpseonpumpkin From 35mm film shot in Tulsa; hand-developed by @danfickle at his office in Portland. #analogphotography #filmphotograph #35mmphoto #filmallover #grainisgood #filmphotos #thesearethedaysofourlives taken in Portland, Oregon by @corpseonpumpkin
40
2 years ago
Download
Pitched into a void of no light, the empty train car produced an awful clangor. An echoing, as I gripped the hard plastic edges of my seat; in this rough darkness, the plastic seats began to rattle and squeal. This wailing of steel and anguish was so loud that when the lights popped back on, it didn’t register as odd to see a woman sitting in the seat directly facing mine, where before there had been no one. A lens of her glasses was cracked, clean down the center, staring at me with a flatness bordering on scrutiny; I couldn’t help but feel shame at how I must have cringed, and even whimpered, as the train threw itself around in turmoil. I straightened up, nodding my head with a feigned composure. She did nothing to acknowledge this but continued to watch, half through the good lens, and half through the cracked one. Again, the train lunged into pure darkness, and I pressed my eyes shut, gripping my seat — a horrible sense of falling, the extreme sudden absence of weight. I was thrown back when the lights returned to find the woman was no longer there. I glanced from side to side, but as quickly as she’d arrived I was just as soon alone again. Her vague, cracked stare hung on the heaviness in the air. Debarking at my stop — the final stop of the night — I realized there were no other passengers. None at all. I waited on the empty platform until the lights on the train and the engine shut off. Mildly confused, I entered the outbound stairs, transcending dark, uninhabited levels of subterranean hollows in search of an exit to the sidewalk. But then I pondered the woman, with her glasses cracked up by the train’s barbaric convulsions – Her unreadable face, that solid emptiness in the wonder. Had she appeared to me, or had I to her? Had she disappeared into thin air, or had I? So I continued to climb the stairs toward an exit, which I assumed would be any moment now. And I continued to climb the stairs… person / @floofie things / @corpseonpumpkin taken in Portland, Oregon by @corpseonpumpkin
42
2 years ago
Download

Download All

Save the photos and videos currently loaded on this page.

0Photos
0Videos
Ready to download 0 / 0

Keep this tab open until your download is ready.
back to up