In response to Melanie Ezell's lesser know Other Big Closet Ultimately Forgettable Challenge — The longest and most tedious introduction/disclaimer ever.

Back in the days when I used to teach, there was a two week break where I needed to switch off completely from anything to do with classrooms and books and revolting children (they aren't all revolting you understand, just enough to make your life miserable), so I stayed in bed (yes I know it's disgusting, and at my age too. What kind of example is that for the kids?) and wrote the first 70k words of this before running out of time and imagination.

As ever, resemblance of characters in the story to people in real life is purely co-incidental as well as extremely unlikely, since the story is set in a parallel universe where everything is pretty much as it is here, except for matters relating to the legal profession and mental health care, and quite possibly the way hypnotism works. Which is another way of saying that I don't know how things work in our world and I'm too lazy and being paid too little to do research, so I made stuff up.

Despite that, I hope you enjoy...