Editing All in the Family

{{Book
| Name        = "All in the Family" from The Long Hard Road Out of Hell
| Cover       = TheLongHardRoadOutOfHell.jpg
| Cover size  = 200
| Writer      = [[Marilyn Manson]]
| Released    = February 14, 1998
| Illustrator = [[P. R. Brown]]
| Publisher   = ReganBooks
| 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''' - <small>A young boy who murders his sister. He is the main character of the story.</small>
*'''Peg''' - <small>A doll, whom Teddy is emotionally attached to and maintains as his lover.</small>
*'''Angie''' - <small>The sister of Teddy and daughter of Mother. She is killed by Teddy due to her harming Peg.</small>
*'''Mother''' - <small>The mother of Teddy and Angie, she punishes Teddy at the story's climax by burying him alive</small>

==Short Story==
'''All in the Family'''<br>
By Brian Warner<br>

 He hoped the tape recorder would still work.<br>
 It was one of those small portable ones often used in schools or libraries.<br>
 Teddy didn’t even realize the irony of his action-Angie was in fact the one who
 had bought it for him.<br>
 He wiped the hair and blood off the corner and released a sigh of frustration.<br>
 “Mother will probably ground me from the television,” he considered,
 looking to the mess he had made.<br>
 “Damn her. Damn them all. Why did she have to hurt Peg? Why?”<br>
 Balefully, he kicked the corpse beside him.<br>
 Her glazed eyes stared back at him with empty fascination. “You bitch. You killed Peg.”<br>
 His sister’s dead look gave no response. (He wondered why.)<br> 
 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.<br>
 He saw, too, that the dent in her skull had stopped gushing; the coagulated blood had formed a gelatinous plug.<br>
 Mother would be home soon. He would have to dig a grave.<br>
 Teddy got up and walked to his bedroom where Peg’s plastic body lay deflated. Atop her bloodless chest<br>
 was a kitchen knife and she stared at the ceiling with her permanent expression-mouth in the shape of an 0.<br>
 She looked as if she would scream.<br>
 He picked up the doll’s head and looked tearfully at the flat terrain of her airless, life-sized figure.<br>
 Cradling her head, he began to cry-each tear held a thousand wishes to bring her back. He was glad Angie was<br>
 dead-she had deserved every last blow. As Teddy stroked her artificial hair he noticed the stench coming from<br>
 his sister who lay several feet away. He knew it was urine-he had heard her bladder release when he struck the<br>
 final deadly blow. He had hit her once more for good measure-she killed peg. He had every right.<br>
 Carefully, he let Peg’s head rest on the carpet.<br>
 Bending down, he kissed her cheek and wiped some sticky stuff from her rubber lip.<br>
 Mom had told him before not to touch Peg or to make the nasty in her mouth, but he couldn’t help it.<br>
 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.<br>
 As Teddy went back to Angie’s body he stopped for a moment to marvel at her nudity.<br>
 He had always watched her dress from the closet, but he never seen her thing up close.<br>
 He was fascinated by the dark tuft of hair between her legs-Peg didn’t have that.<br>
 Cautiously he touched her thigh, and jerked away as if her flesh was hot. It wasn’t, though. In fact, she was<br>
 starting to get cold. It had been four hours.<br>
 “I hate you,” he informed her cadaver eyes.<br>
 Again he touched her thigh, but this time he didn’t pull away. Gently, he ran his fingertips up her hip<br>
 and toward her crotch. With the other hand, he pulled her muscled legs apart.<br>
 Between them was a puddle of urine the size of a pancake. He gave her genitals a curious poke.<br>
 She was much softer then Peg, and wait-although her body was cold and pallid, she was warm inside.<br>
 He was getting excited by her macabre sexual divinity.<br>
 He had to stop-Mother would be upset if he was doing the nasty. She hated the nasty;<br>
 Dad had found that out the hard way. All she liked was sewing and watching Family Feud.<br>
 She loved that Richard Dawson guy.<br>
 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).<br>
 Angie was only five then, and now she had matured into a beautiful young woman.<br>
 He really didn’t hate her that much but she shouldn’t have killed Peg. He was only watching her shower.<br>
 It was nothing new. But she would have told Mother, Mother couldn’t stand for that kind of filth in her house.<br>
 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.<br>
 Going to the garage, he fetched a spade and began digging in the garden. He had to finish before she got home.<br>
 The soil was tender, and it took a half hour to make the grave.<br>
 Time was precious so he went in and cleaned up. He grabbed a towel and went to Angie’s room.<br>
 Grabbing both her arms, he pulled her back a few feet-the puddle had soaked into the carpet, leaving a dark  
