"Hello, Bart."

Marge's bright and sunny voice filled the room. She shook Bart in his bed. "Time to get up."

"I don't want to get up today. I didn't sleep well last night, you guys were up talking."

"Y-You heard us??"

"You should know by now that we can hear everything in the house from any room. The walls are thinner than Homer's hair around here. So… Krusty… isn't all right. I got my hopes up too high…"

"Don't say that. It makes sense that you didn't want him to die, and besides, your hopes can never be too high. It's good to have high hopes."

"The bigger they are, the harder they fall. I know what that means now. It means hope."

"Hmm, well, we're going to church today, so…"

"I'm going to ask the reverend if he'll hold a funeral for a Jew. I bet we're all going to miss him, even Lovejoy."

"Well, we'll see."

The breakfast table was abnormally quiet. No one felt like talking, and they ate slower than normal. Bart said, "I'm going to go get ready for church." The rest of the family murmured in response.

In church, Reverend Lovejoy was giving a sermon regarding what to do- tell the truth or preserve feelings.

"The question that has bothered mankind for centuries is: Is honesty really the best policy? When you are faced in a situation where you cannot decide whether to be brutally honest, or to tell a white lie, you must always- HEY! No throwing paper airplanes in church."

Reverend Lovejoy opened the airplane. It read, "Reverend Lovejoy- Please, hold a funeral for Krusty. We all miss him. –Bart"

"I said, no airplanes in my church!" Reverend Lovejoy said again as another airplane sailed to him. It read, "I know that Krusty is Jewish, but can you hold a funeral for him anyway? –Homer"

"Oh, all right, does anyone else have airplanes to throw, please throw them now?" Reverend Lovejoy asked. No one else had airplanes to throw. Reverend Lovejoy continued his sermon, and while doing so, wrote in the airplanes, "Krusty's funeral will be held here, because there is no synagogue in Springfield. The nearest synagogue is in Shelbyville, and who wants to go there?"

As people began packing to leave, Reverend Lovejoy tossed the airplanes back in the general direction from which they came. Bart said, "Thank you, Reverend," reading the note, and went with his family back home.

That night, Bart went to bed early. He fell asleep and had a strange dream.

"Oh, Bart, I love you so much," said a voice from under the covers. Krusty popped out from beneath the sheets to say, "I love you, Bart." Bart was baffled.

"I know that I like you as an idol, but this is getting really creepy."

"And it's about to get even creepier…" said Krusty, his voice dropping by an octave. His face shriveled, and his hair grew. The green hair that had grown so large gradually shifted to burgundy, and the skin on his face went from white to pale yellow. The wrinkles disappeared, and the morphed Krusty said, "Hello, Bart."

"Ah! Sideshow Bob!" Bart screamed.

"But don't you see, Bart? Seeing as how I am your wife, you shouldn't be afraid of me!"

"You're my WIFE??"

"Yes, yes. That's why I was saying I loved you."

"But- But you were Krusty then!"

"Was I? Or was I actually…" Sideshow Bob then began shrinking vertically and growing horizontally, and his hair receded back into his head (mostly). His hair became a lighter, more orange shade; a ginger color. His skin became more yellow, and his voice was high and squeaky, as he continued, "Martin Prince???"

"What's going on??"

"Well, you see, e=mc2. Also, Edgar Allen Poe wrote The Raven, and water is H2O."

"What the hell?"

"I'm being a nerd. It doesn't take a genius to know that I'm being a nerd! Oh, and, this is a dream; Krusty would never turn into Sideshow Bob and Sideshow Bob would never turn into me if this were at all real."

"Thanks for wasting all the readers' time."

"No Bart, thank YOU for breaking the fourth wall!"

Bart woke up feeling a bit more than odd. He'd always wondered what dreams were there for. This one, he wasn't sure why any of it had happened.

He and Lisa got ready to go to school, and left five minutes before the bus came. They waited on the curb until the bus came.

"Hey, Otto man…" Bart said unenthusiastically.

"Hey, Bart dude! What's the matter?"

"Well, it's not that, it's different… Krusty died, and Sideshow Bob killed him."

"Whoa, I didn't know that. Maybe I should start watching the news at night. …And maybe I should start actually reading the newspaper instead of just throwing it out. Man, that's important stuff… I wonder how I could've missed that, it must've been the most popular conversation topic for a week!"

"It hasn't been a week, he only died really late Saturday night."

"Oh. Man, I really need to pay more attention to what's going on in the world."

Bart sat down next to his friend Milhouse. Neither of them felt much like talking. Martin, sitting in the seat beside them, said, "Cheer up, you guys. It's not the end of the world. Much worse things could have happened. Imagine if Sideshow Mel had died as well… then there would be no one but Mr. Teeny the monkey to carry out Krusty's legacy. Would that be a show you would watch? I think not!"

"Shut up Martin. First you invade my dreams, now this…"

"I was in your dreams?"

"Yeah. You were being a nerd."

Martin gasped. "You- you're in my dreams too! Now I know the feeling is requited and we were meant to be together!" He sighed laxly.

"Eww! I don't like you that way!"

"Oh…"

When they arrived at school, Bart decided he wanted to cut class. "It would take my mind off of things if I could just hang out in the comic shop all day," Bart said to Milhouse. "So that's where I'm going. Want to come with?"

"No thanks, Bart. I think I want to get to class."

"Suit yourself."

Bart left the school and walked to the Android Dungeon Comic Shop, and he walked in.

The guy behind the counter noticed, "Say, you aren't at school."

"Yeah…" Bart replied. "I'm hanging out over here cause Krusty is dead and school is SO not going to help with that."

"So…"

"Don't mind me, I'm really just hanging out, not doing anything bad or anything like that."

"You will, you know, buy something…right?"

"Uh, er, well, you see, the thing is…"

"You mean you come in here with no money??"

"Um, …yeah."

"Well, if you're here with no money, just to 'hang out', I've got news for you. Look outside…"

Bart looked, and there in the window was a sign that read, "GNIRETIOL ON".

"I don't get it."

"What? Can't you read backwards? 'NO LOITERING!' And I think that this qualifies as loitering! Out now."

Dissatisfied, Bart left the comic shop. He walked past that store and several others. Looking at his feet the whole time, he couldn't see very well where he was going. So he bumped into someone on the street.

"Oh, my. Shouldn't you be at school?"

Bart looked up. It was Sideshow Mel.