A bright orange metal hemisphere sat near the true middle of the asymmetric round oak table. It clacked and whirred as small panels opened and lights powered on. A thin black antenna rose from the top. A sweeping beam emitted from its apex and scanned the tabletop.

Ten eyes watched the contraption turn. Ten ears heard the pleasant *bleeeeep* it made after finishing its first scan. Five women waited as the antenna began scanning each of them in turn.

Jasmine was still in the stretched out white tank top and shiny purple bra from their cuddlefest. She was resting her chest on the table, giving her cleavage an exaggerated curve and her back a rest. She was just with her girls, who would know?

To her right was Rachel. The tight curls of her hair had loosened into wavy locks. She wore a light blue spaghetti-strap tank top. Her tiny nipples and petite swell of her breasts pushed the tight top outward.

Natalie came next. Her red hair was tied back in a casual ponytail. She wore a maroon-and-white plaid button-up flannel shirt. She had left it unbuttoned and tied it in the middle, exposing her midriff and just a few hints of her scarlet bra.

A series of lights turned on, putting a holographic display onto the table. A path of colored spaces that were flush with the table made a loop around the hemisphere. Holographic trees, dirt, streams, rocks, and flowers littered the landscape as the contraption continued scanning the girls.

Alice sat to Natalie's left. She wore a white see-through sleeveless blouse that buttoned on the side. The V-neck cut plunged almost to her navel, revealing a deep valley of cleavage. Her black and white lace bra was easy to see through her top. The black lace collar was still hugging her neck.

Marie was the last to be scanned. She was wearing a dark grey sports bra with bold strips of orange that squeezed and covered her C cups. There was a zip-up hoodie on the back of her chair. Two thin electric blue lines circled her upper arms mid-bicep.

*bleeeeep*

Five more lights shone onto the map (now complete with ruins, a couple helpful-looking NPCs, a cave, and pirates). Each of the girls watched as a miniature hologram of themselves appeared on the board space closest to them. They all had black pants and sneakers and the same length legs, but each of their top halves were perfect mirror images.

"Woah, that's so cool," said Rachel. She was leaning forward with her hands on the edge of the table. Her face was inches from her few-inch-tall hologram. "It looks just like me!"

"Technically, it IS you. You'll see as we play," said Natalie. It was her game, so none of this was new to her. She sat back with a proud smile as all of the girls (even Jasmine; it was hard to impress THAT woman) looked at their avatars with wonder.

Alice's copycat was waving at her. Alice giggled and waved back. "Hello!" The avatar jumped up and down with a cartoon ^_^ smile on her face.

*POOF!*

A dice block about the size of a plastic milk crate appeared in the air next to each avatar. They fell with a thud on the ground of the game board. Jasmine's avatar recoiled from the splash of water hers made landing in the stream. They each picked up their block (Marie's avatar's arms detached at the blue lines the first time she tried to pick it up) and rolled.

"Yay, I go first! Nice roll," said Rachel. Her hologram gave her a double-thumbs up, then picked up the block again. The other dice disappeared in a puff. Mini-Rachel rolled a 4. Two arrows pointed in opposite directions on the loop. The avatar had her hand on her chin and looked back and forth. "Go left!"

The avatar skipped along the spaces to the delight of all the girls. She landed on a red space in another stream. Her character was knee deep in water.

*dun dun wooooooo*

A fleet of piranhas jumped in a swarm around mini-Rachel. The hologram cowered in fear, then held up a big coin.

"Flip it," said Natalie. She mimicked flipping a coin. Her own avatar followed suit, caught the coin, and stuffed it in the front of her shirt. "Heads is always good, tails is always bad."

"Oh man...let's go for it..."

Rachel held out her hand. A hologram coin rested on her loose fist. She flicked it. Her avatar flipped hers. Both spun in the air and landed on the board, one vastly dwarfing the other.

"Tails!" shouted Natalie and Alice.

"Oh no! Not mini-me!" said Rachel.

The piranhas cycloned around her. She put her hands up. The fish darted in and snapped their hungry jaws. One of them leaped up and nipped off the avatar's nose. Another caught her left hand and chomped it off in one bite. The swarm subsided.

Rachel looked at the avatar, then herself. A light from the machine highlighted her real left hand, while another was glaring near her eyes. In a flash, Rachel's hand disappeared. She gasped.

"Wow," said Jasmine. "That's so AWESOME!" The girls laughed as Rachel felt her face and found a blank spot where her nose used to be.

The die reappeared next to Natalie. Her avatar wound up her leg and kicked it. It bounced off a tree and rolled back to her feet. 2.

"Hmmm...I'll go this way," she said. She landed on one of few yellow spaces on the board. This one was at the cave's entrance. Echoing drips and the flutter of batwings played out of the speaker. A different six-sided die appeared. Three faces were blank. Two faces had a treasure chest symbol. One had the word "Snatchers!" on it.

"The yellow ones are Event squares. We have to trigger seven of them to go into the final phase. Sometimes nothing happens..."

Mini-Natalie brought her foot backwards.

"...sometimes it's a huge bonus..."

The avatar kicked the new block into the rock wall surrounding the cave entrance. It spun madly in the air. The hologram squeaked and darted a step to avoid getting hit by it.