 stain.<br>
 He carefully sopped it up and threw the towel in the closet.<br>
 As he dragged her through the living room, he considered an idea. It was the best idea he ever had.<br>
 If Mother had liked the nasty, she would have been proud of his idea.<br>
 He dropped Angie’s arms and went back to his room.<br>
 It pained him to look at Peg’s wasted body; the gash in her chest seemed bigger and painful.<br>
 But she was old, he thought. Maybe it was best she had died.<br>
 Teddy tossed the knife and carried the rubber doll’s limp torso through the kitchen into the back yard.<br>
 “I’m sorry Peg,” he told her painted face.<br>
 He wouldn’t bury her just yet-first he wanted to try out his idea. If it worked, then he would cover her up.<br>
 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.<br>
 The smell of death was pungent and sickening, but life was too frightening for him to handle.<br>
 He was more of a watcher. But it was too late for watching and she would be perfect. He could hide her.<br>
 Just like Peg.<br>
 As Teddy mounted his sister in a fumbling, incestuous act of necrophilia, Mother’s car pulled into the cracked  
 driveway.<br>
 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.<br>
 Merely four strokes within her, Teddy finished shamefully; he stayed inside her for a few moments-he<br>
 liked the slimy grip on his flesh.<br>
 He was embarrassed, but he liked the nasty stuff so much. Why couldn’t Mother understand his needs?<br>
 “Teddy didn’t I tell you to take out the trash?” she hollered as the front door opened, slamming into the wall.<br>
 She grimaced as a rat scuttled from somewhere to anywhere. A catalog of punishments befuddled her mind<br>
 as she crossed the living room.<br>
 Teddy froze. How could he explain this to Mother?<br>
 He would have to hide Angie if Mother saw what-<br>
 “Teddy.”<br>
 As Mother hobbled into the hall, he looked up from his disgraceful position.<br>
 She stood above him, ancient and leviathan from his angle. Her cane loomed over him like a tree trunk.<br>
 Teddy’s frozen panic melted and he leapt up and hurriedly cupped his naughty parts, hiding them from Mother.<br>
 “Teddy, why didn’t you take out the garbage?”<br>
 “Huh?” He was confused by her displaced question, her banal motherliness.<br>
 “Oh, never mind.” She poked her cane at Angie with simple curiosity. “Put on your drawers.”<br>
 “Mother, it wasn’t my fault, she killed-“ He quickly shut his mouth-Mother couldn’t know about Peg.<br>
 She hated Peg.<br>
 “She’s dead, huh?”<br>
 “Mother, I didn’t mean to kill her.” That was a lie.<br>
 “You where watching her again,” Mother beamed.<br>
 “No Mother. I never ever watched her. I promise I didn’t.”<br>
 “You did. She tells me.”<br>
 “No Mother.” That bitch, she had told. He wished he could kill her again; she suffered too little.<br>
 “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<br>
 disrespectful boy?<br>
 Her rhetoric frightened him. What if she took away the television? What if she made him take those pills<br>
 again-what had she called them? Saltpeter? He couldn’t fix that though. He was good at hiding them under his<br>
 tongue and then throwing them out his window.<br>
 Although Teddy was taller than Mother, she overwhelmed him with her presence. She stepped over<br>
 Angie and raised her cane to his head; she was varicose in her elegance.<br>
 “Bad boys have to be punished. That’s how we keep a family together.”<br>
 Sharply, and with surprising force, she bludgeoned his head repeatedly until he collapsed, limp and<br>
 denigrated on the carpet.<br>
 When Teddy awoke, he winced at the tugging pain at his eyelids-they wouldn’t open no matter how hard he  
 strained.<br>
 Atop his naked groin he felt the cold security of Peg, and beneath him the gritty soil.<br>
 Damn Mother and her sewing.<br>
 He touched his eyelids and knew he would find the tinny knotted stitches binding his vision.<br>
 “Teddy,” she called from above. “You’ve been a bad boy. You won’t be looking at Angie anymore though,<br>
 I’ve seen to that. Just like your father you are. I had to teach him a lesson too.”<br>
 He heard an earthy scrape from above and pleaded for forgiveness. “Mother, please, I didn’t mean to look. I’m  
 sorry. Please, Mother-“<br>
 A scoop of dirt landed on his face, covering his nose and mouth; his arms were squeezed too tightly into the grave 
 to protest.<br>
 “Got to keep the family together.”<br>
 Mother continued to fill in the grave as Teddy struggled to free himself; he wanted to spit but his mouthful<br>
 of dirt prohibited any such action. Above, Mother babbled about discipline and Teddy’s punishment led to<br>
 suffocation as his eyes seeped tears of blood.<br>
<br>

==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.

[[Category:Writings and literature by Marilyn Manson]]
[[Category:Marilyn Manson bibliography]]