In January of 2006, a who's who of young starlets began disappearing. It started out with Jessica Biel, who had ducked into the bathroom at the opening of a small boutique in L.A. She never re-emerged. Three days later, an unofficial taskforce consisting of the F.B.I., the L.A.P.D. and the seemingly omnipresent paparazzi could find neither hide nor hair of her. It was as if she had stepped into that bathroom and vanished off the face of the earth. A week later, Jessica Alba stepped into her trailer on the set of the second 'Fantastic Four.' Thirty minutes later, a production assistant pounded on her door for fifteen minutes. When security opened up her trailer, there was no sign of her. Security had reported that she had not left the lot.

In the weeks that followed, panic ensued in the ranks of the glitterati. Young, beautiful women were disappearing left and right. Bodyguards were hire, electronic surveillance systems were installed, overtime was authorized for police forces. It didn't matter. At some point, the young woman in question would be alone, even if for a second. That second was enough. Another young starlet disappeared.

Police forces world wide united to search for these missing young women. No rock was left unturned. Interpol was working with MI5 who was working with the FBI who was working with the Russian Federation Security Services who was working with...well, you get the idea. It didn't matter. Women kept on vanishing, never to reappear. No trace was ever found of them, their ultimate fate unknown.

And just as mysteriously as it started, it stopped. But not before 32 young, beautiful women disappeared. The authorities had no idea where to look. But that was the problem. They were looking for where. They should have been looking for when...

That's where I came in. It's 2012 and I just turned 18. But before I get to this part of the story, I guess I should jump back to 2006, or even better, 2004, when the story really starts. My name is Jack. Not James or John or Jonathan. But Jack. I like the name myself, if for no other reason then it drives my pretentious parents nuts. I'm named after my grand-uncle Jack, who was the family ne'er-do-well who still managed to acquire a fairly vast fortune. About a year before he died, he changed his will, stipulating that he would leave his wealth to the first child of one of his siblings who named one of their offspring after him. Mom was already two months pregnant, so I was the winning baby. Good thing I wasn't born a girl. I'm pretty sure they would have named me Jack anyway. Uncle Jack was worth a lot of money.

My Mom (Uncle Jack's niece) had married into a family with a prestigious name but with no money to back it up. Dad's a lawyer, Mom's an architect. They do well, but they work for their money. The inheritance from Uncle Jack let their money work for them now.

I think Dad and Mom both resented the fact, though, that they owed their good fortune to the whimsical wishes of the black sheep of Mom's family. I was the youngest of their five children, and the only one with a common name like 'Jack.' I was something of a sore spot to them, I suppose, a constant reminder of what they had to do for money. So although I was never mistreated, there always has been something of a distance between us.

At age 10, I was your average kid. I played soccer, read comics and was just starting to discover that girls were not only different, but they were different in a very nice way. That's when I got the inheritance Uncle Jack let for me.

It was a steamer trunk full of odds and ends. A chessboard with carved pieces from somewhere in Central or South Asia. One of those expanding telescopes that you in the pirate movies. A couple of old books that might have been worth something if they had been in decent shape. Things like that. My parents rummaged through the chest to make sure that there wasn't anything that might "corrupt the morales of an impressionable young boy" or that should be kept in their safe keeping for when I "became of an age to appreciate such things." No such things in there. So I was given the admonishment of not letting these things clutter my room, and given free reign.

To be honest, my friends and I were especially enthralled with the telescope, and I was just learning how to play chess, so having another chess set besides one with plastic pieces was a big boost. But I quickly became disinterested in the chest and slid it to the back of my closet.

When I was 11, I was doing a project for school and remembered this old looking wooden globe in the chest that might be useful. By that time, other items of mine had found a final resting place in the chest, so it took some time to dig around for the wooden globe. In the process, I found a secret panel.

As I pulled out a piece of paper, all sorts of ideas were running through my head. I knew my Mom and Dad always spoke disparagingly of my Granduncle Jack, but enough of the tales surrounding him had made their way to me to make me think this could be a map to a secret treasure of some kind. Instead, I pulled out a yellow piece of paper torn from a legal pad where the words 'Say Your Name' were scrawled on it in almost illegible writing.

