The landscape changed as I drove towards the lake. Vast tracts of golden wheat waved as the breeze skimmed by. Dust eddies trailed behind tractors. A graveyard of trees stood stark in a paddock, another casualty of the salt trail. I turned onto the road for the lake and rattled into emptiness. Not even a bird called out as I arrived, although the flies soon found me. The water seemed a long way off. The salty beach glistened under the rays. Everywhere I looked I was confronted with a strange mix of beauty and death. The trees that salinity had claimed. The sparkle of pink quartz, the different hues radiant. I dropped the stones and made my way to the large rock that protruded from the earth. The salt crust cracked and crunched under my feet. The sound had a calmness to it, distracting me briefly. 

Like a wiper on warp, my hand constantly flapped at the bugs landing on my face trying to insert their little bodies up my nose and in my mouth. The noise of salt underfoot added to the buzz of my little orchestra friends, but the breeze picked up and they dispersed like dandelion seeds. 

Drifts of tiny black bodies lay mummified in salt ridges. They stretched in waves over the whiteness, a jumble of legs, antennae and wings. A long trail of bodies, lured in for a drink only to taste death. A sudden loud sob startled me, and I turned in circles to see who was crying. The lake was empty in every direction. The sobbing continued, a guttural weeping. I touched my cheeks to find salt trails along my skin.

 

Excerpt from ‘The Spreading' by Rachel McEleney in Follow the Salt (2025, Night Parrot Press) https://www.nightparrotpress.com/follow-the-salt/

 

Author Bio:

Rachel McEleney holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Edith Cowan University. Her short stories, non-fiction and poetry have appeared in Verge, Seizure and Ourselves. Her fiction has won and been shortlisted for awards including Write by the Sea (Ireland), Margaret River Short Story Competition.