>>9242793
Watch Dark City.

There was a piece of short horror fiction along those lines.

I've been trying to remember the name for ages.

Toluca from silent hill

>>9242818
Was it from The Sandman?
I recall reading a short story in The Sandman with a very similar premise, as the sorta-twist ending.

Into doing what?

Perhaps the city welcomes new inhabitants, but kills off those who look too deep into it's own secrets.

>>9242843

Just being like mindless drones, to obey it, to make it grow and build it, and to kill those who seek to find out the cities terrible secret.

>>9242831

No. It featured Sydney Australia, and a sort of wizard-type guy who was hunting down some old hag and her son.

>>9242911
Definitely something else then.

I know there was definitely a Sandman story like OP's idea, though. A man gets on a subway, goes to a part of town he's never been to before. Completely empty except for a hobo. Then it turns out the city is dreaming, and they're trapped inside its dream.

Not quite the same thing, but a bit like it.

>>9242943

What makes it all the more infuriating is that I know the story was from one of the pseudopod/podcastle/escape pod audiobook lines, but I still can't fucking find it.

I did find a nice elder evil story that ends in a guy biting chunks out of the god though. That was pretty good.

Hahahah, I thought of this some time ago, sort of!

A 'meteor' crashes near the town. Many weeks later, small animals begin disappearing, followed by children, then vagrants and everymen.

One cataclysmic day, the whole town lurches and groans. Some houses collapse. Alleyways shudder violently closed. The city gates slam shut; the walls seem to sprout rows of daggerlike irons that wave about as if seeking flesh. Sentinels formed out of loose clothes, spare iron, and mason blocks flood out into the streets from the sewers and begin to herd people. One everyone has been ushered into their homes -- or killed -- the town begins to wither, and close. It burrows deep into the earth, leaving only brown soil. Merchants arrive a few days later to find that an entire town has vanished.

In my CS, the cause of this thing is essentially a grand machine that has been forged in hell. Gone long without orders by its infernal masters, it launches itself at the barrier between worlds and breaks through, streaming through the skies in a fireball that hits near a small village. From there, it burrows underneath to the village's heart, and begins to grow.

This machine grows through consumption. It eats rats, gains power. Eats cats, gains power. Eats brick, gains power. Eventually it can begin manifesting its strength remotely -- channeling itself through the sewer walls and into the structures above, it can close doors, volley bookcases, make crystal glasses 'sing' as if speaking . . . eventually it and the city become one.

After gaining enough power, its first instinct is to spirit the city away to a new place, far, far away. No longer working in the shadows, it launches a full offensive on the people, closes up, and burrows deep underground. It travels hundreds of miles to a new location -- often to a frontier of a civilization, far from well-known territories -- and blossoms once again.

It, and the citizens that it farms, enjoy a strange new relationship. They can never leave. If they try to leave, they will die; city streets burst open into yawning chasms of death, or fortified walls riddle you with daggers. The very city becomes your captor. You eat, sleep, and breathe on top of and inside your warden.

It keeps its prey fed, at least. It extends its reach beyond the city walls, although it is much weaker there; just enough to lure in animals to feed the people and perform some rudimentary scavenging for materials (new stone, new wood, etcetera). Still, it doesn't seem to be able to absorb inanimate materials until they've been worked and crafted.

It also seeks to draw in new organic life as well. Though it settles on the frontier, it places itself where it expects people to come soon -- and so, adventurers may find themselves plunging into the forest's edge to soon find that one last boomtown has 'sprung up overnight'.

op did you ever read the story "the house jack built"?

it's a great short horror story about a guy who gets trapped in a house that is actually sentient, and can move in a very limited way, but manages to trap the guy inside for years.

the house is actually alive, and forces the man to do nothing but rebuild it for years, until one day he manages to narrowly escape

i could see a city wide version of this, where a traveler comes to a city that is beautiful and kept in absolutely pristine condition constantly, but all the inhabitants are weary and paranoid as fuck, since the city forces them to constantly keep building and maintaining it.

And so, the prisoners' horrifying situation becomes clear: They must never speak of the city's nature in front of visitors, or they all die.

