At 2:17 a.m., I lay perfectly still beside my husband, Dererick, forcing myself to breathe slowly while watching him through barely opened eyes. He moved through 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 handed me my usual cup of chamomile tea. He had prepared the same drink for me every night for the past month, but this time, 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 terrified to believe. Whatever Dererick had been putting in that tea was supposed to keep me unconscious, and the confidence with which he moved suggested this wasn’t the first time he had done something while I slept.

The strange pattern had started about three weeks earlier. Every morning after Dererick spent the night at home, I woke feeling unusually groggy and confused, sometimes with my pajamas twisted or my body in a position I couldn’t remember falling asleep in.

At first, I blamed stress. Dererick had been traveling frequently for his medical-equipment sales job, while I was spending long hours finishing 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 with her. The last thing I remembered from the previous evening was drinking the tea Dererick made for me and going to bed.

After that, I started watching for patterns. The heavy, unnatural sleep happened only when Dererick was home; whenever he traveled, I slept normally and woke feeling refreshed.

Then I noticed 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 concern made me feel guilty for suspecting him. But I couldn’t ignore what my own body was telling me, so I began quietly testing my theory.

On evenings when I told him I was too full for tea, I slept normally. Whenever I drank it, I woke disoriented and exhausted, and one night when I pretended to have a headache and went to bed early without drinking anything, Dererick spent more than an hour downstairs before finally coming to bed looking strangely agitated.

That was when I became certain my husband was secretly sedating me. What I still didn’t understand was why, and that unanswered question frightened me enough that I knew I had to catch him.

So that night, I pretended to drink the tea and waited.

Dererick approached the bed and looked down at me while I fought every instinct telling me to move. He reached into the black bag, removed a small camera, and positioned it on the dresser facing the bed.

A tiny red light appeared. He was recording me.

Then he opened a notebook and studied several pages as though following instructions. When he reached into the bag again, he pulled out a pair of scissors and carefully cut a small piece from the hem of my pajama top before sealing the fabric inside a plastic bag.

I wanted to scream, but I stayed completely limp.

Dererick began photographing me from different angles, repositioning my arm, adjusting my head, and moving my clothing before taking more pictures. Everything about his movements was disturbingly methodical, as though he had practiced exactly how to manipulate someone without waking them.

Then his phone buzzed. Dererick read the message and smiled.

A second message arrived, followed by another. He took several new photographs of me and immediately sent them to whoever was communicating with him.

That was when the truth became even more terrifying.

My husband wasn’t doing this alone.

PART 2: I Wasn’t His Only Victim

Dererick continued working as though I were nothing more than an unconscious object. He opened his laptop beside the bed, transferred the photographs he had taken, and appeared to upload them somewhere while repeatedly checking the notebook in his hands.

His phone buzzed several more times, and each new message seemed to contain instructions. At one point, he took additional photographs and immediately sent them, confirming my worst suspicion that someone else was watching and directing at least part of what he was doing.

Then Dererick removed a small swab from his black bag and collected samples from several places on my skin. He carefully sealed each one inside a plastic bag with the same clinical precision he used for everything else.

Finally, he packed away the camera, notebook, and laptop. Before leaving, he leaned over and kissed my forehead with the same tenderness he normally showed me.

“Sweet dreams, Anna.”

Hearing that gentle voice after what I had witnessed was almost unbearable. A few minutes later, the front door quietly closed, and I heard Dererick’s car leave the driveway shortly before three in the morning.

Only then did I allow myself to shake.

My husband hadn’t merely been secretly sedating me. He had photographed me, repositioned me, collected samples, documented everything, and communicated with other people while doing it.

Dererick had told me he was leaving for a three-day business trip to Chicago, so I knew I had a limited opportunity to discover what was happening. I waited another ten minutes before getting out of bed and searching for the personal laptop he kept separate from the computer he used for work.

I eventually found a locked briefcase beneath our bed. The combination was our anniversary, and when the lock clicked open, I felt a sickening mixture of relief and dread.

The laptop contained hundreds of photographs arranged in folders by date. Some went back eight months, long before I had noticed anything unusual, but what terrified me most was discovering folders labeled with other women’s names.

Jennifer. Patricia. Michelle.

There were at least six women.

I opened Jennifer’s folder and found photographs resembling the ones Dererick had taken of me. Later images, however, showed her looking increasingly weak and unwell, and Patricia’s and Michelle’s folders revealed the same disturbing progression.

Then I discovered a document labeled “Client Communications.”

It revealed that Dererick had been running a criminal operation in which paying customers requested photographs and specific staged scenarios involving women whose conditions gradually deteriorated. Different services had different prices, and messages showed customers giving instructions about what they wanted Dererick to document.

I kept searching until I found an email from only two days earlier that mentioned me by name. A customer had asked about something called “Graduation Services,” and Dererick’s response made my hands begin trembling.

He had written that I was “almost ready” and that he would “begin the final phase soon.”

I didn’t know exactly what those words meant, but after seeing the later photographs of the other women, I knew I couldn’t afford to wait and discover the answer. I copied everything I could onto a flash drive, then searched the bedroom until I found Dererick’s notebook hidden inside his sock drawer.

The entries documented substances, amounts, my reactions, and customer requests. More recent notes mentioned people asking about “permanent access,” while Dererick had written that I was becoming suspicious and he might need to “accelerate the timeline.”

That was enough.

Whatever Dererick had planned for his “final phase,” I believed my safety was in immediate danger. I photographed every page, returned everything exactly where I had found it, and tried to think clearly.

Dererick couldn’t know that I had discovered his secret.