He navigated our darkened bedroom wearing latex gloves and toting a small black bag I had never laid eyes on before, fully convinced that I was fast asleep. Three hours earlier, Dererick had handed me my usual mug of chamomile tea.
He had brewed the exact same beverage for me every single night for the past month, but on this occasion, right after he went to brush his teeth, I emptied it down the bathroom sink, rinsed out the cup, climbed back into bed, and feigned sleep.
Watching him now verified the exact dread I had been too terrified to accept. Whatever substance Dererick had been slipping into that tea was meant to knock me out cold, and the calm assurance in his movements implied this wasn’t his first time carrying out acts while I was unconscious.
The strange pattern had first emerged roughly three weeks prior. Every morning following a night when Dererick stayed home, I woke up feeling uncommonly groggy and disoriented, sometimes with my pajamas twisted or my limbs positioned in ways I couldn’t recall settling into. At first, I chalked it up to stress. Dererick had been traveling constantly for his medical-supply sales job, while I was logging grueling hours wrapping up a major project for my graphic design company.
Then my sister Clare phoned one Tuesday morning. “Anna, are you alright? You sounded really off last night when we talked. Like you were drunk or something, but you mentioned you hadn’t been drinking.” I had zero recollection of speaking with her. The last thing etched in my memory from the prior evening was sipping the tea Dererick had prepared and turning in for the night.
Following that, I began tracking patterns. The heavy, unnatural slumber occurred exclusively when Dererick was present; anytime he was away on trips, I slept normally and woke feeling refreshed. Soon after, I noticed minor, unexplained bruises on my arms and legs. When I brought them up, Dererick displayed genuine concern, suggesting I might be sleepwalking and even offering to book a doctor’s appointment. For a time, his worry guilted me into second-guessing my suspicions. Yet I couldn’t dismiss the signals my own body was sending, so I quietly set about testing my theory.
On evenings when I told him I felt too full for tea, I slept soundly. Whenever I consumed it, I woke up groggy and drained. On one particular night when I faked a headache and retired early without drinking anything, Dererick spent over an hour downstairs before finally coming to bed looking noticeably restless. That was the moment I became certain my husband was secretly drugging me. What I still failed to understand was why, and that unresolved mystery frightened me enough to know I had to catch him in the act. Thus, on this particular night, I pretended to drink the tea and waited. Dererick approached the mattress and stared down at me while I fought every natural instinct telling me to flinch. He reached into the black bag, pulled out a compact camera, and set it on top of the dresser, pointing straight at the bed.
A faint red light flickered on. He was filming me. Next, he uncoiled a notebook and poured over several pages as though following a strict set of instructions. Dipping his hand back into the bag, he retrieved a pair of scissors and carefully snipped a tiny fragment from the hem of my pajama top before sealing the scrap inside a plastic pouch. I desperately wanted to scream, but I forced my limbs to stay entirely limp. Dererick started photographing me from multiple angles, repositioning my arm, adjusting my head, and shifting my clothing before snapping more pictures. Every movement he made was chillingly methodical, as though he had rehearsed precisely how to manipulate a sleeping person without waking them. Suddenly, his phone vibrated. Dererick glanced at the screen and smiled. A second notification popped up, followed by another. He took several fresh photos of me and immediately transmitted them to whoever was messaging him. That was when the horrifying reality truly set in. My husband was not acting alone.
Part 2: The Discovery
Dererick carried on working as if I were nothing more than an inanimate object. He opened his laptop beside the bed, transferred the pictures he had just captured, and appeared to upload them somewhere online while repeatedly checking the notes in his hands. His phone buzzed several more times, and each new text seemed to contain explicit directions. At one stage, he snapped additional photos and forwarded them instantly, confirming my worst fear that an unseen third party was watching and directing at least a portion of his actions. Following that, Dererick extracted a small cotton swab from his black bag and collected samples from various spots on my skin. He meticulously sealed each one inside a plastic envelope with the same clinical precision he applied to everything else. At last, he packed away the camera, notebook, and computer. Before heading out, he leaned down and kissed my forehead with the exact same tenderness he routinely showed me. “Sweet dreams, Anna.” Hearing that soft voice after everything I had just witnessed was almost too much to bear. A few minutes later, the front door clicked shut, and I heard Dererick’s car pull out of the driveway just shy of three in the morning. Only then did I let myself tremble. My husband hadn’t merely been drugging me in secret. He had photographed me, rearranged my body, gathered biological samples, documented everything meticulously, and coordinated with outside accomplices while doing it.
Dererick had told me he was heading out for a three-day business trip to Chicago, meaning I had a tightly restricted window to figure out what was truly happening. I waited another ten minutes before sliding out of bed to hunt down the personal laptop he kept separate from his work computer. I eventually located a locked briefcase stashed beneath our bed. The passcode was our wedding anniversary, and when the latch snapped open, a sickening wave of relief and dread washed over me. The computer housed hundreds of image files sorted neatly into folders by date. Some stretched back eight months, long before I had noticed anything amiss, but what terrified me most was spotting folders labeled with other women’s names. Jennifer. Patricia. Michelle. There were at least half a dozen victims. I clicked open Jennifer’s directory and found pictures mirroring the ones Dererick had taken of me. Later files, however, depicted her looking progressively weaker and sickly, while Patricia and Michelle’s folders displayed that exact same alarming decline. Then I stumbled upon a document titled “Client Communications.” It laid bare the fact that Dererick was running a criminal enterprise where paying patrons commissioned photographs and specific staged scenarios involving women whose health steadily deteriorated. Different packages carried different price tags, and the message logs displayed buyers issuing precise commands regarding what they wanted Dererick to document. I kept digging until I located an email from a mere two days prior that referenced me by name. A client had inquired about something designated as “Graduation Services,” and Dererick’s reply sent a violent shiver through my hands. He had typed that I was “almost ready” and that he would “kick off the final phase soon.” I didn’t fully grasp what those terms implied, but after viewing the later photos of the other women, I knew I couldn’t gamble on waiting to find out. I copied every file I could onto a flash drive, then scoured the bedroom until I unearthed Dererick’s hidden notebook tucked inside his sock drawer. The pages logged chemical substances, dosages, my physical reactions, and client requests. More recent entries noted buyers asking about “permanent access,” alongside a note from Dererick stating that I was growing suspicious and he might need to “accelerate the timeline.” That was all the proof I needed. Whatever Dererick had lined up for his “final phase,” I was convinced my life was in immediate peril. I photographed every single page, put everything back precisely where I found it, and forced my mind to think clearly. Dererick could never find out that I had uncovered his dark secret.