As the school day ended, both Marge and Rainier Wolfcastle drove to Springfield Prep to pick up their daughters.
"See ya tomorrow, Greta," said Lisa to her friend.
"As my dad always says, 'You haven't seen the last of me,'" responded Greta as she boarded her father's Mercedes.
"Do I always say that?" Wolfcastle mused. "Geez, my dialogue's getting stale."
While on the road, Lisa began to regale her mother with stories of her wondrous first day at the prep school. "It's so different from Springfield Elementary, Mom. Everyone there is super rich, and some of them are stuck up, but a lot of them are really smart. And I met this nice blind boy."
"A blind boy?" said Marge, intrigued.
"He has a seeing-eye dog," Lisa went on. "And his great-great-grandfather was Walter Gropius."
"He groped you where?"
"No, Mom," said Lisa in frustration. "Walter Gropius was a great architect."
"Oh," said Marge with a relieved sigh. "Like I.M. Pei."
"That's right."
Marge fell into silent thought as she steered onto Route 401. Finally she inquired, "Is he rich?"
"Yes," Lisa replied. "His parents are both successful architects."
Marge suppressed a chuckle.
"What?"
He's rich, Marge thought deviously. Maybe I should call him I.M. Paydirt.
Shortly after they arrived home, Bart disembarked the school bus and walked inside with a huge grin on his cheerful face. "You look like someone who had a good day at school," Marge remarked.
"You have no idea," said Bart as he dropped his book bag on the floor next to Santa's Little Helper. "This day made repeating fourth grade worthwhile."
"You did something bad, didn't you?" Lisa scolded him.
"You have no idea."
"Stop saying that."
"Are you ready for this?" said Bart ominously.
"Just say it," said his mother.
Bart took a deep, proud breath. "I broke Mrs. Krabappel's brain."
"You what?" cried Marge and Lisa together.
"I said, I broke…"
"We heard you," said Marge.
"I used some police tape I borrowed from Chief Wiggum's office," Bart boasted, "and I set up a police line around Mrs. K's desk, with a chalk outline of a big fat ugly lady. When Mrs. K showed up, she crossed the police line and slipped on the grease I'd brushed all over the floor, and fell right on her head. She tried to get up, but she slipped and fell down again. Everybody was laughing. Then she started screaming and ran out of the room. She didn't come back for the rest of the day. Principal Skinner had to fill in for her. I'm supposed to be in detention right now, but I'm not."
Marge and Lisa only glared indignantly at him.
"You have no appreciation for slapstick comedy," Bart chided them.
"You are evil, Bart," said Lisa as she walked away in a huff. "Evil, evil, evil."
"Get in the car," Marge ordered her son. "I'm taking you back to school so you can serve your detention."
Bart groaned and followed her. As he passed through the living room, both Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II fled from his presence in terror.
Cool, he thought with delight. Animals run away from me. I must be truly evil. I wonder what else I can do with my evil powers…
Todd Flanders was playing in the yard with his pet frog when Bart wandered past, waving his fingers sinisterly. An odd sensation gripped him, and he hurried toward the front door, clutching his frog.
"Rod, help!" he beseeched his older brother. "Satan is tempting me!"
"Don't have a cow, man," said Rod flippantly.
Car, break, Bart thought urgently. Car, break. Car, break…
But the car didn't break, and Marge continued to drive him toward the school where he would have to endure his punishment. Maybe my powers only work on kids and animals, he thought.
As was his habit, Homer went directly to Moe's Tavern after enjoying dinner at his house. The usual crowd was gathered, including Barney, Lenny, and Carl.
"Hiya, Homer," said Lenny, sniffing the air. "You still smell like skunk."
"Hey, I heard your little girl's going to a new school," said Carl. "How's that coming along?"
"Oh, fine, fine," said Homer as he took a seat at the bar. "Except that some blind kid groped her."
"I'm sure he didn't mean nothin'," said Barney. "When you're blind, it's hard to tell if you're shaking a girl's hand or touching her privates. Same as when you're drunk."
"So what'll it be, Homer?" Moe asked. "The usual? A beer?"
Homer was about to nod his assent, when a voice called to him. "Stop!"
"Huh?" He glanced around, and to his surprise, the six-inch-tall green man was floating above the bar directly in front of him.
"Not one drink until you've heard me out," the strange little man demanded.
"Beat it, Marvin," groused Homer, who then tried to bat the alien away. His hand only passed through a green mist that reformed itself into the shape of the mysterious visitor.
"Who's Marvin?" asked Lenny.
"The Martian guy who keeps pestering me," said Homer. "He saw me in the shower today. Got a good view of me from both sides."
"Geez, Homer's talking to Martians," Carl remarked. "And he's not even drunk yet."
"Your friends can't see or hear me," said the alien. "My business is with you, and you alone."
"Go away!" Homer snapped.
"Are you talkin' to me?" Moe asked.
"No, I'm talking to the stupid Martian."
"I'll get you two beers," said Moe, shaking his head incredulously.
"For your information," said the green man, "I'm not from Mars. I am from the planet Orbicron Theta, in a galaxy so far away that your most powerful telescopes cannot detect it. Also, my name is not Marvin, but Ozmodiar."
