365 Days Later: End of our Challenge

FIN

Day 365, the end.

For those of you who didn’t know, this website was a collaborative project between Nikita Klimov and Benjamin Davis. Ben is from Massachusetts, U.S.A., and Nikita is from Moscow, Russia. They both live in St. Petersburg, Russia for some reason no one can ever seem to grasp.

Since October 17th, 2016, Ben has written a flash fiction story every day. He sent the story to Nikita who created a piece of art inspired by that story.

Today is October 17th, 2017, we have finished our challenge.

We will keep posting updates and some more content on this page as time goes on. Through the website, we were able to find a home for our book “The King of FU” which will be released very soon. We will announce it when it is available.

And of course, thank you! We started this challenge simply as a way to force us to practice what each of us loves. We did not expect any of the response it’s gotten from so many people and we are very happy and very grateful for how it all turned out. We really hope we can continue to entertain you all with comics and books and whatever else we decide to do.

For those of you who have asked or wondered about the characters in my stories: Many of the stories are based on real events and real people (shown above). None of them are 100% true or false. “N” is, of course, Nikita who is the artist for this website. Y is my girlfriend who does many of the English-Russian translations which you can find here. “M” is based on the one who encouraged us to do this website in the first place but has since left Russia. D/Q is an English friend of ours who lives in St. Petersburg as well. Hank is based on two old friends of mine, one I lived with and one I traveled with and both were exceptionally unique people. “Mother, mom, ma, and mommy (or any other variation)” is often based on my own mother; same goes for dad, father, pa (but not Daddy–never daddy.) And my brother (the younger one) who often simply shows up as ‘my brother,’ he does have a name, somewhere–maybe. And Frank, of course, is completely made up.

The rest of the characters are mostly those who have come and gone or are completely made up. I hope that these people and characters inspired something in people as they did for me.

Again, Thank you to everyone who has followed along and been so encouraging. It’s what kept us running home after so many “oh-shit’ moments where we found ourselves out drinking and hadn’t posted. We will keep posting bi-weekly for the art collective “Hijacked Amygdala” and if you haven’t checked out some of the work over there I highly recommend it, they are a group of talented artists and writers.

Thank you again,

– Ben & Nikita

P.S. P.S stands for poor Sasha!

It’s my birthday. I’m one year older; one year ahead of yesterday.

That is when they took me–a day before my birthday. Them–HE, no–IT, IT, that nightmare of a Lovecraftian nightmare.

My mother had cooked a mutton pie. Ben and Nikita have never cooked a mutton pie. Ben’s leg doesn’t work, so they can’t get to the kitchen and, even if they did, three fingers of Nikita’s right hand are toothpicks.

They truly are–were, useless. As this may be my last chance, I would like to clarify a few things.

First, some have been led to believe that Ben has an affinity for dialogue; this is rubbish–Ben’s half a mouth is only capable of making a sound not dissimilar to the first curious slice into a cadaver frog.

Second, as some have said, “Nikita is a talented artist!” I would like to reiterate; three of his fingers are toothpicks!

I am only able to tell you the truth today because as of today, there are no more gurgles, no more grunts, no more drool no more sweat and sick and blood and puss–no more wiping. The thing that was Ben and Nikita is now no more than a husk on the chair; a piece of fleshy garbage that wouldn’t even be displayed in the most postmodern of postmodern art galleries.

They choked to death on their own joke.

There will be no funeral. There will be no calls for removal. It will sit there, no more demands for stories or art, no more fresh bandages applied, no more wet sickly laughs. They are no more and will remain no more.

It is my greatest failure that I could not prevent them from swallowing the key to my chains. I could tear them open, dig through the shared mess of leftovers that was their bodies to find my glimmer of freedom–but I will not. I will not be wetted by their skin one more time.

So, here I will sit and here I will perish; I am used to the smell.

— Sasha

 

33 replies to “365 Days Later: End of our Challenge”

  1. 1. I don’t have words to describe how much I enjoyed your year of stories. 2. How did you get such a good looking girlfriend? 3. Happy birthday Sasha. 4. Y’all are awesome. FIN

    Liked by 6 people

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    1. hahaha 1. Thank you very very much. 2. You kidding? Look at me. I am a handsome son of a bitch. 3. Sasha cannot come to the phone right now, his phone privileges have been revoked. and 4. You are fucking awesome I love you work and love reading when you have comments about mine. We aren’t going anywhere, just stepping back a bit and starting to work on other things.

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    1. Thank you Penny, you’ve always had so many awesome insights and really made me look at things and adapt things in different ways. I am glad you found us and had the time to keep us going. It’s been so much fun.

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  3. so I must say nothing ever moved me as much as the last half year with you. And yes, I was always addressed personally. I laughed tears, I cried snot and water, my imagination attacked me, and I had always guessed it and tried to avoid it. But as with Sleeping Beauty, there was no success in burning all the spindles in the country, so it did not help me to defend myself so many years against the www. The evil curse of the sorceress hit me…hahaha…you got me with your stories completely.
    You are a great bunch and I wish you with all your heart what you wish for yourselves. Sascha happy birthday, I still have a bottle, which I have kept for a long time…I´ll drink it on your health.

