All in the Family

"All in the Family" from The Long Hard Road Out of Hell
Written by Marilyn Manson
Released:	February 14, 1998
Illustrator:	P. R. Brown
Publisher:	ReganBooks
Narrator:
Media type:	Print (Paperback)
Length:	288 pages
ISBN:	0060392584

All in the Family is a short story Brian Warner wrote to Night Terrors magazine in 1988. The letters along with the short story can be found in The Long Hard Road Out of Hell.

The short story recalls the murder, necrophilia and madness of a family.

Cast of Characters

• Teddy - A young boy who murders his sister. He is the main character of the story.
• Peg - A doll, whom Teddy is emotionally attached to and maintains as his lover.
• Angie - The sister of Teddy and daughter of Mother. She is killed by Teddy due to her harming Peg.
• Mother - The mother of Teddy and Angie, she punishes Teddy at the story's climax by burying him alive

Short Story

All in the Family
By Brian Warner

He hoped the tape recorder would still work.

It was one of those small portable ones often used in schools or libraries.

Teddy didn’t even realize the irony of his action-Angie was in fact the one who
had bought it for him.

He wiped the hair and blood off the corner and released a sigh of frustration.

“Mother will probably ground me from the television,” he considered,
looking to the mess he had made.

“Damn her. Damn them all. Why did she have to hurt Peg? Why?”

Balefully, he kicked the corpse beside him.

Her glazed eyes stared back at him with empty fascination. “You bitch. You killed Peg.”

His sister’s dead look gave no response. (He wondered why.)
 
Her face looked so shadowed. He lifted her head up by her clotted hair and saw that it was dried blood on her  
cheek that created the mock shadow.

He saw, too, that the dent in her skull had stopped gushing; the coagulated blood had formed a gelatinous plug.

Mother would be home soon. He would have to dig a grave.

Teddy got up and walked to his bedroom where Peg’s plastic body lay deflated. Atop her bloodless chest

was a kitchen knife and she stared at the ceiling with her permanent expression-mouth in the shape of an 0.

She looked as if she would scream.

He picked up the doll’s head and looked tearfully at the flat terrain of her airless, life-sized figure.

Cradling her head, he began to cry-each tear held a thousand wishes to bring her back. He was glad Angie was

dead-she had deserved every last blow. As Teddy stroked her artificial hair he noticed the stench coming from

his sister who lay several feet away. He knew it was urine-he had heard her bladder release when he struck the

final deadly blow. He had hit her once more for good measure-she killed peg. He had every right.

Carefully, he let Peg’s head rest on the carpet.

Bending down, he kissed her cheek and wiped some sticky stuff from her rubber lip.

Mom had told him before not to touch Peg or to make the nasty in her mouth, but he couldn’t help it.

He loved her too much just to leave her be. If mom found out he had done the nasty then she would take Peg away, like   
before-he would have to find her too.

As Teddy went back to Angie’s body he stopped for a moment to marvel at her nudity.

He had always watched her dress from the closet, but he never seen her thing up close.

He was fascinated by the dark tuft of hair between her legs-Peg didn’t have that.

Cautiously he touched her thigh, and jerked away as if her flesh was hot. It wasn’t, though. In fact, she was

starting to get cold. It had been four hours.

“I hate you,” he informed her cadaver eyes.

Again he touched her thigh, but this time he didn’t pull away. Gently, he ran his fingertips up her hip

and toward her crotch. With the other hand, he pulled her muscled legs apart.

Between them was a puddle of urine the size of a pancake. He gave her genitals a curious poke.

She was much softer then Peg, and wait-although her body was cold and pallid, she was warm inside.

He was getting excited by her macabre sexual divinity.

He had to stop-Mother would be upset if he was doing the nasty. She hated the nasty;

Dad had found that out the hard way. All she liked was sewing and watching Family Feud.

She loved that Richard Dawson guy.

But she was so yielding, so doughy. Peg’s skin was hard and waxy inside-he’d had her for ten years (when he was  
eighteen he ordered her from a dirty magazine).

Angie was only five then, and now she had matured into a beautiful young woman.

He really didn’t hate her that much but she shouldn’t have killed Peg. He was only watching her shower.

It was nothing new. But she would have told Mother, Mother couldn’t stand for that kind of filth in her house.

That’s why he had to hide Peg in the first place. Mother was so old-fashioned; he had to hide a lot from  
Mother.

Going to the garage, he fetched a spade and began digging in the garden. He had to finish before she got home.

The soil was tender, and it took a half hour to make the grave.

Time was precious so he went in and cleaned up. He grabbed a towel and went to Angie’s room.

