At 2:17 in the morning, I lay perfectly still beside my husband, Dererick, forcing my breathing to remain slow and even while watching him through barely opened eyes. He moved quietly around our dark bedroom wearing latex gloves and carrying a small black bag I had never seen before, completely convinced that I was unconscious.
Three hours earlier, Dererick had prepared my usual cup of chamomile tea. He had been making the same drink for me every night for nearly a month, but after he went to brush his teeth, I poured it down the bathroom sink, rinsed the cup, climbed into bed, and pretended to fall asleep.
Watching him now confirmed the suspicion I had been afraid to believe. Whatever he had been putting in that tea was clearly intended to keep me unconscious, and the confidence with which he moved through the room suggested this was not the first time he had done something while I slept.
The strange pattern had begun about three weeks earlier. Whenever Dererick spent the night at home, I woke the next morning feeling unusually groggy and disoriented, sometimes finding my pajamas twisted or my body positioned differently from how I remembered falling asleep.
At first, I blamed exhaustion. Dererick had been traveling frequently for his medical-equipment sales job, while I was working long hours to finish an important project for my graphic design business.
Then my sister Clare called one Tuesday morning.
“Anna, are you okay? You sounded really weird last night when we talked. Like you were drunk or something, but you said you hadn’t been drinking.”
I had no memory of speaking to her at all. The last thing I remembered from the previous night was drinking the tea Dererick had made and going to bed.
After that, I started paying closer attention. The unnatural exhaustion happened only when Dererick was home, while on nights he traveled, I slept normally and woke feeling rested.
Then I began noticing small unexplained marks on my arms and legs. When I mentioned them, Dererick acted concerned and suggested that I might be sleepwalking, even offering to take me to a doctor.
For a while, his apparent concern made me feel guilty for suspecting him. But I could no longer ignore the pattern, so I started quietly testing what happened whenever I avoided the tea.
On nights when I told him I was too full to drink it, I woke normally. Whenever I accepted it, I felt exhausted and confused the next morning, and one night when I claimed to have a headache and went straight to bed without drinking anything, Dererick stayed downstairs for more than an hour before coming to bed visibly irritated.
That was when I became convinced he was secretly sedating me.
I still didn’t understand why.
So that night, I pretended to drink the tea and waited.
Dererick approached the bed and studied my face for several seconds while I fought every instinct telling me to move. Then he reached into the black bag, removed a small camera, and placed it on the dresser facing the bed.
A tiny red light appeared.
He was recording me.
Next, Dererick opened a notebook and studied several pages as though following a set of instructions. He removed a pair of scissors, cut a small piece from the hem of my pajama top, and carefully sealed the fabric inside a plastic bag.
I wanted to sit up and demand an explanation, but I stayed completely still.
He began taking photographs while repositioning my arm and adjusting the way I was lying. Every movement was deliberate and methodical, as though he had practiced exactly how to handle someone without waking them.
Then his phone buzzed. Dererick read the message and smiled.
Another message appeared, followed by a third. He took several more photographs and immediately sent them to whoever was contacting him.
That was when the truth became even more frightening.
My husband was not doing this alone.
Dererick continued moving around the bedroom as though I were nothing more than an unconscious object. He opened his laptop beside the bed, transferred the photographs he had just taken, and appeared to upload them somewhere while repeatedly checking the notebook for instructions.
His phone kept buzzing, and every new message seemed to tell him what to do next. At one point, he took several additional photographs and immediately sent them back, confirming that someone else was actively watching and directing at least part of what was happening.
Then Dererick pulled a small swab from the black bag and collected samples from several areas of my skin. He sealed each one inside a separate plastic bag with the same calm, clinical precision he had used when cutting the fabric from my pajamas.
Eventually, he packed away the camera, notebook, and laptop. Before leaving the bedroom, he leaned down and kissed my forehead with the same tenderness he had shown me countless times throughout our marriage.
“Sweet dreams, Anna.”
Hearing his gentle voice after everything I had just witnessed made my stomach turn. A few minutes later, I heard the front door close quietly, followed by the sound of his car pulling away from the house shortly before three in the morning.
Only then did I allow myself to move.
My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely sit up. Dererick had not only been secretly sedating me; he had photographed me, repositioned my body, collected samples, documented everything, and communicated with other people while doing it.
He had told me earlier that he was leaving for a three-day business trip to Chicago, which meant I had a narrow window to discover what he was involved in. After waiting several more minutes to make sure he wasn’t coming back, I started searching for the personal laptop he kept separate from his work computer.
Eventually, I found a locked briefcase beneath our bed. I tried our anniversary as the combination, and when the lock clicked open, relief and dread hit me at the same time.
The laptop contained hundreds of photographs organized into folders by date. Some of them went back nearly eight months, long before I had begun noticing anything unusual.
Then I saw folders labeled with women’s names.
Jennifer. Patricia. Michelle.
There were at least six women.
I opened Jennifer’s folder and found photographs disturbingly similar to the ones Dererick had taken of me. As the dates progressed, however, she appeared increasingly weak and unwell, while Patricia’s and Michelle’s folders revealed the same frightening pattern.
Then I found a document titled “Client Communications.”
It showed that Dererick had been running an organized criminal operation in which paying customers requested photographs and specific staged scenarios involving women whose condition gradually deteriorated. Different requests carried different prices, and several messages showed customers giving detailed instructions about what they wanted him to document.
I kept searching until I found an email sent only two days earlier that mentioned me by name. One customer had asked about something called “Graduation Services,” and Dererick’s response made my hands start trembling again.
He had written that I was “almost ready.”
He would “begin the final phase soon.”
I had no idea exactly what that meant, but after seeing the later photographs of the other women, I knew waiting to find out could be dangerous. I copied every file I could onto a flash drive, then searched the bedroom until I discovered Dererick’s notebook hidden in his sock drawer.
The entries contained detailed records of substances, amounts, physical reactions, and customer requests. More recent notes mentioned people asking about “permanent access,” and Dererick had written that I was becoming suspicious and he might need to “accelerate the timeline.”
