Mathew had been locked in a mansion, the doors never opening, with no one coming to see him, for as long as he could remember. He tried to understand what had happened, and why he felt that something was missing in his life when this place was the only one he'd ever known, so why should he ask for more? Why did he want more? He couldn't tell what was missing.
To try to distract himself, to give himself something to do every day, he always went through the entire house checking for anything different, anything he could do. The house stayed spotless. Every day there was fresh food for him to eat, and he never saw who put it there. He'd tried once before, he'd stayed up the entire night, but when the old grandfather clock out in the hallway had started to strike midnight he'd blinked, and that day's food was there. Everything in the house stayed perfect, not a single thing out of order, every time he went through the house trying to find something different. It's hard to keep wanting to play a game that you never win.
One day, though, his searching paid off. He almost didn't notice it, but the grandfather clock that could be heard throughout the entire house every time it announced the hour had stopped, its pendulum was no longer swinging, and the time had not moved since midnight. There were other clocks in the house, he ran and checked them all. None of them moved. He went back to the grandfather clock, and looked into the glass where a face was staring back at him. It took him a while to notice that it wasn't his reflection. The boy may have looked like him, but he was different. The boy smiled, and gestured to a door behind him that Mathew hadn't noticed before. A door behind the clock. The boy behind the glass smiled and held up a sign.
"Come with me if you want to finally live."
Mathew shook his head and pantomimed asking 'how?'
Another sign went up.
"Shatter the glass."
Mathew blew on the glass to fog it up, and wrote out his answer.
"I have to think about it."
Mathew shook his head slowly, and walked away. The boy inside the glass nodded and went out the door.
That day was full of contact with the outside world. On his daily walk around the house Mathew found a total of fifty-seven notes. All of them said the same thing.
"Don't leave."
"Don't leave."
"Don't leave."
The next morning he went straight to the grandfather clock and tried to find a latch to open the door of the clock. He couldn't find one. He'd searched the entire clock. Frustrated, Mathew grabbed a candlestick off a side table close by, and took that to the glass door instead.
Light exploded from the cracks in the glass. The door behind it was open, and the outside world was just beyond it.