To say I was disappointed would have been the understatement of the year. My buried treasure fantasy came crashing down around me. I crumpled up the piece of paper and threw it at my waste basket. I turned away, not seeing that the crumpled piece of paper had missed the wastebasket and ricocheted to behind my desk.

About a week later, I was working on my computer and had a wood carved pawn in my hand when it slipped out of my fingers and went behind the desk. I bent down to get and saw the crumpled piece of paper. I uncrumpled it, then remembered where I had found it. I read over it again, and tried to think why someone would put something like that in a secret panel. Maybe, I thought to myself, it means there are more secret panels! This could be a clue of some sorts.

I spent the next few hours going over that chest. I poked, pried, cut, knocked...whatever I could do to find more secret panels and compartments. Nothing. I grabbed the piece of paper. If it were something I could punch, I would have by now.

"OK, what are you a clue to? Did someone just put you in there to drive me crazy? What's my name? My name is Jack Sherrington, but what does that have---"

I stopped, stunned into silence. As soon as I said my name, another question appeared on the paper. This one asked 'Who are you named after?'

I wasn't feeling very adventurous right then. Things like this did not happen in the real world. Truth be told, I was probably thirty seconds from wetting myself. Hey, don't be judgmental! I was eleven years old, and voodoo shit like this did not happen outside of computer games and DVD's!

To this day, I do not know where I got the courage to speak up instead of tossing that paper away and running out of the house as fast as I could. Maybe the ghost of Uncle Jack was sitting there, giving me courage. Whatever. I stuttered out 'Jack Lehman.'

Instantly, both questions disappeared and a letter appeared in its place.

The letter directed me toward the dilipated books that had come in the chest. It gave me a spell on how to restore them. I was still feeling like I was somewhere in a dream that could plunge into a nightmare at any moment. Nonetheless, I dug out the four books, and chanted the spell. With a blink of the eye, all four books were restored to normal. The letter directed me to read the one that was Uncle Jack's journal, and to take precautions that I wasn't interrupted. I quickly locked the door and got to reading.

The first thing in the journal was instructions on how to restore the illusion of the books being almost destroyed. That was a good thing to learn, inasmuch as I wasn't able to read the books uninterrupted. The journal itself took weeks, and I found myself going over and over them again.

Uncle Jack was one of the last great explorers of the little nooks and crannies of the world. He would have probably have felt right at home among the great English explorers of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. He had been to spots where few civilized men had ever gone, even in this age. Spots where even fewer civilized men are able to emerge with their hide intact. He had chased down a hundreds of legends and myths, and debunked 99.9% of them. But then there was always the small fraction which ended up being truer than you could hope for.

Magic did exist in the worlds. Magic of a sorts, anyway. Uncle Jack just assumed it was a process that hadn't been fully developed or explained yet, but which had its own set of laws, if any type of systematic research would reveal. The other three books contained a list of spells which were found to work.

Most of them were useless. Well, not exactly useless. One, for example, was a spell that let you produce a quarter from behind somebody's ear without using sleight of hand. Of course, you had to have a quarter in your pocket at the time of the trick, and the spell itself was indistinguishable to a casual observer from the sleight of hand trick. And some of the spells which might prove useful had ingredients that would be fairly difficult to get. Especially considering that some of the animals that the ingredients were extracted from were on the Endangered Species List.

One or two, though, were quite useful. One let you read the surface thoughts of other people. Another granted you very temporary invisibility. It lasted for just a few hours. And it was disspelled if you came in contact with another person. So it might be good for hiding or eavesdropping, but that was about it. That one I used to sneak into the cheerleader's dressing room one time, but that's another story entirely.

Then there was the chessboard. The chessboard was called 'The Young Man's Legacy.' The spell was such that the board could be prepared so that a young man, upon reaching his majority, would have at his beck and call, an army or harem of his choosing. The spell had to be set up before a young man's majority, and would be his to call upon that age.

I wasn't sure what exactly the spell meant by the age of majority. Uncle Jack had found it when he was 42, too old to prepare it. I didn't know if I would be too old or too young. I assumed 11 was still too young, but I really didn't know what the guidelines were. Uncle Jack was vague on this as well. Unlike Uncle Jack, though, I had the internet. What I found was that the age of puberty (13 or so), was considered the age of ascension into manhood by a lot of ancient (and current!) cultures.

