In Honors English class in my junior year of high school, we were instructed to write a Gothic story. It's honestly one of my favorite things I have ever written, even though I never fully finished the story.

But since we are able to publish our own works of fiction now, I thought that this would be the perfect time and place to share it. I got inspiration for this piece from "The Immortals" series by Alyson Noël, which I was actually reading at the time I wrote this during high school. From what I remember, it's a good series, so you should definitely check it out!

This doesn't have a title unfortunately, but here it is (along with many, many edits):

As Andrea was walking home from school, she looked up into the sky and embraced the sunlight. It was a nice day in San Francisco, so she decided that she would go and take the long way home.

She approached her neighborhood and continued to walk, her headphones in her ear. Passing by an older house, she glanced up at it. She suddenly felt like she had been in there before. The presence of the house seemed gloomy and a bit creepy. The grass around the house was dried out. There were dead vines that had crawled up all the sides of it, the color of them green-grey instead of a lush green. The white paint that was once bright was now faded and worn to gray. The shutters of the window were either crooked or missing and the windows broken. There was only emptiness that could be seen through them and nothing else. The chair-swing squeaked from the slight breeze.

Andrea suddenly had what seemed like a flash of memory and saw herself inside the house. She was making her way upstairs and opened the door that had light peeking through it. She saw herself push it open gently, looking around the room, then suddenly saw a man’s blood-soaked body on the ground. Andrea frantically stepped away and ran out of the room and came back to reality.

“What the heck was that?” Andrea asked herself as she put a palm to her head. She took one last look at the house and ran the rest of the way home.

“I’m home,” Andrea announced when she walked into her house, closing the door behind her.

“Hey honey, there’s someone here to see you,” her mom responded from the kitchen.

Andrea furrowed her eyebrows in confusion as she dropped her brown leather messenger bag at the stairs and walked into the kitchen where she saw her mom and a stranger sitting across from each other at the dining room table.

“Can I help you?” she asked as she walked in, crossing her arms over her chest. Andrea didn’t like strangers.

Her mom gave her a look.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized flatly. “But, who are you? I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

The stranger looked at her with an apologetic smile, and suddenly he seemed familiar to her in a way. She didn’t really know how, but there was something about his features. His dark brown hair was curly, a small curl falling just above his bright, piercing blue-green eyes. His golden brown skin glowed in the sunlight that hit his high cheekbones. He flashed a white smile before answering. “I’m Rome.” He introduced himself, extending a hand.

“Rome?” Andrea almost laughed. “Like Rome, Italy?”

He chuckled. “Yes, like the city of Rome.”

Andrea walked over to the table and took the seat across from him. “So, what are you doing here?” she asked. “Like I said: I don’t think we’ve ever met before.”

“Well, we go to the same school. I just transferred,” Rome explained. “Someone told me that you could show me around.”

“Okay…” Andrea was a little freaked out. “So, how did you find out where I live?” she asked, “and who told you to come find me?”

“I don’t remember exactly who it was who told me, but they drew me this,” Rome responded as he got out a piece of ripped notebook paper out of his jacket pocket and placed it on the dining table. It was a basic map that lead whomever read it to Andrea’s house. “That’s how I got here.”

“Well, I’d be happy to show you around the school, Rome.” Andrea stated as she got up from the dining table, officially creeped out. “But I’ve got a lot of homework to do.”

Rome arose from the table as well and made his way to the door, Andrea following to see him out. “Thank you; and I’m sorry that I intruded like this on you," he said going out of the door.

“You’re welcome. See you later," she said awkwardly and shut the door.

For the next couple of months, Andrea kept getting flashes of memories, the flashes getting clearer and clearer. But they were always jumbled and random. She also never found out what happened to the body she “found” in her first flash. She took the long way home almost every day, going into the house and looking around inside -- everything getting more and more familiar. She was even seeing furniture that wasn’t there. Andrea also spent a lot more time with Rome about a week or so after they met. He seemed like a cool guy, even though her first impression of him wasn't all that great. He was interested in many of Andrea’s favorite things, but there were some differences here and there, so they were always teasing each other about those differences. But even with all the time they spent together, she always felt like there was something mysterious and ominous about Rome. He never talked about his family, and whenever she went to his house, there was never anybody home. Rome always gave the excuse that his parents were on a business trip. Along with the flashes of memory, Andrea also started having nightmares. The nightmares were so vivid and real that she would wake up in the middle of the night with a thin coat of sweat all over her body. She didn’t know why all of this was happening to her, but she really wanted to figure it out. She felt that there was only one way to do it -- by looking for clues within that house. But one day, as she and Rome were walking into the abandoned house on their way home from school, Rome hesitantly told her something – something that surprised her.

“Andrea, I know why you’re getting all these…flashes. They’re actually flashbacks," he said as they walked inside.

“They’re not flashbacks, Rome,” she replied as she looked around. “They’re from a different era, and I'm pretty sure I'm not from it.”

“Yes, they are," he stated.

“What are you talking about?” Andrea looked back at him, puzzled.

“It’s your past life.”

“My past life?” she repeated.

“It’s about us.”

Andrea took a big step away from Rome, freaked out. “Us?”

“Yeah, it was one of our past lives in the 20s,” he explained nonchalantly. “That was the last time we were together.” He came closer to her, Andrea backing away even more.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “What exactly happened? What am I saying? What is going on here? What do you mean by ‘us’? There is no ‘us,’” Andrea started to get anxious, questions coming into her mind rapidly.

“You don’t remember?” Rome asked coming toward her, putting his hands on her shoulders, his expression growing worried.

Now Andrea was really freaked out. Rome had officially lost it.

“Rome, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I’m going home. This was a bad idea," she said as she made her way out and onto the sidewalk, running toward her house.

“Andrea!” she heard Rome call out to her. But that only caused her to pick up her pace.

As she was running, she tripped over something and fell to the ground. Andrea looked up to see Rome approaching her. She scooted away as he came closer. But she came to a dead end of a house. Rome’s bright blue-green eyes, including the whites of them, had turned into an ominous pitch black. The sky suddenly became dark and gray along with becoming windy. He stepped toward her and put a hand on her cheek, grinning at her as he tilted her chin up to look towards him.

“I want you to do something for me,” his tone darker than it usually was.

All of a sudden, Andrea felt a sensation go throughout her body, like pins and needles. Rome’s pitch black eyes soon became soothing to Andrea and she found herself falling into them.

“Anything," she grinned, her eyes turning pitch black as well.

To Be Continued...

Maybe?