Disclaimer: characters and places in this story are property of Squaresoft. The title is borrowed from the Stephen King short story of the same name.


ALL THAT YOU LOVE WILL BE CARRIED AWAY

Chapter One: Rufus

Another gloomy day in Junon.

The skies outside the glass wall of his office were stormy and grey, promising rain but never quite delivering it. Everything was a pause at times like this, when the air was still and pressing, and everyone was on edge. People often had short tempers, and in the high altitude Shinra offices of Junon, short tempers could often be deadly.

Rufus hated days like this. When the weather was bad and people were restless, his work piled up and it seemed his father would never just give up and die, these grey periods seemed to achieve a feeling of eternity. Like the paperwork on his desk, days like this just never seemed to end.

He sat down at his desk with a sigh, glancing up at the grey skies above him and the greyer ocean below him and wondering when it would just give up and rain already. But the sky could (and would) wait, but of course his work wouldn't.

He swivelled his chair back to his desk, ready to start the day's dealings with the eternal paper mountain before him. His secretary would have left the most important pile on the middle of his desk before going home, and it was this pile that he'd start this stupid day off with.

In the middle of the ritual of picking up a pen and reaching for the papers, he suddenly froze. They weren't there. Instead of the usual 'must be signed' and 'initial here' papers he encountered every day, there was what had to be a strange, tasteless and totally weird joke. He pulled his hands back and studied what had been left on his desk.

It was a single sheet of paper, unlined and stark in its contrast with the rest of the paper on his desk. It had only a single sentence (if it was a sentence, and it didn't have a full stop, so how could it be a sentence?) which had been centred and typed in huge, bold black capitals;

ALL THAT YOU LOVE WILL BE CARRIED AWAY

and nothing else. Rufus stared at this strange, incomprehensible message for some time, before reaching out and turning the sheet over to see if there was anything on the back ('gotcha' maybe, or 'this is your fortune for today'). There was nothing. He turned it message side up again, and stared some more. The feeling of unreality that had pressed him all day grew stronger. It all felt like a dream, a dream of order and control and life while he was asleep in some strange alien reality. And it was all because of that message. Looking at it seemed to make this world waver before his eyes, it was as if he was stirring slightly in his sleep as the words were whispered in his ear.

How did it get here? he wondered, playing the charade of reality for all it was worth. It worked, a little. So he kept on doing it. Why would his secretary have left a message like this for him? She was the only one who had access to his office after he was gone, and he believed that she valued her life enough to avoid making tasteless jokes like this, especially on a day like this when everyone was on edge.

A day like this: of course! he thought wildly. It's the weather, everyone's gone crazy!

He looked up sharply, as if expecting to see her hiding in a corner, behind the pot plant maybe, grinning insanely with a knife between her teeth and watching his puzzled response. There was no one there. But if she hadn't done it, then who? A burglar? that was stupid, and irrational besides. Burglars stole things, they didn't leave messages and not take anything. He looked around again to verify this thought; everything was in place. There wasn't much in here a burglar could carry away, and nothing looked disturbed.

He looked down at the message again, and unreality washed over him again in a grey flood. Forget who, forget when, but why? And what did it mean?

Nothing, his mind said, that stoic defender of rationality. Forget it and go back to work.

That was a good idea. He reached out to pick it up, then paused. All that you love will be carried away, he thought suddenly. Rufus leaned back in his chair and began to laugh. Hard. He rocked back and forth in his chair, head thrown back, howling with laughter while behind him the grey skies seethed and the ocean rolled. Even as he laughed harder than maybe he had in his entire life, he was surprised. Is this me? he thought dimly. What am I doing? I must look like an idiot!

He calmed down slightly, laughter tapering off into chuckles, and then his eyes caught the message again and he lost it completely. Because it really was funny, he supposed, but in a mean, sarcastic kind of way. "Go ahead!" he yelled out to his empty office in between gales of laughter. "Take it all! I'm sure it won't be very much to carry!" He finished of this statement with another burst of maniacal laughter. But in his head it had ceased to become funny. In his head he saw not a piece of paper with a strange message, or even the grey, waiting sky. In his head he saw a desert, THE desert, an endless expanse of cracked, parched red earth that covered the world. Its skies were not blue but grey, as if the sun and heat had faded it into the drab no-colour that it was. This was a place where it had never rained and never would rain, a place where the grey waiting skies would wait their time into eternity and beyond. It was endless, unquenchable dryness and thirst, a place where all was dead and nothing would ever grow. Above this desert a merciless, boiling sun beat down, filling the desert with unimaginable heat. And all the time it was laughing, laughing at him, laughing just as insanely as he was now. But he just couldn't stop.

And he saw himself in this desert, standing alone in his expensive white suit and immaculate boots, standing and looking out at nothing, at everything. looking out while the sun laughed and the heat rose and the words played out in his head like and insane melody: ALL THAT YOU LOVE WILL BE CARRIED AWAY. And it was no longer funny.