I had a lot of fantasies about what I could do with my own army of ultimate fighters (I was 11 at the time, remember), but a harem...

I had had my first wet dream the week before, and had really started noticing girls in a positive way. So a harem that would help me explore this new area of awakening...

So on, January 6th, two weeks before my birthday, I decided to create my harem. I had used some of the minor spells already, but I wasn't sure how this one would work. Would my harem just appear in my room when I turned 12 (which was one of the birthdays that I thought might me the magical age of majority)? If so, it would get crowded pretty fast! And I'd have a hard time explaining all these women to my Mom and Dad! But the spell said that the harem would be there at my call. So I guess I had a choice of when and where they showed up.

But first I had to make the list. OK, sounds easy, doesn't it? But the spell said 32 girls, and I wanted to make it a very hot 32.

Now, originally I was thinking of girls that I knew personally, or that I saw when one of my sisters brought home their friends, or one of the cheerleaders on the fields when I went to watch my older brother play high school football.

But then I was watching the DVD of the Fantastic Four when Jessica Alba appears in her underwear and it hit me. Why not get an all-star of my fantasy girls in my harem?

Now, at this time, I really didn't think this spell was going to work. I mean, all the spells I had used so far had worked, but these were minor (I still hadn't used the temporary invisibility spell yet). This...this was something that Spielberg movies are made from. Nevertheless, I worked and sweated until I came up with the list of 32 women (one for each chess piece).

So I printed a list of the thirty two women, and got the list of ingredients. One of the spell ingredients was a likeness of the woman, to be touched to a chess piece. So I hit the web, found the sexiest pictures of my thirty-two women, and touched each one to a piece on the board.

When the spell was completed, nothing happened. I waited for five minutes, and still nothing happened. I was just about to put the board away when the spell finally happened. Each chess piece turned briefly into a five inch high figure of the woman I had touched their picture too, and then it returned to normal.

I put the pieces away until my 12th birthday. I locked the door, picked one of the pieces at random, and summoned my harem.

Nothing.

Grumbling and thinking the spell was like the coin behind the ear spell, I left my room and headed for supper.

Nothing happened until Jessica Biel disappeared on January 28th, 2006. I was at a friend's house when the news started talking about her disappearance. I made some lame excuse and rushed home as fast as I could. Jessica had been on my list.

My chess pieces were still the same, and I couldn't summon Jessica Biel.

Then all the starlets who had been on my list started disappearing. I was freaking big time. I didn't try to summon any of the harem/chess pieces. I put them in the bottom of the steamer trunk, shoved it into my closet, and hoped everything would return to normal.

By September, 2006, all 32 women on that list had disappeared. It had created a major panic in the entertainment industry. Everything from terrorist plots to UFOs were being offered as an explanation. I was on constant pins and needles and was expecting the FBI to knock on my front door at any moment.

Finally, the disappearances stopped. But there was no way in hell I was touching that chessboard or those magic books or anything that came from that chest.

A week from my 13th birthday, things were settling down, if not returning to normal, in Hollywood. Increased security and personal vigilance was given as the reason that there were no more disappearances. I knew it was because my list of harem girls had been completed. I was curious as hell, but there was no way that I was going to go into that steamer trunk.

11:50 p.m. on my 13th birthday found me pulling out the steamer trunk with a chess piece in my hand, trying to summon a harem/chess piece girl.

Nothing.

As the years passed, the disappearance of the 32 starlets (no one had yet made the connection between that number and the number of chess pieces) was becoming more of a background mystery and less of an active investigation. Sure, there were continued investigations, but with the lack of leads, they soon merged into the background.

I had gotten back to using the magic spells in the chest as well (especially the temporary invisibility spell, but again, that's a different story). I had my own ring of friends. I did good at school; not stellar, but good. I was an excellent baseball player, and felt I was a cinch to get into an Ivy League School on that.

And I had a private ritual. On each birthday, ten minutes before midnight, I would try to summon one of my 'harem.' And always without success.

