The strange pattern had actually started about three weeks earlier. Every morning after Roland spent the night home, I woke feeling unusually groggy and confused, sometimes finding my pajamas twisted, or my body positioned in some way I genuinely couldn’t remember falling asleep in.
At first, I’d blamed simple stress. Roland had been traveling frequently for his medical-equipment sales job, while I was spending long hours finishing an important project for my own graphic design business. Then my sister Marnie called one Tuesday morning. “Paloma, are you okay? You sounded genuinely strange last night, when we talked. Like you were drunk or something, but you insisted you hadn’t been drinking.”
I had absolutely no memory of speaking with her at all. The very last thing I remembered from the previous evening was drinking the tea Roland had made me, then heading to bed.
After that particular call, I started watching carefully for patterns. The heavy, unnatural sleep only happened when Roland was actually home; whenever he traveled, I slept normally and woke feeling genuinely refreshed. Then I noticed small, unexplained marks appearing on my arms and legs. When I mentioned them, Roland acted genuinely concerned and suggested I might be sleepwalking, even offering to take me to see a doctor about it.
For a while, his apparent concern made me feel genuinely guilty for suspecting him at all. But I couldn’t ignore what my own body kept telling me, so I began quietly testing my own theory instead.
On evenings when I told him I was too full for tea, I slept entirely normally. Whenever I actually drank it, I woke disoriented and exhausted. And one night, when I pretended having a headache and went to bed early without drinking anything at all, Roland spent more than an hour downstairs, before finally coming up looking strangely agitated.
That was precisely when I became certain my own husband was secretly sedating me. What I still genuinely didn’t understand was why, and that particular unanswered question frightened me enough that I knew I genuinely had to catch him in the act.
So that night, I’d pretended drinking the tea, and waited.
Roland approached the bed and looked down at me, while I fought every single instinct telling me to move. He reached into the black bag, removed a small camera, and positioned it on the dresser, aimed directly at the bed. A tiny red light appeared. He was recording me.
Then he opened a notebook and studied several pages carefully, as though following precise 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, sealing the fabric inside a plastic bag afterward.
I wanted desperately to scream. I stayed completely limp instead. Roland began photographing me from different angles, repositioning my arm, adjusting my head, moving my clothing before taking additional pictures. Everything about his movements was disturbingly methodical, as though he’d practiced extensively, learning exactly how to manipulate someone without ever waking them.
Then his phone buzzed. Roland read the message and smiled. A second message arrived, followed quickly by another. He took several new photographs of me and immediately sent them off to whoever was actually communicating with him.
That was exactly when the truth became considerably more terrifying still. My own husband genuinely wasn’t doing any of this entirely alone.
