The Epilogue:

Magnus stormed into his room, slamming the door shut and glancing around as if he was searching for his patience as it ran away and hid from him. His heart raced and ached painfully, seeming to fuel the aggressive behaviour as he stared into space for a moment before losing his temper. He grabbed the closet thing to him, throwing it across the room before grabbing the next thing, then a painting on the wall and tugging it down to break it. He snatched the sheets from his bed and threw them behind him, flipping the mattress before throwing the bedside lamp against the wall and heard it smash.

He moved over to his desk next as his mind moved at hyper speed, ranting over and over again about how his parents picked his girlfriend over him, how she had chosen them over him, how she had kept such a giant secret from him and had broken his trust. He was furious, and it showed as he snatched his laptop from his desk and threw it against the wall, flipping over the desk next before picking up the mug Alice had given him during spring break and throwing it at the wall too. "FUCK!" he shouted, seeming to lash out as a strange painful sensation ripped through his chest.

He stopped, breathing heavily as he stared at the broken mug, the crashing sound seeming to have broken through the blind rage. "Shit." he breathed, seeing all the little broken pieces and knowing even if he sat there for hours it wouldn't look right if he tried to fix it. "Fucking- shit." he spat, snapping his palms to his face as he felt a burning in his eyes. He knew what the sensation was, and tried to push it down or shove it away from him but it clutched at his throat tightly, digging its nails into his eyes so they stung so intently that he did nothing but stand very still for a few moments.

A minute or so had passed when Magnus decided to move towards his closet. He grabbed a suitcase and began shoving things inside it from the colour coordinated rails, his heart still pulsing angrily inside his chest before he went into his bathroom and snatched up his essentials. He booked an Uber in the midst of the chaos, then was on the phone to the airline company to change his flight to the next one. "I really don't care about the price, can you do it or not?" He snapped down the phone, zipping his bags shut before he walked back out into his bedroom and stared at the mess he'd made for a few seconds.

He heard a faint commotion and walked over to the window after hanging up, hearing the airline representative say that the earliest flight they could get him on to England would be in the morning, which he agreed to.. Magnus stared outside, seeing Julia excitedly clapping then hugging Alice suddenly as his father stood to one side, waiting to shake Alice's hand although his expression was neutral. His chest seemed to ache even more, and his expression contorted angrily before he tore himself away and refused to look or be here any longer.

He made it downstairs without bumping into anyone, brushing past his dogs who gathered around him curiously as he snatched open the front door and stood outside, waiting for the Uber to arrive... which it did, about five minutes later.

Magnus left without another word to Alice or his parents... and had no intention of speaking with them any time soon as the Uber drove away from the property and the reflection of it in the mirror got smaller and smaller... he felt nothing, and didn't even bother to look around to watch it vanish out of sight as the Uber turned round a bend...

~

... After Alice had calmed down, having spoken with Julia and Hans about her position, essentially telling her she'd be the poster girl for the company, appearing in commercials and in campaign shoots so that people would associate her with the brand from the very beginning. It wasn't much, but it excited her that she would be getting paid for it although the price had been discussed and agreed on with her father but she was assured she'd be very happy with it.

She wandered back upstairs; taking in a deep breath to speak with Magnus and explain herself and her decision, and that she wasn't taking what he saw as his position or replacing him at all. She wanted to stay with him, and continue to be in a relationship even though she was upset at the way he handled it all... she was prepared to talk or even shout it out until it was resolved but as she went to knock on his bedroom door, it opened... revealing the carnage left behind from his temper.

Alice's lips parted in shock as she walked in, seeing the mess and growing a little worried. He'd really lost his temper, and it showed in the way things had been thrown with such force at the wall they left marks or dents. "Magnus?" She asked after a few seconds, wandering if she should give him a couple hours to calm down or just speak with him now. There was a lot she felt they needed to talk about, and ran through it in her mind as she walked through his room, stepping over things and checking the bathroom to see if he was in there.

Which he wasn't.

She cleaned up the mess as best she could, avoiding the broken glass from the lamp and the shards from his laptop as she threw it away... only to then spot the broken mug, feeling her eyes start to water again but it could be easily replaced. It was only a mug, she told herself although she liked how he'd kept things in it on his desk, like pens and rulers for his assignments.

