I Watched Dad Sketch My Skull

The states largest unlicensed troubled youth ranch had finally been raided and shut down by the FBI.

Sitting in the cold interrogation room, the director, Gary, smirked as he went down the list of kids who had passed through his gates, describing each of them with casual cruelty.

But when he reached one particular name, his smile twisted into something dark and mocking.

"This one was the most pathetic," he sneered. "Twenty-one years old, sent to us just for dating some deadbeat. Her own mother personally requested the 'maximum correction package' for her. Said she needed to be broken."

The forensic artist's pencil hitched. The room fell into a suffocating, dead silence.

Gary bared his yellowed teeth, letting out a dry chuckle.

"She was a clever little bitch, though. She actually managed to splice a live wire into the generator room's terminal, rigging up a dial-tone just to make a call. Scared the living hell out of my staff."

"But you want to know the best part? Her mother called us right back. Told us exactly where she was hiding, clear as day."

"We dragged her out and beat her within an inch of her life. And that very night, she hung herself. Survived three years of our program, only to end it all over a failed phone call."

He leaned forward, his eyes locking onto the man holding the sketchpad.

"Hey, Joseph. Don't you think that girl sounds a little familiar?"

My father, Josephthe legendary forensic artist who could reconstruct a human face in six strokesdidn't look up. He quietly shaded the final line on his paper.

"Are you finished?" his voice was flat, hollow. "My youngest daughter is getting married tomorrow. If you're going to lie to save your own skin, at least make it believable."

Gary laughed until tears rolled down his dirty cheeks.

"Oh, I remember her clearly. Even when they cut her down, she was still clutching one of your sketch pens."

My father let out a cold, dismissive breath and checked his phone.

"Anyone who bothers to look at the records knows I gave my eldest daughter a custom fountain pen on her eighteenth birthday. But she cut ties with this family years ago."

He stood up, brushing the charcoal dust off his sketchpad.

"My youngest is walking down the aisle today. I don't have time to listen to a monsters fairy tales."

Garys eyes filled with pure contempt.

"You really are a piece of work, Joseph. So cold-blooded. You let your eldest rot in a hole, just so you could play the doting father to your darling youngest."

My father frowned, looking down at him as if he were a piece of garbage stuck to his shoe.

"I have always loved both of my daughters. Neither of them would ever belong in a hellhole like yours."

He flipped his sketchpad around, revealing the face he had just drawn. "Gary Junior. Familiar?"

The arrogant smirk on the director's face vanished instantly.

"Joseph! Leave him out of this! My son had nothing to do with the ranch! If you want blood, come after me!"

My father snapped his folder shut.

"Whether your son is clean is for the DA to decide. I suggest you start talking instead of playing games with me."

I stood beside my father, watching him with quiet admiration. He had always been larger than life to me. He didn't just draw suspects from a victim's memory; he had this incredible, almost magical gift of reconstructing a child's face just by looking at their parents.

Gary thrashed against his cuffs, begging, but the detectives in the room ignored him.

My father turned to leave, his patience entirely depleted.

Suddenly, Garys eyes turned bloodshot. He screamed at my father's retreating back:

"Your wife told you she was at Veritas Prep on a study-abroad program, didn't she? You stupid, blind bastard! Why don't you go look at what Veritas really is! You destroyed my family, Josephdon't think you're getting a happy ending!"

At the mention of those words, I instinctively shrank back, covering my head in terror.

But the expected blow never came.

I forgot. I'm already dead.

Behind the double-sided glass, the lead detectives sprang into action. This ranch was just a branch of a much larger, darker syndicate. Every lead was vital, and the department had brought my father in specifically to crack Gary's defenses.

My father let out a long sigh, stepping into the hallway.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. It was my mother, Meredith.

"Honey, where are you? Maisies ceremony is about to start. Youre the father of the brideyou cannot be late for this."

"I'm on my way," my father replied, his voice softening.

But as his foot cleared the threshold, a desperate, raw shriek echoed from the interrogation room behind him:

"That girl had an iris tattooed on her left forearm!"

My father froze. His entire body went rigid.

An iris. It means hope and protection.

He had inked that tattoo on me himself. I remembered the exact weight of his hand, the gentle hum of the needle. He had looked at me and said, "An iris is a shield, Summer. Daddy put it on you, so Ill be protecting you forever."

Then, his phone screen lit up with a photo Meredith had just sent. He stared at it, and a faint, relieved smile touched his lips.

In the photo, a handsome young man was holding up a glass, flanked by my beaming mother and sister.