Grabbing both her arms, he pulled her back a few feet-the puddle had soaked into the carpet, leaving a dark  
stain.

He carefully sopped it up and threw the towel in the closet.

As he dragged her through the living room, he considered an idea. It was the best idea he ever had.

If Mother had liked the nasty, she would have been proud of his idea.

He dropped Angie’s arms and went back to his room.

It pained him to look at Peg’s wasted body; the gash in her chest seemed bigger and painful.

But she was old, he thought. Maybe it was best she had died.

Teddy tossed the knife and carried the rubber doll’s limp torso through the kitchen into the back yard.

“I’m sorry Peg,” he told her painted face.

He wouldn’t bury her just yet-first he wanted to try out his idea. If it worked, then he would cover her up.

It was almost time, he would have to hurry. Back in his sister’s room, he took off his jeans and knelt beside the  
corpse.

The smell of death was pungent and sickening, but life was too frightening for him to handle.

He was more of a watcher. But it was too late for watching and she would be perfect. He could hide her.

Just like Peg.

As Teddy mounted his sister in a fumbling, incestuous act of necrophilia, Mother’s car pulled into the cracked  
driveway.

She saw through the grimy windshield the rotting bags of trash piled among the weeds near the porch. That 
damnable  Teddy. Just like his father.

Merely four strokes within her, Teddy finished shamefully; he stayed inside her for a few moments-he

liked the slimy grip on his flesh.

He was embarrassed, but he liked the nasty stuff so much. Why couldn’t Mother understand his needs?

“Teddy didn’t I tell you to take out the trash?” she hollered as the front door opened, slamming into the wall.

She grimaced as a rat scuttled from somewhere to anywhere. A catalog of punishments befuddled her mind

as she crossed the living room.

Teddy froze. How could he explain this to Mother?

He would have to hide Angie if Mother saw what-

“Teddy.”

As Mother hobbled into the hall, he looked up from his disgraceful position.

She stood above him, ancient and leviathan from his angle. Her cane loomed over him like a tree trunk.

Teddy’s frozen panic melted and he leapt up and hurriedly cupped his naughty parts, hiding them from Mother.

“Teddy, why didn’t you take out the garbage?”

“Huh?” He was confused by her displaced question, her banal motherliness.

“Oh, never mind.” She poked her cane at Angie with simple curiosity. “Put on your drawers.”

“Mother, it wasn’t my fault, she killed-“ He quickly shut his mouth-Mother couldn’t know about Peg.

She hated Peg.

“She’s dead, huh?”

“Mother, I didn’t mean to kill her.” That was a lie.

“You where watching her again,” Mother beamed.

“No Mother. I never ever watched her. I promise I didn’t.”

“You did. She tells me.”

“No Mother.” That bitch, she had told. He wished he could kill her again; she suffered too little.

“I told you not to do the nasty. And now I catch you doin’ it on your sister. What can I do with such a

disrespectful boy?

Her rhetoric frightened him. What if she took away the television? What if she made him take those pills

again-what had she called them? Saltpeter? He couldn’t fix that though. He was good at hiding them under his

tongue and then throwing them out his window.

Although Teddy was taller than Mother, she overwhelmed him with her presence. She stepped over

Angie and raised her cane to his head; she was varicose in her elegance.

“Bad boys have to be punished. That’s how we keep a family together.”

Sharply, and with surprising force, she bludgeoned his head repeatedly until he collapsed, limp and

denigrated on the carpet.

When Teddy awoke, he winced at the tugging pain at his eyelids-they wouldn’t open no matter how hard he  
strained.

Atop his naked groin he felt the cold security of Peg, and beneath him the gritty soil.

Damn Mother and her sewing.

He touched his eyelids and knew he would find the tinny knotted stitches binding his vision.

“Teddy,” she called from above. “You’ve been a bad boy. You won’t be looking at Angie anymore though,

I’ve seen to that. Just like your father you are. I had to teach him a lesson too.”

He heard an earthy scrape from above and pleaded for forgiveness. “Mother, please, I didn’t mean to look. I’m  
sorry. Please, Mother-“

A scoop of dirt landed on his face, covering his nose and mouth; his arms were squeezed too tightly into the grave 
to protest.

“Got to keep the family together.”

Mother continued to fill in the grave as Teddy struggled to free himself; he wanted to spit but his mouthful

of dirt prohibited any such action. Above, Mother babbled about discipline and Teddy’s punishment led to

suffocation as his eyes seeped tears of blood.

Trivia

• This short story can be found on page 51 of the autobiography The Long Hard Road Out of Hell.
• A group of student film makers, created a short film inspired by this story.