Originally Posted by: Jolly McJollysonI watched.

God help me, I watched in silence, with the dumb, lazy interest of a child sprawling across my infant face. I was barely two; all I knew then was that mommy didn't wake up. I didn't know what they'd done. Couldn't see his horrid, twisting grin as they held her down. Violent shadows and muffled screams--in the doorway stands a stupidstaring toddler, a blanket in his hands, his head cocked to one side, mouth open just a crack. The impotence of children is disgusting.

I've been told since that it's a crime of power, not lust. A crime of power. A crime of weak and spineless men smokeslipping through the cracked first-floor windows in the middle of the night, their faces masked.

I was thinking maybe you should have seperated the second sentence into two.
"I watched.

God help me, I watched. I watched in silence, with the dumb, lazy interest of a child sprawling across my infant face."
I thought that it might have a bit of a stronger effect that way. Maybe a bit more emotional. Just a thought though.

I liked how it changed tense in the middle of the paragraph. It gave me the feeling that the narrator was reliving the event while he told it, which adds to the emotion of the piece, in my opinion. The description of the child is very good...the "dumb, lazy interest," "infant face," "mouth open just a crack", all of these things give me a good impression of the child as painfully ignorant of what is going on, and even though this is expected of a child it makes me share the anger and disgust of the narrator at his child-self. The blanket in his hands is also a very good image. A blanket, the traditional symbol of children's security against imagined dangers. Here he holds it as he dumbly watches his mother's rape and murder. There's some really good, strong imagery here, it's putting a very good picture in my mind, and the emotion is intense and believable as well. As you well know, I look forward to when you put up some more. No complaints...yet. :)