It didn't take her long to put things back in place before she wandered about the mansion looking for him... checking the gym, then the cinema room, the library then the study. She checked the spare rooms and then found herself back in his room hoping he'd appear at the door and want to talk... but deep down she somehow knew he wasn't here. Since her thoughts changed from, maybe he went out for a drink or to walk it off. Maybe he needed to blow off some steam then he'd be back.

Right?

She tried to call him after a couple of hours, still feeling immensely attached to him and felt physical pain when he wouldn't return the call or answer the text. She skipped dinner and waited in his room still, watching the hours tick by as she scrolled through the photos of them from their vacation and watched an old black and white film on his tv to fill up the background silence...

Alice wished she'd told him as the guilt crept up on her... she wished she could go back a few weeks and sit him down to explain. Maybe then he would've felt less like he'd been singled out or replaced... but even then she remembered pushing the thoughts to one side herself, not wanting to think about it because of Magnus, because she wanted to enjoy their vacation and be in the moment with him and not potentially spoil it.

Days drifted past and she didn't hear from him. She went through waves of sadness and anger like the ocean tides wandering in and wandering out on the shores... Julia and Hans had started to worry the morning after he'd disappeared and had the police round in the evening to put a report together. Alice felt strange as they had asked her questions about him and their relationship, asking if anything had gone wrong or if there was any reason for him to just disappear.

Alice was honest, as honest as she could be, and she could see from the looks on the officer's faces that they were judging her subtly. She had only told them half the truth, because she knew if she told them everything she'd have to include how he believed that she had been using him for her stone cold revenge on the trio who caused her the most hell since the start of that year. She didn't feel bad for them, she felt no remorse, no guilt, no shame, nothing. She felt happy the three of them were gone... and that they had paid for their crimes now with the ultimate punishment. The thought of them dying didn't phase her at all. Not like it had phased Trey or Charlie... or even Magnus, so she assumed now. So she'd had to leave out so much of the story that it did make her seem like the villain. And if it was like that she would have agreed, but it frustrated her that she could explain that she had her reasons.

The officers concluded their report as they sat opposite her in the lavish living room of the Johnson Mansion, and Alice stared into the distance... wondering what if something bad had happened to Magnus... What if he'd felt drastic and hurt himself? What if he'd been in an fatal accident somewhere and she had no idea? Anything could've happened to him. She knew that. Would the last time they'd have spoken been that argument? She was frustrated he didn't respond to any of her messages, none of them even looked like they were being delivered let alone read. The idea of never seeing him again genuinely worried her sick for... a while.

Weeks passed and neither Julia, Hans or Alice heard anything. There had been complete radio silence, and the murmurs that Magnus Johnson had up and vanished seemed to spread through Summerland like wild fire. Cards and flowers started arriving at the house, from parents whose children had gone missing too... it put Alice on edge as she saw the arrangements in the kitchen, knowing that the reason for their children going missing had gone missing himself, it had somehow gone full circle and she couldn't even bare to look at them. All of them wanted to bring Julia into the circle and comfort her and relate to her, since the police had been so busy dealing with the rest of the chaos they hadn't gotten to Magnus's case yet... Julia was so worried she had started wearing less and less make up, she didn't leave the house. She waited for the phone to ring then she'd jump at it when it did, hoping for news.

He'd just gone. And none of them could seem to process it, like it wasn't real. One moment he was there, the next he wasn't. And they'd been left grasping at the air hoping he'd suddenly reappear and let them sort this out but... nothing. His social media vanished too, and when alice had gone to check it she'd spent an hour refreshing her phone, turning it off, turning it on, finding the WiFi router to figure out if there was a problem with the internet but there wasn't. All their social media's started vanishing, Charlie's went next, then Trey's... Juniper's, Lucy's and Noah's too. Alice thought she was going insane, and began ignoring the messages she was getting asking if she was okay.

Another couple of days passed and Alice had started to visibly lose weight. Her heart break seemed to happen slowly and violently... like an invisible virus creeping throughout her body, infecting her bloodstream, her sleeping patterns, and finally, her appetite. He was being swiped from her fingers repeatedly, and every single time her heart would tear itself up and sink to the bottom of her stomach.

Where was he? Why did he cut her off? Why was he doing this? 

