The Game Club Podcast

The two men had known each other since high school and had a tradition of hanging out in Slade’s driveway, where they’d set up a couple of lawn chairs, a cooler, and let the conversations flow as freely as the beer. Slade was the kind of guy who always had a story to tell, and Will was the perfect audience, ready with a quip or a joke. As the sun dipped below the horizon and the sky turned a rich, dark blue, they settled into their usual routine.

“I’m telling you, Will, it’s a conspiracy,” Slade said, taking a long swig from his bottle. “They’re replacing all the good donuts with those weird, fancy ones that taste like flowers or something.”

Will chuckled, shaking his head. “You mean you don’t like the lavender-infused crullers?”

“Lavender doesn’t belong in donuts!” Slade protested. “It belongs in a spa, not in my breakfast.”

As they bantered about the finer points of pastry, something unusual caught Will’s eye. “Hey, Slade,” he said, nudging his friend, “look over there.”

Slade glanced up, squinting in the dim light. At first, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. But then, from behind a bush near the driveway, a small, curious creature emerged. It was a platypus—an animal neither of them had ever expected to see in their suburban neighborhood.

“What in the world is that?” Slade asked, his mouth falling open in disbelief.

Will rubbed his eyes, thinking maybe the beers had gotten to him. “Is that... a platypus?”

The creature waddled a few steps closer, its webbed feet making soft crunching sounds on the gravel. It had a duck-like bill, beaver-like tail, and the sort of quizzical look that seemed to say it had just as many questions about these two humans as they had about it.

“Well, I’ll be,” Slade said, leaning forward in his chair. “That’s definitely a platypus. Do you think it’s lost?”

Before Will could respond, the platypus made a small, friendly noise that sounded like a cross between a quack and a squeak. It then proceeded to sit down on the driveway, making itself comfortable as if it had lived there all its life.

“Do you think it’s been following us?” Will wondered aloud. “Like, maybe it’s got a taste for driveway beers too?”

Slade laughed, “Maybe it’s just here for the ambiance.”

The two friends watched as the platypus seemed to relax and even stretch out, its little legs splayed out in a most endearing manner. It was clear that the animal was not in any distress, and if anything, it seemed quite content to hang out with them.

Slade, ever the adventurous spirit, grabbed a small bowl from inside the house and filled it with some water. He placed it near the platypus, who looked at it with mild interest before taking a few sips.

“You think it wants a beer?” Will joked, though neither of them was really serious.

As the evening progressed, the platypus stayed with them, occasionally shuffling closer as if it wanted to be part of the conversation. Slade and Will took turns talking to it, as if it were a regular guest at their nightly hangout. They even gave it a name—Perry, after the famous cartoon platypus.

Eventually, Perry stood up, gave a little stretch, and ambled off into the night, disappearing into the darkness from where he had come. Slade and Will watched him go, feeling oddly privileged to have had such an unusual visitor.

“Well,” Slade said, raising his bottle in a toast, “to Perry the Platypus. May he find all the driveway beers he’s ever dreamed of.”

“To Perry,” Will echoed, clinking his bottle with Slade’s.

As the stars twinkled above and the night grew cooler, the two friends sat back, enjoying the lingering warmth of the evening. It wasn’t every day that you had a platypus join your driveway beers, but that was just another story to add to their collection of memories.