Comfort Room - Or The Seven Dreams of Frank Diggory

The Second Day

The sun arrived right on cue. It streamed in through Frank Diggory’s slatted glass window, easily penetrating through his thin curtains and quickly lit up the room. Within seconds, it’s glow fell on Frank’s weary eyes and jolted them awake.

He grinned.

The darkness had fled from his room. The nightmare had gone.

He needed no alarm clock, or cockerel, to tell him it was morning.

He was awake. Wide awake.

And ready for another day in Paraiso.

And today there was something different. Something small, but it changed everything.

Frank Diggory had made a friend.

Or so it felt like to him.

Light on his feet, he danced down the wooden staircase, grabbing his towel on the way. He washed in the bathroom, singing gleefully a few decibels louder than usual.

Emet held her pillow tightly over her head. His voice was so out of tune, the racket was unbearable. Especially at this time in the morning.

Still, it was better than puking.

He exited the shower and then padded quickly up the stairs again to get dressed. He was torn between waving at a camera he imagined was somewhere high up in the corner of his ceiling, or mooning it, but he thought better of either.

Better not give the game away. Not yet. Let’s see how far they'll go. He thought to himself.

Frank Diggory flicked the radio on. ‘It’s got to be perfect’, his daily refrain, sounded out its bugle call once more.

He got dressed in his usual, plain, cotton trousers and shirt combo.

He crossed the road, as usual, to Kainan Paraiso.

As usual, he was greeted warmly by his hosts, and with the same cheery refrain:

More than fine
More than bent on getting by
More than fine
More than just okay

He ate his usual bland breakfast of poached eggs on toast, drank his usual coffee, did not pay his usual bill, and walked out of the restaurant, as usual, straight into his usual bus.

All orchestrated by the incredibly gifted (in his eyes) Ethan Peteros who, having abandoned his coffee to the glass table in front of his screen bank, was now waving a stick he’d found in the forest hear his house as if it was a conductor’s baton, pointing at each of the components of his wonderful plan as they came in right on cue.

Not noticing for a second the simmering resentment they harboured, and the fact that money was losing its power to mollify it.

To Frank Diggory, the day was just the same as every other day.  Yet somehow it was better. The sun was brighter. The colours more vivid. He even found himself smiling wider.

Life just seemed to be different. But in a good way.

Because Frank Diggory had made a connection.

He had a friend.

And the incredibly gifted Ethan Peteros had not noticed it at all.

Frank Diggory’s day passed like every other: workshopping and proposing in vain in the morning; take-away lunch at noon time; irritating and futile visits in the afternoon.

Nothing at all unusual there.

But Frank did it all with a lighter spirit.

And no-one noticed.