"For your information," said Homer sharply, "you don't exist. So stop not talking to me."
Ozmodiar continued his speech while Moe filled a pair of beer mugs. "We Orbicrons have the power to alter reality, and we use this power to grant the fondest wishes of randomly selected individuals. It was the wish of a devoted baseball fan that caused the Red Sox to win the last World Series."
"Wait," said Homer, taking a sip of beer. "You're a magical dude from outer space, and you've come to grant me a wish?"
"It's more complicated than that, I'm afraid."
"I hate my job," Homer complained. "If you have the power to give me any job in the world, then I wanna be Duff Man. Or the President of the United States. Er…no. Duff Man."
"If you'd just listen to me…"
"Oh, is that too hard? Okay, let's try something simpler. I wish I had hair. I wish I wasn't fat." He ran his fingers over the top of his head, and looked down at his belly. "Well? What are you waiting for?"
"You don't understand, Homer."
"Stupid magical alien," Homer groused, downing his mug of beer quickly.
"If you get drunk, you'll lose the ability to see and hear me," Ozmodiar warned him. "And I have something very important to tell you."
"Hey, I want a wish too," said Barney. "I wish my apartment was clean."
"I wish I was the smartest person on Earth," said Lenny.
"Don't forget what happened to the last guy who wished for that," said Carl. "He turned into a woman."
"Prepare yourself for a rude shock when you wake up in the morning," said Ozmodiar as he faded in and out of Homer's view.
Edna Krabappel was scarcely aware of what she was doing. She knew only one thing—either she or Bart Simpson would soon be dead.
"Get me the warden," she spoke into the telephone.
"Yes, ma'am," replied the receptionist at Springfield Penitentiary.
"This is the warden," came a polite but firm man's voice. "How may I help you?"
"I want to know when Robert Terwilliger's parole hearing is going to take place," Edna requested.
"Wednesday at six p.m.," the warden told her. "May I put you down as a character witness?"
"Yes," Edna answered. "I'm Bart Simpson's teacher. Believe me, if you knew Bart like I do, you'd thank Sideshow Bob for trying to kill him."
"I want a fresh pot of coffee waiting for me in the morning, Mom," said Bart confidently. "I'm going to lie awake all night thinking of ways to torment Principal Skinner."
"He was imprisoned and tortured for eighteen months in Vietnam, Bart," Lisa reminded him.
"Yeah, but they didn't break him," said Bart. "Someone's got to finish what those amateurs started."
"You may have scared Mrs. Krabappel away," Lisa warned him, "but you haven't licked the system yet. Someday it's going to come down on you, hard."
"Time for bed, kids," said Marge gently.
Bart, still smirking, hurried up the stairs and sealed himself inside his room. While ascending, Lisa turned to her mother and remarked, "I shouldn't have called him evil. Now it's gone to his head."
With the children tucked away, Marge settled in for another night in the company of her beloved husband. On this occasion, Homer appeared a tad worried. "Something wrong, Homie?" she asked.
"It's probably nothing," said Homer as he pulled his nightshirt over his head. "I've been seeing this little green alien guy all day, and he told me to expect a shocking surprise in the morning."
"You've been working too hard," said Marge.
"Damn straight," Homer concurred. "I need to take some time off. I've been imagining all kinds of stuff lately. Lisa going to prep school, Bush getting re-elected…"
"Those things really happened," Marge pointed out.
"Of course they did, honey," said Homer patronizingly.
He switched off the lamp, and was soon tossing and turning. While Marge snoozed peacefully, he pondered Ozmodiar's dire warning. If the green man truly possessed the power to alter reality, then the world as Homer knew it might drastically change overnight. He didn't know what to think. It was late, and his brain was tired.
The ringing of an alarm clock roused him from slumber. He had expected beeping.
He slowly opened his weary eyes. The room had the same dimensions as before, but he had the feeling that something was absent. My imagination's running wild again, he thought. Still, it can't hurt to perform a routine reality check.
He raised his hands to his head and fondled his scalp. Still bald. He lowered his hands until they were over his chest. Still a man. He moved his hands to his belly. Still fat.
It occurred to him that the sunlight streaming through the blinds was much brighter than it had been the previous day at the same time. Oh, my God, the sun's gone nova!
Glancing at the clock, which had somehow changed from being digital to having hands and a face, he realized that someone had set the alarm to an hour later than normal. This was good, because it meant the world wasn't coming to an end. At the same time it was bad, because…
"Marge, get up!" he cried. "I'll be late for work!"
No answer came. The room was utterly silent.
"Marge?"
Homer turned on his side. Not believing what he saw, he rolled onto his other side. Marge wasn't in the other half of the bed. There was no other half of the bed. He was lying on a full-size mattress instead of the queen-size to which he was accustomed.
He leaped clumsily from the bed. Looking down, he noticed that he was wearing only underpants. He didn't recall having removed his pajamas. I must have been really drunk, he thought.
Things only became stranger. The furniture was arranged differently from what he remembered. The framed portraits of Bart, Lisa, and Maggie were no longer hanging on the wall. In their place were several posters of bikini-clad models.
