Robert Helfst

Robert Helfst’s written ravings have appeared or are forthcoming in Gamut Magazine, Chthonic Matter Quarterly, Creepy Pod, Twin Pies Literary, Come October: An Anthology of Autumnal Horror, BULL: Men’s Fiction, and elsewhere. He is the editor-in-chief of Fraidy Cat Press. Robert lives in Indianapolis with his wife and a menagerie of children, dogs, cats, trees, and jumping spiders. You can find him at www.roberthelfst.com and on Blue Sky at roberthelfst.bsky.social.

SLUMBER PARTY AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Robert Helfst

July 10, 2025 · Micros

We’re nearly there now - lids grow heavy as the sun sets on our species. It’s bittersweet, sleep’s surrender, a warm blanket wrapping around our aching bodies. It’s better this way, a relief to embrace our conclusion without a coda, to no longer carry on. In the end it wasn’t cancer or rising oceans or mass extinctions or other self-inflicted harms but a deep fatigue that hollowed us until there was nothing left to do but rest, finally, now and forever. One last shared sigh, releasing the weight of our communal sins, and then the comfort of an unending slumber.

Meg Tuite