Breath-Death
Breath-Death (AKA "Breathdeath") is from Harlan Ellison's From A to Z in the Chocolate Alphabet
Description
B is for Breath-death - It's waiting for them when they reach space. It grows on virtually every world but the Earth. It is common as weed: the little black flower with the blood-red bulb in its center. Its spores fill the atmospheres of grey planets circling yellow stars and burned-out cinders. When the last of the atmosphere has been drawn off into space, the spores will settle, but they will still kill. It is a lovely flower - if one stares into the center, one can see many, disturbing things, until the aneurysms stop the visions and the blood bursts forth. There is a race on a far star that believes that believe that Breath-death can be ground up and cut with various juices and consumed, and it will give eternal life; no one has ever tried the recipe.
— Harlan Ellison, From A to Z in the Chocolate Alphabet
A small, beautiful, orchid-like black flower with a blood-red bulb in its center, Breath-death is psychic, transmitting deadly, maddening dreams and visions to its victims, and according to untested recipes found in certain tomes, capable of bestowing immortality or the wisdom and knowledge of the gods upon those who can consume it without perishing. Breath-death can grow on virtually every world, common as weeds throughout the galaxy, its spores carried on solar winds from world to world, leaving ruin and destruction in its path as the flowers grow and bloom, siphoning the atmospheres off into space via tall, spike-shaped stems, and constantly emitting spores into the winds, leaving the the worlds dead and desolate. Death-breath spores may also be carried from world to world, clinging to the skin or the clothing of alien travelers, unaware that they have tracked through clouds of the plant's horror and destruction.
Heresies and Controversies
- Breath-death can grow on Earth, but for unknown reasons the spores have not yet been found on this planet; it may simply be a matter of time before its spores drift down from out of the stars, or are carried down by design or mistake by travelers through space, requiring Breath-death to be weeded from the world, lest it destroy all life on Earth. (YSDC)
- Breath-death is found throughout the Dreamlands, but is relatively tame there: it still transmits deadly dreams to those who stare into its flowers, but requires special care to deliberately cultivate it, due to its relative delicacy in the Dreamlands, and Breath-death is not known to have destroyed any Dreamlands world. It may be that Breath-death is native to the Dreamlands, and an invasive species on the waking side of the Wall of Sleep. (YSDC)
- Waking Mars was ruined by a Breath-death infestation, leaving its air thin and its surface desolate in the modern world; no such devastation has reached the Martian Dreamlands (Barsoom), where Martian populations still flourish to this day. (YSDC)
- The plant is intelligent, and has an ultimate, but unguessable plan; no living being has ever been able to decipher the alien thoughts of Death-breath. Breath-death grows on several planets and moons of the Solar System, notably Mercury and Venus; a single specimen of Death Breath, encased in a glass terrarium, can also be found on Yuggoth, where it is worshiped as a god by oracles of the Mi-Go, who risk death to stare into the flower's center seeking visions of other places and times, other worlds, and other dimensions. (YSDC)
Associated Mythos Elements
- races: for other killer plants, see Hell-Plants, Triffids, Body Snatchers, Kudzu
