The doom that started it all.
It was the crap days of winter. Christmas vacation had came and gone, and there was much darkness left until Spring vacation. To amuse ourselves, we oft wondered at the possibilities of creating a Doom-style computer game, where the enemies were teachers and the weapons were pencils, erasers, and so on.
None of us could program, so that failed miserably, but we did make it into a Dungeons&Dragons™-style RPG. (And no, we don't a. worship Satan b. get lost in sewer tunnels). It got horribly out of hand, on the level of world-wide organized crime, but it planted the seed of an idea into the mind of one Nat Webb.
Came the late summer, leading into the next year of drudgery. A crazy online friend of Nat's fancied himself a good writer (he wasn't, particularly) and Nat wanted to show himself he could do better. But he needed a story idea!
School Doom was supposed to be a short story, maybe 10 pages.
School Doom R-type, the super final version, with total spacing and editing and names changed and everything, is 132 pages.
Talk about getting horribly out of hand.
But we're proud of it. It was fun to write, and it created a permanent legacy that has crept out of the esoteric reaches of Punch Drunk lore and seeped into societies around us.
Well, no it hasn't. But it's our masterpiece. It's our proof of ability, of perseverence, of total mental breakdown.
Without further ado, I proudly present to you the crowning achievement (so far) of Punch Drunk literary glory. Behold, the jewel that is School Doom.