Question

Brian Kilcline had only one tattoo on his body. He had emblazoned in ink on his forehead a crimson question mark. For this reason, the local kids had nicknamed him ‘Dr Whit?’

Whenever anyone had cause to ask him ‘Who are you?’ he would smile broadly and simply point to his question mark. This had the affect of precluding him from any and all government buildings and places where security was a watchword but the momentary satisfaction it gave him more than made up for that. Similarly, job interviews were never successful. Interviewers found it hard to keep their eyes focused anywhere other than Brian’s forehead and the ambiguity it represented and always found a way to never employ him ever in whatever capacity.

Whenever anyone asked him why he had a question mark on his forehead he’d just shrug as if the question had never occurred to him.

Newspapers and television shows became interested in him and, sure that he was a member of some sort of cult, looked for others similarly adorned in the forehead department.

And pretty soon they found them. If human beings are anything they are followers and copycats. In no time you’d find the odd soul dotted about who had a question mark on his or her forehead. Before long there were millions. Some of the Queen of England’s great-grandchildren were spotted at grand functions sporting bright crimson question marks on their regal foreheads. Slick Dildo, the new American President wore one ‘for a joke’ while giving a speech apologising for America’s brutal enslavement of black folk and for stealing half a continent from Native Americans and Mexicans. Everyone laughed.

And what of Brian Kilcline? Well, you see, what he had on his forehead wasn’t a tattoo but what the Scots called a ‘Dabbity’. Simply it was a washable ink image which he had applied himself and, even more simply, he washed it off.

For the rest, it wouldn’t be quite so easy..!