Word: Benighted

benighted

[bih-nahy-tid]

adjective

1. intellectually or morally ignorant; unenlightened:

benighted ages of barbarism and superstition.

2. overtaken by darkness or night.

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There was a scraping sound from behind the wall.  It was too big and heavy to be from mice, and had been occurring off and on since Kevin and Mary had moved into the house a few weeks ago.  Kevin had gotten fed up with it, and so had decided to see what was there, much to Mary’s chagrin.

    And so it was that he stood in front of the questionable wall with a sledgehammer.  He hefted the heavy tool, brought it up and slammed it into the wall. He heard something yelp from the other side of the wall.  He slammed the hammer into the wall over and over, pulling out chunks of wood with each swing. It was clear that there was a hidden room there, and that something was inside of it.

    After a few more minutes, he finally broke through the wall enough to see what was inside.  There were three things inside of the small room. One was a human skeleton resting on the far wall.  Scraps of clothes clung to the decayed body, although they were so dirty that it was impossible to tell what they used to look like.

    But it was not the bones that Kevin was looking at with alarm.  It was the two pale skinned teenagers huddling near the bones that really got to him.  They looked to be around 14 or 15 years old and wore scraps that could have been torn from whatever the skeleton had been wearing when it still had flesh.  They were covered with dirt and grim, and were hiding their faces against the light.

    Seeing the two youngsters huddled there, Kevin did the only sensible thing he could think of:  He called for his wife.

    Mary slowly entered the room and questioned her husband on what the problem was.  All he had to do was point her attention towards the room and its occupants. Mary was just as stunned as Kevin was.  She was, however, quicker to do something about the issue. SHe immediately told Kevin to call the appropriate authorities while she tried to figure out what was happening.

    Mary knelt in front of the pale teens and beckoned them forward with outstretched hand.  The two of the looked at her hand and then at each other, but did not move. Mary spoke to them in a soothing, gentle voice, but there was still no response from them.

    Kevin came back just as Mary was beginning to get frustrated.  She voiced her problem. Kevin had an idea and ran off. He came back with a variety of foodstuffs, ranging from fruit and vegetables to some leftover meat to some cookies.  He offered the food to the walled in teens. Like with Mary, they simply looked at the food, but made no move to leave the room.

The husband and wife backed away and spoke to each other in hushed tones, mostly asking each other what they should do and coming up with no answers.  The teens were completely unresponsive. So unresponsive, if fact, that it was like they simply did not know what anything was. Like they had no idea what Mary was saying, or what the offered food was.  Both of them stopped. Once that idea was voiced, everything made much more sense. Their unresponsiveness was simply due to ignorance of anything outside of the dark, sealed off room.

They moved to a nearby couch and sat down.  They looked blankly at an intact wall. How could they not know anything?  How could they not know words or different kinds of food? And from they way they kept to the darker recesses of the small room and shielded their eyes, it looked like they did not even know about light.  

The two of them sat there, periodically turning to look at the teens.  It was all they could do until someone better qualified could arrive. Maybe they would be able to figure something out.

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Sooo....creepy kids sealed in a wall, huh? Oh yeah, this is going to turn out well for EVERYBODY, I'm sure.