    Liked by 4 people

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    1. You are the best. Seriously, when you showed up and started engaging us in a way we hadn’t been engaged before. I always looked forward to your comments and trying to see things through your eyes. I know english is not your first language and still you understand stories in such a beautiful way. Thank you. I will be sure to keep updates going on what we do and where more of our work can be found. You are damn awesome. I am so happy you enjoyed the stories.

      Liked by 2 people

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    1. Thank you. I don’t know how far we would have gotten without people encouraging us and commenting and I am really glad we’ve been able to keep our work entertaining and new. I hope what we do in the future is equally, if not more interesting and entertaining.

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  5. Thank you SO much for creating multiple loads of AWESOMENESS and then going on and sharing it! I’m sure you have loads of immersions and truths you’ve learned in a year. That would be intriguing to hear, but I won’t pester you about it as you’re both, no doubt, quite busy! BUT you deserve all the praise and I need to go back to the beginning and start reading since I started somewhere toward the end. I always looked forward to reading yours, even if I was unable to read every day.

    Congratulations on one year! And here’s to the new adventures ahead!! OH! And happy birthday! 🎉🎊🎈

    Liked by 3 people

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    1. Haha thank you, this is so great to hear. It’s kind of hard to think about right now. 365 stories was a lot and I am just going back through them now compiling them into different categories. I didn’t realize how many I’d forgotten haha. I hope you find many that you enjoy and I hope in the future there are many more things we do that are equally enjoyable and engaging. If you ever want to chat about this year and what we did you can always email me through ‘contact’. It goes directly to my personal email. Anytime. We will still be keeping the site up and running and updating people about our work. We have a book coming out and we have been talking about contributing to an upcoming anthology so I promise, we won’t disappear, we just wont be around every day for a while.

      Liked by 2 people

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      1. I will definitely keep this in mind (to contact you)!! Tomorrow I’m actually at the halfway point on my own blog for posting daily, so I may actually take you up on this. And you’re quite welcome! Haha. Enjoy your time “off” so to speak.

        Liked by 1 person

    1. haha awesome. Happy Birthday!! It has been a really interesting and fun year, I’m so happy we’ve been able to create things that you love. I really hope that we can create so much more this year and that you enjoy being 18. I remember my 18th. I tried to buy a cigar and the guy asked me what time I was born! People can be shitty sometimes, but you are certainly awesome.

      Liked by 2 people

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  8. So much love and gratitude to you both – youve given me so many exquisite gifts.
    You’ve no idea how much I’m looking forward to buying the book.
    And thanks so much for the photo montage!I’d been lately wondering if either of you had a Ask Me Anything page on Reddit(?), but my curiosity had been sated. (For now.) Best and thanks again and congratulations!

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. haha you’re awesome. Sooooo many times this year your comments made me so happy. I am glad you’ve enjoyed our work and I hope our book is just as entertaining. You’ve been with us since the beginning and we are so so grateful. I always look forward to your comments and you will be our marker of success when our next work comes out so please let us know and keep us on track

      Liked by 2 people

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    1. Thank you! It’s been a hell of a lot of fun and really surprising and encouraging to hear how much people enjoyed it. We will be doing our best to make sure the next things we create as just as engaging if not more so. More art, longer stories and more attention to detail. Sometimes writing so many stories so fast means I haven’t been able to tell them as well as I can but now we will have the time to try and make some really special things and I am happy to hear that you’ll be sticking with us even if it won’t be every day.

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  10. Pingback: 365 Days Later. — Flash 365 | Benjamin Davis, Author

  11. Hey, I’ve been absent a while but got the chance to catch up over the last few weeks. Wanted to pass on congratulations for having completed the challenge. I get the feeling it was worth it – It seems obvious to me and I think most would agree that you and Nikita have improved significantly since the beginning; and it’s inspiring to see you two planning to keep up with these stories and arts. Hope to see the Patreon expand. I’d be glad to aid if I had the income myself.
    I’ll stick around for all that’s to come; particularly interested in King of FU. And for the love of God get that Frank book out.

    Liked by 3 people

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    1. That’s awesome. Thank you so much for all your support. Our book will be out soon and also we will be releasing the Frank book to certain people to read and give feedback before we send it to publishers. If you want I can let you know when we do that.

      Liked by 1 person

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      2. Oh awesome. I’ve started a new job and work constantly so I’ve been completely disconnected for a bit but I love those stories. I’ll check them out this week. Do you have an email sign up so I can get them in my email?

        Liked by 1 person

      3. There should be an email sign-ups on the blog. If not, I’ll shoot you a link.

        And congrats on the job. I completely understand busy. I haven’t been able to post nearly as frequently, either.

        Liked by 1 person

  13. Pingback: New Stories Coming to Flash-365 – Flash-365

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