Is this FOUR weeks in a row now, that Jen DeSantis, @JenD_Author is our 5MinuteFiction winner?? Amazing. But it’s not hard to see why. I simply love her descriptions and the character emotion she packs into such a short, and quickly written piece. Congratulations Jen!

Here’s her winning piece for you to enjoy. See you next week, when you can end her winning streak! 🙂

“In my considerable experience, drug dealers are more likely to die a violent death than get hit by a bus.”

“Back up,” a girl in the back of the classroom called, her head popping up as she eased herself out of the low slouch she’d been employing. “What considerable experience?”

“Well … the experience—that tells me drug dealers generally die violently,” I said, annoyed at my stammer.

“And you don’t consider getting hit by a bus violent?” she asked, tapping her pencil on the side of her thick framed glasses.

I eyed her up. Spiky hair, dyed a deep violet. Pale skin and bright eyes outlined in thick, black liner. And the glasses—don’t get me started on the glasses. They had thick, green frames, dotted with sparkly rhinestones. The frames alone probably cost her parents upwards of five hundred dollars. She probably didn’t even need them for vision correction. God, I hated my job and the new generation.

“Violent, but not in the technical term,” I clarified.

“Technical term? I’d call it violent, technical or not. I mean, it certainly wouldn’t be an easy death, now would it?”

“Well, no … but you know what I mean. They’re more likely to, you know, meet their demise on the other end of a gun or a knife, then they are to die accidently.”

“All I’m saying is you should have said “accidently. Getting hit by a bus is violent, and it doesn’t make any sense to call it otherwise..”

I swallowed the bile rising in the back of my throat. Back in the day, kids would have just sat and stared vacantly, no questions asked. Of course, back in the day, who had to talk about drug dealers and violent deaths to a class of incoming freshmen? But here we sat, 2011, with respect at an all time low and me talking about drug dealers to a class of kids who thought I was an idiot all because some teeny-bopper anology nazi in sparkly glasses disagreed with my terms. I missed the old days.

“It really isn’t that important,” I said tersely.

“The drug dealer might disagree,” violet-hair mumbled from the back.

I rolled my eyes and looked at the clock. Only seven more hours to go before the end of the first day.