The groom. My sisters new husband.

And the boy I had loved with every fiber of my being.

The wedding venue was breathtaking, packed to the brim with high-society guests.

Meredith looked at my father with a playful, scolding pout.

"You always let your work get in the way of this family, Joseph."

"If you hadnt been so soft on Summer back then, she wouldn't have gone down such a rebellious path."

"Its a good thing we sent her to Oakhaven to get her sorted out. Otherwise, Id still be blaming you for being an irresponsible father."

I stood in the center of the floral-draped aisle, staring at my mother in absolute shock, my spectral hands clenching into tight fists.

Rebellious path?

To my mother, my "rebellious path" was refusing to break up with Waynewho was poor but loved meto marry the wealthy heir she had handpicked for me when I was twenty-one.

I remembered that night vividly. I had wept at her feet, begging her to understand.

"Mom, please! That man is cruel, he doesn't care about me! And I love Wayne!"

But Meredith couldn't tolerate defiance. Her eyes had burned with a manic, red-hot fury as she struck me across the face, her fists raining down on my back.

"Everything I do is for you!" she had shrieked. "You ungrateful little bitch! You think you're grown now? You think you can disobey me? You will break up with him. Tonight."

When I remained silent, she grabbed a paring knife from the counter and pressed it against her own throat, drawing a thin line of real, crimson blood.

"I'll do it!" I had screamed, my heart fracturing into a thousand pieces. "I'll break up with him!"

But the moment the breakup text was sent, Wayne had lost his mind. He sped through the rain to find me and wrapped his car around a concrete pillar. The moment I heard he was in the ICU, I fought to run out the door, but my mother locked me in my room, screaming about parental authority and social standing.

In a desperate, reckless bid to see him one last time, I crawled out of my second-story window and jumped.

Before Wayne even woke from his coma, Meredith had dragged me back. My escape was the ultimate betrayal in her eyes. Her control was absolute, and my defiance was unforgivable.

So, she arranged to have me sent to Oakhaven Academy.

When my father returned home from an out-of-town case, all he saw was the dried blood on Meredith's neck. Blaming me for nearly driving my mother to suicide, he personally drove me to the gates of that hellhole.

Neither of them knew that Oakhaven wasn't a school.

It was a slaughterhouse.

My spirit trembled violently, nearly swallowed by the darkness of those memories, until my fathers bitter voice pulled me back to the present.

"Don't bring up Summer," he muttered to my mother. "She clearly wants nothing to do with us anyway."

Meredith's face hardened. "All because we saved her from ruining her life? We spent a fortune on that academy. How dare she cut us off the moment she turned eighteen? Her program ends tomorrow. Youre going to pick her up, and shes going to apologize."

I let out a hollow, silent laugh, looking at my sister, Maisie, standing just behind her. Maisies face was bloodless, her knuckles white.

My mother had no idea. I was never coming home.

It was Maisie who had shown my private texts with Wayne to Meredith in the first place. She knew exactly how to trigger our mother's obsessive control, deliberately painting Wayne as a dangerous predator to turn Meredith against him.

And Oakhaven? That was Maisie's recommendation, too.

Beside her, Wayne noticed her pale face and asked if she was alright. Maisie forced a brittle smile, whispering that she was just nervous, and pulled him toward the dressing room.

Meredith beamed, waving them off. "Go on, you two. No time for flirting now. Get changed."

The moment the heavy dressing room door clicked shut, Maisie grabbed Waynes sleeve, her voice trembling.

"Wayne... do you still love my sister?"

The air in the room instantly turned to ice.

I stood right beside them, staring at Wayne, my heart aching with a familiar, ghostly longing.

We had loved each other since high school. Six years of shared dreams, secret notes, and promises of a future.

But Wayne didn't answer. He just let out a dry, humorless chuckle.

"Why are you asking me that today, Maisie? Its our wedding. Lets not ruin it with dead weight."

But his hands were shaking, and on his wrist, he still wore the cheap leather watch I had bought him for his eighteenth birthday.

"I need to know, Wayne!" Maisie demanded, her grip tightening on his jacket.

Cornered, the frustration in Wayne's chest finally boiled over into bitter resentment.

"No! I don't love her!" he spat. "After everything I gave her, how could she just discard me like trash? Six years, Maisie! And she walked away without a single word. She didn't even show up when I was dying in that hospital bed. She just sent a text calling me a pathetic loser and vanished. Why would I still love someone like that?"

A look of smug triumph flashed across Maisie's face, and she threw her arms around his neck, holding him tight.