Neospective

"There, you look the same." Mary is looking at him, head tilted.

"Darling, I am the same," says Whittingham.

"You're still a fucking slave," says Whittingham. Mary wouldn't be treated like the other women in Whittingham's "life". Lucy was his slave now. He was hers.

"So you keep telling me," says Whittingham.

"Flights on Friday, darling. I've got everything you need. Now fuck off back to those little Thai bitches you love so much," says Mary advancing on Whittingham with handcuffs.

"Certainly, my dear," says Whittingham as she closes the lock behind his back.

On the morning of the flight Luke can barely get out of bed without a shot of vodka and snort of cocaine. The flight is early to make sure the papers and the whole media has a full day to collect themselves, recover from the shock that, actually, Luke Whittingham, who is now the stuff of art legend, is not strictly dead. He's not in art heaven with Warhol and Picasso, and all those other geniuses. No, he's just got off a flight at Heathrow and is back at his old abode in Chelsea. They need to be given time to take all this in and then write something half intelligible by the next day. To maximize his return.

Everything has been planned, the first interview he will do for The Times, will be on the front page. The headline will be: Back From The Dead. There will be features in Prieze and Cash Art to control the most outraged in the art community and there will be pieces in Week and News Time, both for and against this affront to decency. Should he be locked up, is this art? Who cares? None of this will matter because Luke and everyone involved are protected.

When "Committed to Death" first opens there are almost riots outside the Royal Academy. One art student attacks the piece with a pick axe and the gallery closes for a day. The hysteria around the work redoubles the next day. Whittingham is quoted as saying: "Now I know what it feels like to be more human than human." The media are happy, they love it, the public love to hate it, the wheels turn, and the money rolls right in, everyone gets paid. To the World, Luke Whittingham is Successful. Luke Whittingham is Famous. Luke Whittingham is Huge. Luke Whittingham is Universal. Luke Whittingham is the New Messiah. Luke Whittingham is Jesus. Luke Whittingham is God.

To Mary, Luke is a slave.

To Luke, Lucy is a slave.

We're all slaves.

With the new influx of cash Whiitingham, with the help of Mary of course, buys the top floor of an office building in London. It is going to be his new HQ. He has just finished the first wave of media, marked down on the schedule as Maximise Return. Mary says that they won't need him for a month now. Always leave them wanting more. It might be longer than that as Whittingham has taken every piece of furniture in the open plan office, and even the side offices, and rammed them up against the front door. There are four or five hefty filling cabinets, numerous desks and chairs all locked together, almost unmovable now. Before he barricaded the door, he had a king size bed and two fridge freezers delivered from Harrods. He hasn't made up the bed yet but the fridge freezers are full of Champagne and frozen gourmet meals.

Whittingham has taken up residence in the board room, he's sitting behind the big conference table, wearing only a white PVC vest, leather boxer shorts, matching alligator cowboy hat and boots. His feet are up on the table and he is smoking a Cools Menthol using a cigarette holder. There are two open bottles of Champagne on the table, one in an ice bucket. At the end of the room there is a bank of TVs, three high and five across. Each horizontal row covers one of the five TV channels. First row is Channel 1 and so on. He's been monitoring his media coverage via the TVs and the online newspapers. There are nine remote controls scattered across the table.

At this very moment his image is on Channel 3, it's the 10'Clock News. He looks away, back to Channel 1, the news has finished. Now it's The Weather. That's something he can understand. The weather girl is quite buxom, Whittingham notes. The fashion for Swedish models seems to have given way to a glut of rather large British girls. The weather girl points to London on the map and says, "London will be cloudy with sunny spells, some rain in the afternoon, and maybe even snow, with winds up to gale force in some areas, with temperatures reaching high 20s later." Luke Whittingham lights another Cools Menthol cigarette.

"Hello, Luke. Fancy meeting you here, here of all places," says Lucy on entering the board room. "Here at your headquarters, at your central offices, where you control everything, where you are God. Or do you want to be a slave?" Lucy is standing at the office window, looking over the city. Her eyes move from building to building, nervously, looking for hope in each office window. She turns to face Luke and says, "Today, Luke Whittingham was found at his London offices. Whittingham was infamous for making a mockery of the whole art world earlier this year when he staged his own death, only to return a year later to more adoration. Now after being found truly dead, after being whipped to death by his own PA, Lucy Mack, it seems Luke Whittingham will be remembered for completely different reasons..." She is idling around the corner of the conference table, letting the whip trail behind her. It's ready to be cracked.

"What do you intend to do with that whip, my dear?" asks Luke Whittingham from the far end of the conference table.

Lucy __________s.

D. J. Sandwicher.