And then, on my 18th birthday, it happened.

I was living in a small apartment off campus. (My parents could tolerate me getting to an Ivy League school on my athletic ability, but had moved me off campus once they found out that entailed me live in an athletic dorm). I wasn't seeing anyone seriously (as usual; somewhere in my mind, I had faith that my all-star harem was going to show up at any time). I was popular with my teammates in that I would let them use my apartment from time to time for their dates. The night before my birthday, I had set out the harem chessboard in preparation of my ritual. I had decided that if nothing happened tomorrow, I would destroy the chessboard, and hopefully release the girls. As I had grown older, the guilt at this eternal imprisonment I had condemned my 'harem' to had grown to the point that I could not shunt if off to my unconscious any longer. But I was still fascinated enough by the thought of having a personal harem that I had not let my guilt stop me from waiting until my 18th birthday.

When I woke up, I looked over at the chess pieces. My eyes nearly bugged out. Instead of the 32 pieces, there were 32 tiny figurines of the women I had ensorcelled, each a perfect five inch tall replica of the picture I had used so many years ago.

My mouth was dry as I continued staring. It had happened. I had reached whatever the board considered my age of majority, and my harem was ready to be summoned.

Which brought up a whole slew of new questions. Where had they been during those six years from their disappearance to now? How would they react? And how was I possibly going to keep secret of 32 young women whose disappearance six years ago had created such a panic?

Experimentation and research was the key. I pulled out the spellbook that contained the information on the chessboard harem. It was pretty sketchy at best. But it seemed that I could summon and de-summon the harem at will. I picked up the five inch piece of Jessica Biel. She was in the pose from one of the men's magazines years back. She was topless, though she had been posed so that nothing was seen. However, the pose was now rendered three dimensional, and her pose left her full, firm breasts exposed to my view. Even at this tiny size, the image was enough to cause me to get hard.

I decided to try to summon her at her present size, i.e., five inches. I figured that a panicking five inch Jessica Biel would be easier to handle than a full-sized one. With a gathering of will, I tried to summon her.

This time it work. The figurine turned into a fleshy, albeit tiny, Jessica Biel. Her first reaction was to flinch and squirm. I tried to keep my voice as soft as possible. "Jessica, don't be afraid. It's all right. I'm not going to hurt you." I didn't know how much this was going to do.

Jessica looked up at me, and the panic on her face disappeared. She spoke as calmly as if it was the most natural thing in the world to appear in a giant's hand wearing only high heels and panties. "I'm not afraid of you, Jack." That was an interesting development, her knowing my name. "Just a bit startled. I was just freshing up my make up at the opening, and then the next thing I know I find myself in the hand of a giant definitely not dressed for a boutique opening." Jessica kicked off her heels and uncovered her chest. Even diminished, they were incredible. "But only if you don't mind me being dressed this way." She giggled at that, as my bug-eyed stared demonstrated I didn't mind a bit.

"So, you don't remember anything between the boutique and showing up in my hand?"

"Nothing. Would you help me off with these?" These were her tiny panties, which she had shoved partly down. I used my index fingernail to tug them all the way off. "That's better," she giggled. Her trimmed pubic hair was a light brown, and looked so inviting. "So, if you don't mind me asking, Jack, am I tiny or are you the giant? Jack? Earth to Jack?"

I shook my head. "Um, you're tiny. But just for now."

Jessica gave me a sultry look. "Well, are you going to make me normal size? Not that we can't have fun with me this size as well."

I really had to think, but Jessica was making it hard...in more ways than the obvious one. With a thought, I tried to de-summon her. Jessica froze again as I set her down. I found her tiny panties still hanging from my fingertip.
Part of me (guess which part!) wanted to unfreeze Jessica, restore her to her normal size, and go at it until we both passed out. By her conversation, I knew she'd be a very willing partner. But now I knew my spell had definitely worked. So how do you summon thirty two of the sexiest women in the world, all of them willing to do your bidding, without finding yourself stuck in a deep, dark hole by someone who wants to know how you pulled off such a nifty little trick?

I looked at the clock and realized I was going to be late for class. With a simple spell, I made the chess set look as I first found it, and headed to class, putting off the decision of what to do until later.