Seventeen puffs of black vapor--he counted them--whiffed up winsomely from the charred circle. "Around and around," he said, dreamily, remembering the second line of the poem, "When Fifthly is perplexed." Edris oozed out of the shadows to him, longlike and snaky, with fearthy fettles adorning her foresome, and a blaze in her eyes like the hurmwurst of Whidby. Island, island, he repeated to himself, thrusting an negatory hand thru the farthing of her wrabdy--and her mouth parted to disclose another mouth, from which issued visible words like ticker tape of steam in chilly air, so surprising him that he could only stand rooted, like a tree. It was then that he noticed the snakes in her hair, as the leaves sprouted from his cheeks end from every simple vascicle of his tubular perpendages sometimes cursorily applellated, eyebreams. Among the amiderie of her fascinating fingers, which she waved before his face like the shimmer of phosphorescence on a salty sea on hot midsummer moonlight, took shape an elegant form, something reminiscent of a redchief. Within his sore heart a black thot grew, spurred by the excess of his agonized birdtwitters, bidding him to slay and do so quickly. He reached for a weapon. There was nothing at hand but a slug. He groaned. A slug against snakes? What chance of victory? As tho she'd read his thot, she moved nearer, her laffter lifting and lowering like a fragile boat on waves of honey. One by one her eyes--390 of them--popped out with hollow slaps like corks from bottles, while within the dull draperies of scarlet which adorned the farthest lamp-post stirred an unnameable bloody something which sent forth a thrill of foreboding into his anguished heart, and he remembered the 4th and last lines of the poem "He who dines alone is hexed." He uttered a gurgling scream as she leaped upon him, and her snales torn and the steam of her bare eye-sockets scalded him--then the ensanguined thing crawled limply over the face of the blinding desert and the vacant sun stared sitelessly at nothing. I'M THROUGH! BY _Foo E Onya_ The editor of this magazine, under the impression that I am still one of that queer tribe known as science-fiction fans, has asked me to write an article. I am no longer a science-fiction fan. I'M THROUGH! However, I have decided to do the article and explain with my chin leading just why I am through. Here goes.