Chase Robinson

Chase Robinson’s life is under siege, his condition intolerable. His future, the carefully crafted Plan of his life, is slowly disintegrating. He must either impotently observe it decay and crumble or defy the blunt wishes of She-Who-Gave-Him-Life. Stay out of that man’s way, his mother simply said. He’s dangerous. Gary Twolan, the hairball that walks like a man, had briefly dated Chase’s mom. Now, Kelly won’t let Gary touch her. It’s all the more curious, then, that he’s moved into the spare room of the row house that used to be just for Chase, his mom and Loki the mutt. It’s temporary, she says. And nothing more. Gary doesn’t pay rent, doesn’t have a job. His massively intrusive self is oppressively present, his leering smile at the ready, his grating voice never far away. The very him of him drains the life from the row house. The safe place Chase needs to launch his career, to conceive and illustrate ideas, seems forever gone, leaving him with nothing but a numbing sense of despair. When Gary’s efforts to impose his greasy self on Kelly become aggressively, threateningly insistent, Chase transforms his misery into an icy rage, then consumes it as fuel for a creative solution to his Gary problem.He’ll have to keep his project a secret from his mother. She can never know how he harries, provokes, and pranks Gary. It must be a perfect crime, to be scripted and executed with precision. It’s not supposed to be lethal. And it’s really not supposed to bring out the killer in his mother. But even the best plans can run into a snag or two.