A man could not sleep. He supposed it was because he was to be executed in the morning. Bummer, he thought. He picked at his belly button. Something he seldom did. There were grains of sand in his navel. He wondered if he should have done this more often. Soon there was a pile of sand in his cell. Then sand dunes. He wandered off into the dunes.
He drank from cactus and the occasional well. He covered his head with things he found, scraps of cloth, chunks of Styrofoam. He found pieces of metal and plastic. He met others out there. Several men and one woman, rivals, were searching for artifacts left behind from the sets of Star Wars movies.
He could tell from the tilt of the constellations that he was walking back in time. One evening he stumbled upon the Last Supper. A Passover dinner, but there were no chairs. He inquired of one of the disciples and was told this is the custom. It is meant to show their haste in preparing to leave Egypt.
James, brother of Jesus, was holding forth. He made a joke about matzo being the world’s first fast food. No one laughed. Jesus was quiet. He seemed to be in a funk. One of the disciples asked the first of the four questions: Why is this night different from all other nights?
The disciples all turned toward Jesus. Jesus said, Forget all that, let’s make this night about me, no matzo, no Egypt, no Moses; henceforth, this wine shall be my blood, and this bread shall be my flesh and you shall consume it—no sacrificial lamb with unbroken legs, for I shall be the sacrifice.
The man who could not sleep wandered off, down the back stairs and into the alley. He set off for the desert in the vague direction of where his cell had been. Soon he was joined by Judas. Neither man spoke.