“I Love You

**”**

This story happened to me twice. I don’t claim it’s unique, and I want to make that clear from the start.

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### Part One, Student Years

In the 2000s, I studied at the only higher education institution in our small provincial town. Being a person of modest means, I couldn’t afford a separate place to live. So I stayed in a dormitory. Picture it: the only nine-story building in the entire town, four sections with eight rooms on each floor, and a constant turnover of residents every year. Oh, how many interesting stories the students themselves told about that place!

My roommate and I shared one room. He regularly wandered off somewhere in the evenings—visiting acquaintances or just walking the streets with friends. I, on the other hand, usually stayed in. Since we each had our own keys, there was no need to wait up for him, and I went to bed alone without worrying that I’d have to jump out of bed in the middle of the night to let him in.

It was the same that evening. I had dinner, watched some TV, rearranged my notebooks with lecture notes, and went to sleep. I woke up unexpectedly. I never wake up at night without reason; I sleep so deeply that even an atomic explosion wouldn’t rouse me. And yet there I was, wide awake at midnight.

I immediately understood what had woken me: someone was walking down the corridor toward our room. I dismissed the first thought—that it was my roommate—right away. The footsteps were heavy, booming, while my roommate was short and of average build.

The sounds came closer to the door. “Well, he definitely won’t come in—he doesn’t have the keys,” I thought. And then the door began to open. There was no sound of a key turning, but the door opened—that’s a fact. The horror of realizing that someone unknown, clearly large and strongly built, had easily entered the room made me literally press myself into the bed.

The footsteps sounded again. He was approaching my bed. There was nowhere to run. Screaming was useless—everyone was long asleep. Pray? Every prayer I had ever heard simply flew out of my head. All that remained was an overwhelming sense of terror.

He was standing next to me; I could hear his heavy breathing. My body was paralyzed. Pull the blanket off my head to at least see who had come for my soul? And then, not giving me time to finish the thought, чужие hands grabbed my neck and began to choke me. No—not choke, but press me into the bed with inhuman strength. In the complete silence, I could hear only his heavy breathing and the creaking of the bed frame bending under the strain. One thought pounded in my head: “Help!”—but not even a rasp escaped my lips.

And then, at the edge of consciousness, a phrase flared up: “I love you.” What? A joke? The delirium of a dying mind? I could no longer breathe; my lungs burned like fire; the weight of the hands crushing me was unbearable. But the phrase kept resurfacing: “I love you.” I tried to say it, but my lips treacherously refused to move. I repeated it again and again, without result. My mind was empty except for that single thought. Somehow I understood that this was the very phrase after which everything would stop.

Gathering all my strength, all my desperation, all the horror I had endured, I rasped desperately, “I love you.” And everything vanished—the hands, the weight, the breathing, the feeling of a чужое presence nearby. My body began to come back to life. I jumped out of bed and rushed to the light switch. Turning on the light, I saw the locked door and my roommate sleeping peacefully.

For the rest of the night—almost four hours—I sat trembling in the corner of the room with a knife in one hand and a box of matches in the other. My roommate, waking in the morning, was quite surprised by the sight but was satisfied with my explanation about a terrible nightmare. Nothing like that ever happened to me again in that room, and the following year I moved to another section, farther from that place.

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### Part Two, Everyday Life

After the incident described above, nothing supernatural ever happened to me again, and without much thought I chalked it up to my imagination and/or an unfortunate dinner.

After graduating, not eager to spend a year serving the Motherland (proud defenders of the Fatherland, forgive me), I got a job at a rural school. I was even given housing, as was customary for a young specialist. Incidentally, the house had been built on the site of an old church and cemetery destroyed during Soviet times. Moreover, in my half of the building, some man had hanged himself—the details of that fascinating story I never managed to learn. “Well, he hanged himself and that’s that,” the locals would say. “What’s the big deal?” But I learned about all the interesting aspects of my home much later than the events described below.

So there I was: young, inexperienced, and, due to my unsociable nature, single. I received a huge living space for my own use. After moving in my few belongings, I settled in as comfortably as possible and began to live and teach the local children. And then it all happened again.

Another ordinary evening—sat at the computer for a while, read a book, completed my usual nighttime routine. The sun hadn’t even fully set, and I was already in the arms of Morpheus. I woke up in the middle of the night from a creaking sound. The house was old; creaks were common, and I was used to them. So what was wrong?

There it was: the creak came again. That’s how floorboards sound when someone steps on them, I recalled. They were footsteps. Heavy, damn it—the very same footsteps. History was repeating itself, and again I could do nothing. My body was paralyzed with fear.

This time I had no blanket over me, and through my half-closed eyelids I could see something large and dark approaching my bed. I would recognize his heavy breathing even in a crowded hall. And again the hands, again the weight on my neck, the inability to breathe. Do you think it’s amusing? It’s terrifying—unbelievably terrifying—to realize you have no control over your body, and this creature is once again trying to kill you—and quite successfully, I might add.

But the thing overlooked one detail—I remembered. I remembered how last time, suffocating and dying, I had recalled a single phrase: “I love you.” I had no desire to die in the prime of my life, and this creature clearly had no intention of stopping its attempt to take it. Anger—at it and at myself—cleared my head. And, miracle of miracles, I managed to move. Somehow drawing in a breath of air, I whispered the saving phrase, and again everything ceased. I had no strength left to get up or do anything; I simply blacked out.

Five or six years have passed. Nothing unusual has happened to me since. But you know, I no longer want to move anywhere, and I never stay overnight at friends’ houses. Sometimes they’re offended, but I feel calmer at home. The second time, whatever or whoever that creature was, it will not come into this house. Of that I am absolutely certain.

The only thing that troubles me is that very phrase: “I love you.” Why that one? On the brink between life and death, it was that phrase that saved me. Every night before sleep, I repeat it like a mantra. And I know that everything will be fine.

I love you. Good night.