Rufus finally managed to stop laughing, and brought himself back to reality- to the grey day, his grey office, and himself sitting in his chair gripping the edge of his desk so hard his knuckles were white. His stomach ached from his outburst, but at least it was over now. But the sense of unreality was not, and the stillness and silence of the early morning day seemed to stretch on forever. Like a desert.

He fixed his eyes upon the message once more, but this time didn't laugh. "All that you love will be carried away," he said out loud.

No, it wasn't funny anymore. He didn't like it, but more than that he was worried about the effect it had had on him. Had he lost his mind? It sure had sounded like it for a few minutes. Lucky that he was early, and the place was deserted.

And the desert, he thought with real worry. What was that all about?

But because on some level not too far below the surface he knew, he pushed aside the thought. he had to get rid of this stupid message, that was the first thing. And when Stacy got here, he'd fire her. Then this business would be over with.

He reached out and picked up the paper, and waited, as if expecting that the feel of it in his hands would cause him to dissolve into laughter again. And if it did, he probably wouldn't ever stop, he'd just keep laughing as they carted him away to a nut-house. His father wouldn't be surprised at that. But it was just paper, and nothing happened. Rufus stood, firmly walked the six or so steps to his paper shredder, and turned it on. He could have crumpled the paper and put it in his bin, but the cleaners might have seen it. Anyone could have seen it. And it was dangerous.

"They might think I'm crazy," he said aloud. As the green 'ready' light stopped blinking and held steady, he fed the sheet into the shredder, relishing the chewing sound of the paper being split into dozens of pieces. The worrying feeling of unreality, of being out of control, receded. the paper strips exited the machine and fell in a silent pile into the wire collection basket.

Rufus walked back to his chair and sat down, feeling better than he had all day. Back in control, back in the world where there was paperwork and phone calls to make, and things to be done. And secretaries to be fired, he reminded himself. Maybe even killed.

Stuff like that just wasn't funny.

He reached for his gold-plated pen, ready to commence work, but stopped again. The feeling was back, and stronger than ever. The world was wavering, this was no longer his office but Purgatory, where everything was a desert and he was alone in it from end to end.

But there was no end, of course, and on days like this when the world was still and grey, he could feel that reality was the desert, and this was just a dream he had fooled himself into believing. He lowered his trembling hand away from the pen, afraid to touch it.

Afraid that the desert would be there. He folded his hands in front of him on the surface of the desk, but instead of feeling polished wood under his fingers, he felt paper.

Rufus almost screamed aloud. Instead, he looked down with eyes so wide and strained it felt as if they were going to fall out of his head. As he lowered his head, his hair fell into his eyes, but he didn't push it back. He couldn't. And besides, he could see just fine.

ALL THAT YOU LOVE WILL BE CARRIED AWAY,

the paper said. Rufus felt his strained mind trying to escape the fact of its existence, trying to convince himself that it was just his mind thinking it was there, and if he closed his eyes and opened them, it would be gone.

Rufus closed his eyes tight and kept them shut. He was afraid to open them, but he did, and when he did he felt his body go limp with relief.

The paper was gone.

But he could still feel the unreality on him, creeping up on him like quicksand. He could struggle, but he couldn't escape. He was in the desert, after all.

Rufus closed his eyes again. His head hurt, his thoughts were all in a wild roaring confusion. Control eluded him, and now he just wanted to sleep, to let everything fall away and cease to matter. But it just wasn't in his nature to give up.

He opened his eyes. It was there again.

He blinked. It was gone. With great difficulty, he turned his neck, feeling it creaking as he turned to look at the paper shredder. It was off, although he hadn't turned it off- both of its eyes, the green and the red, were dark. Rufus's own blue eyes moved down to the wire basket where the paper had fallen. It was empty.

He slowly looked back at his desk again, where a neat pile of paperwork sat, ready and waiting for him to start his daily ritual. Had it been there all along? He wasn't sure.

Rufus stared at his desk, and thought about dry sand, and laughing suns, and the unbearable heat that radiates from everything and everywhere in a desert, the heat which never quits but only seems to grow.

He thought about a desert which covered the world. It was the world. And he was in it, wasn't he? Even here, in his office, where all the purposeful and important work of his life went on, hell, where all of his life went on, he was still in the desert. Everything he loved had already been carried away, and that meant that everything had been left behind. It was all as useless and worthless as dry desert dust.

The phone rang. Rufus ignored it. Instead he gazed blankly down at his hands, now refolded on the desk before him. He looked at his hands and thought about the desert while the phone continued to ring, unheeded. And in the silence of his empty office, it sounded

like laughter.


I like to think of this one as interpretive. Make of it what you will - and please let me know what you think. Read and review, folks.