Second time around (working title)
an excerpt

Phil and Chin parted company at 3pm as Phil had to buy some new headphones. Waiting in line to be served at the electrical shop he grew increasingly annoyed with the staff, who were as unhelpful as could be. Despite there being five people in corporate t-shirts, only one of them appeared to be doing any work. And even he wasn't very effective, answering queries with a silent shrug and a point over in the direction of a particular section of the shop, and following the till's totting up of the amount due with a simple but effectively rude holding out of his palm.
His emo look – dyed black spiky hair, large aperture wooden earrings, black eye-liner and tusk-shaped lip stud – suited his uncommunicative exterior perfectly. He was probably the epitome of the sub-human online obsessives chin spoke so disparagingly about.
Arriving at the front of the queue, Phil handed over the headphones and, after hearing the bleep, handed over his credit card. As he was about to swipe the card, the shop assistant's robotic actions suddenly juddered to a halt.
“Is something up,” asked Phil, conscious that any deviation from the steadily mundane normal course of checking-out was probably bad news (If there was anything good different happening, the assistant would hardly have taken the time to divulge this spot of positivity).
The assistant had, unbelievably, turned to make eye contact with Phil. He clearly wasn't accustomed to making eye contact as he stared in far too intense a manner, drilling into Phil's brain with eyes that had absorbed, and were now emitting, the radiation of a million hours in front of a computer screen.
He then broke the gaze to look back down at the credit card. His lips moved as he read something on the card, then , looking up again and fixing Phil's eyes in his cold, geeky stare, said, “You're Phil Godzinsky.”
Unsure why this would elicit such a rare reaction, made all the more significant by the rarity of any reaction at all... to anything, Phil simply replied honesly, “Yes – I am.”
The assistant broke out into a retarded grin, sucked in some drool which almost slipped out, and said again, though in more excited tones, “You're Phil Godzinsky.”
“Yes, I know... Why is that important.”
Searching Phil's face, but clearly not having enough familiarity with people to be able to gauge facial expressions, the assistant judged Phil's utterly befuddled expression, which none but the most talented actor could fake, to be a deliberate concealing of a deeper recognition of the meaning of their exchange. So, controlling his actions a little more successfully, the youth said quietly, “Ok, fair enough. I understand if you want to be secret about it, but I just thought I'd say you're, like, the coolest. Me and my friends, we've got so much respect for you.”
“That's nice,” said Phil, “but I haven't a clue why.”
“Understood,“ replied the assistant, tapping the side of his nose. Then, he slipped the headphones, by this time bagged and ready to go (a service he provided no-one else), and Phil's credit card back across the counter, saying, “No charge this time,” as he did so. “My name's deathray12, by the way, in case you come across me again.”
“No it's not. It's Tim. It says so on your badge,” Phil replied, pointing at the badge on the assistant's chest in case he was so switched off to the world that he hadn't noticed.
“Ok, ok,” replied Tim, clearly enjoying the conspiracy, “next time you're, umm, 'around' ElephantMan80 I'd really appreciate it if you could pass on my name to him.”
“Tim?”
“No – deathray12!” Tim was starting lose his composure, not understanding the need for so much misdirection in a simple 'I scratch your back, you scratch mine' transaction.
“And who's ElephantMan80?”
Suddenly there came a shout from the group of five lazy staff at th eother end of the shop - “Tim, the queue's growing. Can you stop talking to your friend.”
“Sorry,” said Tim, gesturing that Phil should walk out of the shop. “Remember – deathray12,” he yelled, before turning to the next customer, dropping his gaze downwards and returning to his automated processing of the now quite lengthy queue.