The infinite spiral downward - written in 10 minutes

The combination of the staircase image and the word “aperture” on the group list generated in our Saturday morning Salon sent Corinne Crone on an imaginative beam into a place she’d never been but was able depict with visceral immediacy by simply letting her imagination take the lead and not questioning it. This is unedited, exactly what Corinne wrote in 10 minutes.

She wanted to name her Aperture. The way her own body opened up giving birth to that impossibly small baby girl. How was such an animal feat possible? As a nurse she'd witnessed dozens of births in rotation, but none of those 'other women' could possibly have prepared her for THIS, the spiral into the abyss.

Fear rearranging her instincts to run, to flee, to die. Now, holding this tiny being, fear. What do I do? she wondered aloud. Don't drop the baby. Just. don't. drop. her. Stair by stair her descent through the center of the asylum holding her baby.

She knew this moment of clarity would soon be lost when they'd retrieve her just-born daughter and take her who knows where. When the fog of medication would resume and her label Mother would be replaced with schizophrenic, crazy, insane. They were only labels, so what did they matter anyway? Somewhere in the cavern of that mold-grey hospital a baby cried. Vertigo. The infinite spiral downward.