“Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Cartaphilus..!

Behold that silhouette of a man! Wandering the earth through millennia, immortal but barely alive, on the move but at the same place, scavenging but never reaping, never sick but always diseased, not getting old but flesh rotting ever so slowly. Who was Cartaphilus? A tradesman, a shoemaker, the doorman of the Pontius estate, Ahasverus the Jew? He has but forgotten…

On the day of the crucifixion thus spoke and taunted Cartaphilus:

• Go on quicker, Jesus! Go on quicker! Why dost Thou loiter?

Jesus, "with a stern countenance," said

• I shall stand and rest, but thou shalt go on till the last day.

So began the curse of Cartaphilus… Bear witness!

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AI-assisted artwork. Hand-painted and collaged initial image was run through Disco Diffusion machine learning image generation software and touched up in photoshop.