When the knock on the door finally came Alice and Julia were deathly silent as Hans showed the police officers into the kitchen to speak with all of them. "First of all we'd like to apologise for how long this took." One of them said as Alice felt her heart pulsing in her throat. "Um, we won't keep you long so we'll just get straight to the point. We were able to track a credit card payment from Magnus's account that happened just over a month and a half ago, he booked a flight to, uh, the United Kingdom on the exact day that you mentioned he up and disappeared... From there we weren't able to find much else, the number you gave us was discontinued, the bank accounts were emptied... um... that's about it. From since the flight we didn't find much else. I'm sorry."

The silence that lingered evidently made the officers uncomfortable. "He's... in England?" Hans asked, as both himself and Julia realised Magnus knew that they would evidentially find out where he'd gone and didn't care. He knew how not to be tracked, and probably opened up a new account that his mother didn't have access to. He'd cut ties... cut them off. Just like that, but wanted to let them know that he had by being just about reachable by staying in the house they'd bought for him.

Alice suddenly walked off, leaving the kitchen as she felt her eyes watering heavily. Her bottom lip trembled as she walked quickly to the home gym, feeling her whole body beginning to tense and wind itself up with a sudden urge to release her frustration. This whole time he'd been in England, probably setting up his new house for uni and making his new friends, starting his new life... whilst she sat in his room and cried over his sweatshirts hoping he'd answer her text.

She felt horrible, horrible about everything she'd decided on even when her mind tried to tell her different. She'd been thrown down a hole and buried alive, she'd been tormented by Lucy and Juniper for getting close to Magnus, throwing pigs blood all over her kitchen floor, then running over her dog. She'd had a girl murdered in her house, then was almost run her over for trying to distance herself from the group. She'd been stalked by Noah, prayed upon, spied on, then used as the blueprint for a chain of murders he committed. All those pictures he collected then spread over the internet just so Magnus could take the spotlight off of him... and then finally when she'd had enough, this behaviour being one that her own boyfriend encouraged, even praised... she was the one that ended up being the villain.

Her heart was in her ears as Alice pulled on the boxing gloves, feeling her whole face seeming to tremble as she held back the urge to scream out a sob and walked over to the punching bag, repeatedly hitting it with as much force as she could as tears streamed down her cheeks.

She continued to punch the sandbag, feeling her arm beginning to ache so she switched, then felt her temper run away from her as a vision blurred. She kicked it next, throwing her fists at it then kicking it again until her muscles screamed for her to stop. She sat back on the mat and lay on her back, looking up at the ceiling as she breathed heavily and let the tears stream from her face and down to her ears.

She wasn't sure how long she lay there, and didn't notice Julia step in to place a mug of tea next to her before leaving... She had her own demons to deal with, and had shut herself away in her office to find some way to get in contact with her son, that was now proving to be very difficult.

Eventually Alice's emotions seemed to quieten... her face now a little blank. She sat up, stared vacantly for a moment before she sluggishly took herself upstairs to sleep since the mansion had now gone quiet and the main lights were off, excusing a few here and there. She slept for a while, dreaming of her reflection just calmly looking back at her, as if it had nothing to say since everything it did want to say was obvious...

... When the day finally came for Alice to board a flight to Switzerland and start her new life, she had almost completely changed. She was smiling again, she was chatty, and excited to leave, she barely blinked twice as Peter and Herself left Summerland together to drive to Vancouver to catch their flight.

Peter glanced over at her several times, wondering what was travelling through her mind as she stared ahead with a faint smile playing on her lips. It didn't move, her expression didn't relax, even when she believed no one was watching... there was something so eerie about it that Peter couldn't place his finger on, but he decided to leave her alone, knowing the chaos that had probably gone on inside her mind was bound to change her somehow.

Maybe Alice was fine, and maybe she wasn't. Maybe something about Alice Murphy had finally clicked into place and maybe it hadn't. But behind the happy smile, even though it was small as she looked out over the clouds as the plane cruised through the air, was a void so dark, so bottomless, that even Alice was afraid to acknowledge it now.

She'd opened that door, she'd even kicked it down in a desperate attempt to rid herself of the heartbreak... but what she found behind it had scared her. So much so that the happy smile was becoming a defence and a reminder that if she stopped smiling... what would come next...

What would come next?

~ Fin. ~