Marge will kill me if she sees those, he told himself. But where did they come from? And where's Marge? Obviously nowhere nearby, judging from the articles of men's clothing haphazardly strewn across the floor.
He reached into the closet for a bathrobe, and found one made from red velvet as opposed to the customary green robe. Marge's dresses were conspicuously gone.
Had she abandoned him during the night?
Throwing the robe around his nakedness, he hurried from the bedroom in a panic. "Marge! Lisa! Maggie! Boy!" he wailed. No one answered.
The kitchen was an unholy mess. Food scraps littered the floor and counter tops. On the refrigerator, where he should have seen Bart's and Lisa's grade-school drawings held neatly in place by magnets, only half-legible scrawls on post-it notes were visible. The food and water bowls intended for Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II were missing.
He wandered into the living room. The TV was in its usual location, but the ratty couch was coated in stale potato chips and cheese curls. The stench of beer was almost overwhelming.
It's my house, all right, thought Homer feverishly. But it's like Marge never existed.
On the upper floor, the door to what he thought was Lisa's bedroom opened. Lisa! She'll explain everything!
It wasn't Lisa who emerged, but the bleary-eyed Barney Gumble, also clad in a bathrobe. "Mornin', Homer," he said groggily. "Buuuurp."
"Barney?" the startled Homer blurted out. "What are you doing in Lisa's room?"
"Who's Lisa?" the lush responded.
Bart's bedroom door flew open, and a haggard-looking man stepped out. "What's with all the shouting?" he complained. "Can't ol' Gil get some proper sleep?"
"Waugh!" Homer screamed in terror. He didn't stop running until he reached the front gate of the Flanders house. Barefoot and breathing heavily, he struggled to calm himself and make sense of his transformed surroundings.
The next sight he beheld didn't help matters at all.
"Good morning, Homer," came a sweet woman's voice.
It was Maude. Maude Flanders.
"M-Maude?" he stammered. "B-but you're dead!"
The slender redhead chuckled. "Well, I do look a bit ghastly without my makeup, but don't you think that's overstating it?"
Homer nearly broke down the wooden gate in his haste to reach the woman. "Tell me what's happening!" he pleaded. "Why are you alive? Where's Marge? Where are my kids?"
"Kids?" said Maude incredulously. "You don't have kids."
Ned approached the pair from his front door, his moustache considerably bushier than when Homer had last seen it. "Hi-diddly-ho, neighborino," he said in a sickeningly friendly tone. "What can I do you for?"
"Where's Marge?" demanded the frantic Homer.
"Marge? Marge Bouvier?" Ned's expression became wistful. "That girl you had a crush on all those years ago? Golly, I didn't know you still carried a torch for her."
"This is all your doing, Flanders!" Homer accused him. "Well, except for the pictures of the bikini babes. Who helped you?"
"I think the alky-hol is playing tricks with his memory again," Ned muttered to his wife.
"Take it easy, Homer," said Maude with concern. "You're just having a little delusion. You're not married. You have no children. You've been living next door to us with your roommates, Barney and Gil, for the past ten years."
Homer could only stare in confusion. This must be a dream, he tried to convince himself.
"I hope we were able to help you straighten things out," said Ned. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to run to the mall and open up the Leftorium. Ciao-diddly-ao."
He skipped away, leaving the astonished Homer to face the mysteriously resurrected Maude—and Ozmodiar, who had abruptly reappeared.
"This is what I was trying to warn you about, dumb-dumb," the floating alien chided him. "But you were too busy being stupid to listen."
Homer scowled bitterly. "Stupid Martian! I didn't wish for any of this. I sure as hell didn't wish for Maude to come back to life."
"Who are you talking to?" Maude inquired.
"You're quite right," said Ozmodiar calmly. "This is not your wish. I didn't choose you—I chose another man." His voice began to quiver. "When he made his desire known to me, I was disgusted. I've never encountered such selfishness anywhere else in the universe. Still, I had sworn to grant his wish, whatever it might be."
To Maude, it appeared that Homer was gazing into empty space with wide, bewildered eyes.
"I found a way to get back at him, though," the green man went on. "He thought nobody would be hurt by his wish, since under standard practices, only the wisher knows that reality has been altered. In this case, however, you know it as well. It's no longer a victimless crime."
Clarity seeped into Homer's mind. "Oh, God," he said somberly. "Somebody wished my family away from me."
Ozmodiar nodded.
"Who is he?" Homer bellowed. "I'll kill him!"
"Such a primitive response," said the alien arrogantly. "You humans call yourselves civilized, yet your solution to every problem is to find a scapegoat and publicly execute him."
"Who is he?" Homer shouted again.
"I'll tell you," Ozmodiar offered, "but you must promise not to confront him with violence. That's not the way. Reason with him. Make him aware of the pain he has caused. Did I mention he has a week to change his mind and reverse the wish?"
"All right, I promise," said Homer impatiently. "Now tell me his name, so I can hold a freaking peace conference with him."
Ozmodiar took a deep breath and gazed at Homer seriously.
"His name is Artie Ziff."
Coming soon: Springfield Springs Forward II