troll in the closet

Eh. This is more of a drabble than a story.
Prompt:
troll in the closet
---oooo---

It was his duty in the village to serve for this month, but Snedrick never really liked funerals. Wearing itchy formal suits over his armor and enduring the endless marching, which always made his knives poke him in the oddest of places, ruined the entire experience for him. Just now, in fact, the handle of the knife in his boot shifted to pinch the back of his shin.

By long held tradition since the Fall, all six box bearers were supposed to be armed.
Before he could kick the pointy pit into a more comfortable position for him to take another step, the lead pallbearer, a rather portly man with a bald shiny head, hissed a warning. It was formal: The one which told all six of them to be at the ready for fighting.

Exactly how it was supposed to happen when he was helping to carry a pine box, Snedrick was at a loss to say. Snedrick supposed "fighting" was something of a vague notion to the current king, much less the original king who began the tradition in the first place.

The reason for the warning was because they were, supposedly, about to be very vulnerable to an ambush attack: They were near the grave site in which the old man they were carrying would be buried.

The lead slapped his free hand upon the box with a satisfying thump. It was the traditional signal. As one, they eased the heavy awkward box down into the earthen hole.

"That'll do!" The bald man said sharply. As one, they were supposed to climb out, draw their weapons, and be at the top to stand warily on guard. It was something they practiced to often it was as easy to do a breathing.

Usually.

This time, Snedrick tripped on a dirt clot, and the knife in his boot bit into his fleshy heel. With the flash of pain for inspiration, he decided that some traditions were quite stupid to follow.

"Why are we still doing this..!" He demanded loudly after shouting some choice gutter worthy words.

"Shh..!" The lead man said.

"There haven't been any troll sightings for years. For heavens sake..! Why are we still..?"

"I said quiet!" The lead man scolded.

Snedrick scowled at the tone, and as he climbed sullenly out of the grave, he would have kicked a stone down into the pit, but instead noticed the sound of some animal growling in the distance.

"You hear that..?" the lead man said grimly. Spread out."

Snedrick rolled his eyes, fully believing that the noise was just some wild dog gnawing a bone.

The lead man turned and regarded man with the shovel, who had frozen from his labors.

As he went through the stupid motions of being "on guard", Snedrick sneered as he thought the simpleton was probably recalling the many gory stories of what happened with anyone's the last encounter with a troll. That unfortunate person had lived well over a hundred years ago, and there hadn't been much left of the body to bury.

Trolls were allegedly voracious eaters.

"You. Hurry." The lead man snapped. "Continue with your task."

The shovel wielding man nodded solemnly, understanding his job was the sole key to keeping the remains undisturbed from any wild predator.

Not just trolls.

Satisfied, the lead then had them find the source of the sound. Snedrick smirked. This involved a lot of walking about the wastes, which was something he really didn't mind.

Along the way Snedrick noticed a number of graves had been dug up. The sturdy wooden boxes broken asunder as though they were thin as egg shells by...

.. A club? Or. Maybe a large boulder?

He looked them over owlishly as his fellow box luggers muttered their own theories amongst themselves.

"Classic.." The lead man declared, and pointed to the darker patch of earth on the ground. "Whatever dug up the graves' covered in dirt. We got a trail."

Snedrick could see that plain enough: The fresh grave soil was much darker than the rest of the barren earth found in the city of the dead. The surprising trail was quite easy to follow.
It lead to what appeared to be the remains of a freestanding wall. Guttural growls and suspicious whimpers emanated from the ancient structure. Snedrick noticed a set of stairs the lead up to nothing, which meant..there was room for something beneath.

One of his fellows called out that he had found what looked like a door. There was even a metal handle intact. The overpowering stench of rot flooded his nose, choking his breaths before he could make them.

Please... Let it be a bear. It has to be a bear.

But a tiny voice in his head poised a question he couldn't dismiss: how could a bear even open a door, much close it?

"Looks like some one has to open it."

"Let the green horn do it."

"Hell no. No way am I letting myself get all bitten up by who knows what..."

"Then move faster." The lead drolled. "Than usual that is."

"Shut it. I'm not THAT ba.."

"I'll do it." Snedrick interrupted, surprised at the quaking fear in his own voice. He cleared his throat, swallowed, then began again. "I'll open the damn door."


"Ok. There.. " The lead man set himself and drew his sword. He glanced at the others. Snedrick could help but notice the "greenhorn" hiding behind what remained of the ruined wall. "At the ready..?"
Snedrick gripped the handle, nodded, and glanced to the lead. The bald head bobbed, and Snedrick tugged back...

His eyes glimpsed a great two legged thing, twice as tall as any man, lunge out from the darkness-- great misshapen hands clawed blindly at anything nearby. His mind froze, and he narrowly escaped a sweep by the sheer luck of being crouched too low.

The wall above him wasn't so lucky. It crumbled from the strike, and he ducked as his back was pelted with rocks.

Snedrick heard another man swear loudly and cock his gun. The sudden thunder of the gun stole the sound from him, and he owlishly watched the thing spit out an entire bloody femur as if it were but a toothpick--

--And then next moment, he realized that was all that remained of the lead.

Snedrick gripped his longest knife a bit tighter, and swallowed his bile.

Sent via a stray supercharged nano particle of unobtainium....