It doesn't have to be the visitor's fault; maybe the visitor overhears something when natives don't think the visitor is near. A native may let something slip. The visitor may not even seem to be listening; if the city thinks there is any chance that the secret is out, the visitor and the speaker are immediately executed in a horrible fashion.

And so, many merchants come to this new boomtown after they hear of its profitable stores. They sell there, bring back new wares, and news of this place. Adventurers come to stop by the boomtown on the road to new adventures, and commoners seeking a fresh start in a new land decide to move. By the time they realize the nature of the city, it is too late.

>>9244023
Holy shit.

>>9244083
Jaw, Floor.

OMFG I am throwing this into Archive right now. This is a horror you can drop into any setting you want.

However, how would anyone destroy that thing?

>>9244195

Burn it all.

Oops. I forgot to mention that the citizens are encouraged to mail letters to their loved ones, asking them to visit.

I'm not actually sure how the city communicates with the citizens, or how often. I think it should be clear enough that it's always watching, always listening, but rarely actually respond to them -- it doesn't wait on them. What communication it has should certainly feel rather alien; for example, the 'singing' wineglasses.

>>9244195
well in the house jack built, the guy managed to destroy it by basically building the house to be as new and fresh as possible. before it had broken planks and shingles that it could kind of "shoot" at the character if he tried to run away, but it couldn't do that as well once everything was fresh and properly nailed down and stuff

>>9244195

I'm not actually sure how one would destroy it.

Your initial conflicts with the ... thing ... may or may not go straight into nuclear war. After all, it ideally wants you for food or for you to bring it more food than you're personally worth. But once you've proved to be a liability, that's when things would get tough.

It's heart lies deep within the city, far below. I'm still not sure what it would look like, or what it could do at the center of its power. Certainly, it's a master of reshaping the battlefield, and can form interfaces out of ordinary objects that it can use to harrass you the whole way down.

saved for posterity...

Maybe ... it works like nerves?

It has some sort of physical, or mystical, 'nerves' that web throughout the city. Several main lines radiate out from itself; those main nerves branch into smaller nerves, which branch into smaller nerves, which branch into the fine tips that reach the edge of the city and fill in the cracks of its control.

By destroying the objects through which it channels its power, it also loses power over objects that would be down the line. To use a metaphor, if you severed a person's wrist, they couldn't use their fingers.

Destroying objects could be literal -- blow up a house -- or could be a figure of speech. For example, we've already established that this thing can only consume worked materials -- cut blocks are fine, but it couldn't use raw boulders. Perhaps using polymorphing or transmutation could sever that link -- warping its walls would be equivalent to somebody using a spell on you that caused your arm to warp, fracture, and gelatinize.

The city is its body. Damage the city, damage the creature. Sever the arteries to its defenses and cut to the core.

>>9243856
>>9244017
>>9244073
>>9244297
sorry but i've gotta point out that this sounds a whole lot like the movie the mangler, written by stephen king

basically the mangler is a demon that possesses machinery, and is fueled by blood/pain. in one of its incarnations it starts out as a simple dry cleaning press, but as it mutilates the workers it becomes larger and more powerful, until it can manifest it's own shape

>>9244380

That's fine. Now that I think about it, there's another movie that's kinda like that; its title has something to do with a Signal, or some sort of Voltage. It's about a ship in the ocean, yadda-yadda, and the ship's electronics become killing people and building half-human half-machines with bodyparts and spare machinery.

This idea's presentation is as much about the society it creates as the monster that drives it, though. Having just the creature kind of neuters the concept.

OP

as you can see I made the thread a while ago and didn't expect it to go anywhere

but

thanks for contributing Lou Lynx

>>9244380
Also haunted house
Also haunted hotel
Also haunted car
Also haunted camera

[trollface.jpg]

Couldn't help it.

>>9244470
yea stephen king can make pretty much everything haunted

where which book was the haunted camera from?

>>9244497

I want to say it was Nightmares & Dreamscapes? A short story named the Sun Dog, I think. IIRC, it should be alongside a story about a library, and the short story that Secret Window was based on.