Tod’s a mute, it doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t matter why, but Tod’s a mute. He sometimes wants the world to spin so fast that he’s on the other side and he’s singing, he’s singing so loud that the crows in the rooftops stop their noise because there isn’t any point because no-one’s listening, because they’re all listening to Tod. God stops to hear Tod sing. But Tod can’t sing, not at the rate this world spins. He can’t sing.

Tod starts to paint. Starts in his room at the sound of the door, but the sound’s only so loud because it never comes from his mouth the way we sometimes surprise ourselves with words we never planned. Starts to paint with his right hand and learns to spoon chicken noodles into his mouth with his left, and Tod paints around a plate and stares at the daubed red sun that’s hollow and always mouthing Oh.

When the couple across the street walk out of their front door a few mornings later they’re on their way to work and on their car (it is red) is written: Go To Sleep. And they’re so angry, they walk across the street because they’ve seen that little mute boy painting red wherever he can, but never on cars before now. He paints round red ‘Oh’s on sheets of paper torn from one long roll his father gave to him and the sound the paper makes when the brush hits it is Oh, it’s an explosion, it’s a fire starting. They knock on the door, three times, they’re so angry, and Tod answers the door and he shakes his head No when they ask him did he paint the Go To Sleep on their car? And he shakes his head No.

When the girl with white shoes and white teeth crosses the road she sees written next to the white lines in the road in red paint a perfect line of words that read: Go To Sleep Suburbia. And she tells her friend who says Oh.

All night Tod paints, Go To Sleep, Go To Sleep, on fences and roadsigns and sometimes on cars (but only red cars), Go To Sleep Suburbia. On churches and walls, Go To Sleep.

There’s a man at the window tonight, and he sees Tod paint the perfect red line of the words that read so: Go To Sleep. And he mouths and he shouts through the double glazed window but Tod cannot hear and even so, he’s not afraid, so he stays, and he paints the curvature of the O, and begins again. The man comes out and says, “Please, tell me, what does it mean? Are you mocking the listlessness with which we face certain global crises, the issues we spurn in favour of watching our blue-green TVs? Is it a satire on sleepy community? I find it so fascinating!” And Tod turns slowly around, and he smiles, but he cannot tell. He waggles his silent tongue inside his mouth and walks back home.

Go To Sleep Suburbia, sings the boy at the gate, empty of all but desire.