Anxious Andy

The shivers. The jitters. The shakes. The whatchyamacallits. Whatever it was, Andy Confundido had it. Es una pena que no estoy aqui hoy... it’s a pity that I’m not here today... yo deseo que puedo hablar con otras personas... I wish I could talk to other people... necesito practicar mi español... I need to practice my Spanish... thought Andy as he wandered back and forth through the crowded Mexican beachside dance club, feigning that he was urgently replying to a text message as girls danced and shook their fingers at him beckoningly (he was in fact just typing out his anxieties verbatim in the notes document of his smartphone).

He bumped into someone, dropping his phone, a seemingly innocent confrontation that could have been resolved with a polite smile and a quick dip down to grab the aforementioned mobile device. Heck, if it weren’t Andy who had dropped his phone it might have even led to some witty back and forth between the phone dropper and the person whom had been bumped that led to drinks at the bar and a night of raucous sex. However, it was Andy Confundido, and so the situation went somewhat like this:

A bump.

The phone hits the ground.

Andy blurting out at the top of his lungs, "I’M SO FUCKING SORRY!" (coincidentally, right as there was a pause in the hip DJ club track being played).

Without looking, jerking forward, and practically falling to the floor in a scramble to grab his phone so as he could run away and die a metaphorical social death while guzzling alcohol in a different bar, far, far away from this one.

Another bump, as his head collides with the skull of the attractive, nice female who had bumped into him on purpose in order to get his attention, sending her sprawling backward into a tank topped cokehead that had been waiting seemingly his whole life for this moment.

A feeling of lethargic panic that creeps in slowly, like a rollercoaster approaching the top of the first hill, as Andy looks up with horror at the tank topped cokehead, who has swooped the injured female into his arms and is now yelling obscenities at Andy as he cradles her in his arms like some kind of brilliant modern Lancelot.

A sputter and a spray of saliva as Andy attempts to explain the situation and only manages to spittle all about the area in front of him due to indigestion caused by the onset of a panic attack.

And finally, the ensuing rejoice of the entire club population in ecstatic, retributive ecstasy as Andy is dragged out of the beachside venue by two burly Hispanic bouncers as the tank topped coke head guy high fives those around him and shouts vindicated obscenities of moral justice at pobre Mr. Confundido.

And as Andy wandered back to his hotel in a state of panicked shock, the icing on the cake being that he had dropped his passport on the floor alongside his cellphone, and he noticed this but neglected to reenter and procure it out of fear not so much of bodily harm but that he may spontaneously combust from the sheer uncomfortableness of the situation, he resigned himself to his fate and relented that he would spend the rest of vacation in the hotel lobby playing card games with his little cousins who had been too young to venture outside into the great beyond of Ensenada.

Upon his return, he found the two aforementioned younger cousins seated giggling poolside around a large white table. They had a deck of cards laid out in front of them. Andy, still quivering, jittering and shivering (a not unusual state for pobre Andy but exacerbated by the incident which had just occurred) seated himself along side them, looking with plastic, disappointed curiosity at the game that they were playing.

“What’s this called?” he asked, being met with reluctant silence (even his younger cousins had decided he was simply a big ole box of no fun).

His younger cousin Angelica, giving him a look of suspicion, finally piped up after sometime, stating plainly, "It’s a card game."

"Duh. I mean, what’s it called?"

"Panic Time 9000."

"Oh, I think I’ve heard of this. Can I play?"

"No."

Andy scoffed, thinking his cousin was making a joke, but Angelica stared at him vehemently, and he withered a bit under her thirteen-year-old glare. The other child present, Antonio, in his childhood innocence (being only nine years old), took pity on Andy and handed him a few cards, saying with sympathy toward Angelica, "we should let him play."

Andy took the cards presented to him, feeling about as pathetic as he had ever felt, glancing through their unique abilities and pictures. He set one on the table in front of him, "What’s this card do?"

"That’s ‘FINE.'"

"What’s ‘FINE’ mean?"

Angelica glared at Antonio and the young boy giggled out, "It means you have to pay a fine."

"How much?"

"Two cards."

Andy flipped through the remaining five cards he had in his hand, placing two random ones on the table, "how about these two?"

"You can’t pay with those two."

"Why not?"

Angelica roughly grabbed the two cards, pointing at them angrily, "This one is a FRANTIC. You can only play it during the lightning round. And this one," she motioned to the remaining card, "is an ATTACK. You can only use it to make the other players spend cards."

Andy Confundido extremely confused at this point, laid out his three remaining cards, "Can I pay with any of these?"

Angelica scoffed, "those are all XANAX cards."

"What’s that mean?"

"You have to pay a card to LORD XANAX," she said, motioning towards a figurine of a white-robed, douchey cokehead looking alien (in Andy’s eyes) that stood upright at the center of the table, "if he accepts your card, then you get to make us all pay you two cards. If he doesn’t..."

"What happens?"

Antonio giggled, "Try it and find out."

Andy, staring at his two cousins with paranoia heightening, laid all three cards in front of the LORD XANAX figurine. The statuette’s eyes lit up and a message began broadcasting out of a speaker (the location of it being indiscernible to Andy). "ATTENTION: HUMANS. THIS IS LORD XANAX. YOU HAVE GIVEN ME THREE CARDS. NOW YOU MUST COMPLETE MY CHALLENGE AND I WILL DECIDE TO ACCEPT OR NOT ACCEPT."

Andy Confundido, a little more confused now, continued staring at the statuette. Its eyes lit up bright red. "ANDY, YOU SEEM NERVOUS."

He was shocked, "It spoke to me!"

"CHILL OUT, BRO."

"It fucking spoke to me!" Andy was screaming now, standing up.

Antonio giggled, laying a card on the table, "I play my CHILL OUT card!"

Angelica, an evil grin creeping onto her face, laid down a card identical to Antonio’s, maniacally saying, "Me too!’"

They say on that day that Andy Confundido chilled out for the first time in his life, as the LORD XANAX statuette blasted him with liquid nitrogen (which temperature measured zero on the kelvin scale), freezing him into an Andy statuette that to this very day can be found in the hotel lobby of La Casa Divertida en Ensenada, Mexico, used most often for beautiful women who are on vacation there to do iced body shots of high grade tequila off poor, unfortunate, Anxious Andy’s frozen corpse.