"...sometimes it the Parts Snatchers!"

The die spun on a corner. Its sides blurred together. It nicked a rock, fell to a side, and spun to a stop. The "Snatchers!" logo was face-up.

*CRACK-cr-CRACK rrruuumbleee*

Lightning flashed in instant storm clouds that darkened the board but didn't rain. The cave exuded an eerie green glow. Natalie's avatar took a few recoiling steps from the cave and fell on her bottom.

"What's happening," asked Alice. Her hologram was shuddering.

"I don't know," said Natalie. "I haven't seen the cave snatchers before."

Right on cue, five floating green fires shot out of the cave. Mini-Natalie put her arms in front of her face. The fires circled the orange sphere, then descended on separate paths to each of the five avatars.

Four of the girls were watching with curious anticipation. Marie, however, was recoiling physically from the table. She may have been silent, but inside she fought a battle to let go of control of whatever was going to happen.

The five green fires approached their targets. The flames licked the hair of the avatars without setting them ablaze, then surrounded the head of each mini girl. Five new holograms appeared; the real girls had their heads submerged in identical fires. They all heard a constant high note, a piano key struck long and true but unnervingly fractured.

"Guys, what's-" Marie began to say. She was unable to finish.

*CRACK-cr-CRA-...................*

As the lightning struck, the flames flashed white. When they became green again only a moment later, all five of the girl's heads were gone. Their avatars suffered a similar fate and followed the same animation of panicked surprise. The real girl's reactions were very different.

Jasmine's headless body rocked back as though she took a punch to the face before it disappeared. Her fingers clenched in a gradual curl to become fists. She looked like she was going to slam the table until her shoulders relaxed. Jasmine dropped her arms with a thump and waited. Her chest rose and fell in calm pace.

Alice was overjoyed. She patted her empty neck with catlike swipes, her fingertips brushing her lace collar. She bounced in her seat. Her chest jiggled like two bowls of jelly that threatened to spill over. If she had to flip a coin to get her head back, Alice already knew she wanted to lose the toss.

Rachel was frozen for the first few seconds. Who knew a board game called "Parts Snatchers!" would pop her no-head cherry? She had had her head off of her shoulders before, but Rachel had never gotten rid of it entirely. Her hand and wrist came up delicately to her empty neck stump. Her chest expanded as she inhaled deep. She pressed and poked her blank neck with her fingers. Her breathing hitched twice in a pleased way. She brought her hand down to try touching the holograms to find them, forgetting she couldn't feel them, while her wrist kept passing over her blank stump.

Natalie arched her back, slouching in her chair. Her long, toned legs cycled on the ground. She slid her hands up to her neck and over it, then back down to the sideswell of her DDs. She pressed her breasts together, causing her nipples to slide out of her scarlet bra. She stopped cold, stunned by a panicked half-thought; ("girls see...my tits?") She struggled to think it through. ("All...us don't...heads...seen my...before") Natalie resumed caressing herself with vigor.

Marie stood and sat, stood and sat, rocking as she did so. The absence of sound was deafening. The sudden blindness was frightening, like walking in a dark, dank basement when the power goes out but she couldn't smell the wet rot, couldn't smell or see or hear anything. Marie had experienced this once, with a Magic Eraser at Jasmine's place, and she hadn't liked it then. At least that time she chose to do it, and only for a minute. This time her head was stolen and she had no idea how long it would be until it was over. Marie twitched and twisted. The cords on her truncated neck stood out.

For thirty seconds, the game did nothing else. The five gorgeous beheaded women writhed and wiggled, waited and wobbled, touched and groped and panicked. Irregular thuds and scrapes went unheard as their gyrations shifted and slammed their chairs. What they lacked in mentality was made up for in movement and enthusiasm. Just when Marie was going to storm off in a frenzied walk to find a head (she didn't care whose by this point), the hemisphere made each girl's avatar and current space visible to every girl.

Natalie shot up in her chair and rushed to cover herself, then realized her avatar wasn't doing what she was. Her shoulders relaxed in clear relief, then she covered herself anyways and sat up.

Everyone saw three green flames pop up around Alice's headless avatar. Another three large flames appeared to Alice herself with the words "PICK ONE!" over them. She reached up and touched the one on the right. It dissipated in a green burst of sparks and showed a red "X" before the flames disappeared. Mini-Alice panicked over not getting her head back. Alice, unseen, bubbled and wiggled in joy.

The flames went in turn order and  chose Marie next. She was trying to swallow, hating how it felt without a head but trying to use it to remove the clogged feeling she was imagining in her throat. The large flames had barely appeared when Marie shot her hand through one of them, any of them, hoping to grab what she missed so dearly.

This time the green flames popped into confetti and played a fanfare they could hear. A hologram of Marie's head appeared. She scrambled to try and grab it and came up empty. The hologram shrank as it descended down to Mini-Marie and reattached on her neck. A second later, Marie's real head returned.

"Ah! Oh thank god! Oh! Phew!"

She was patting down her head in gratitude when she looked at her headless friends. Natalie was sitting with perfect posture, like it was no big deal. Jasmine tried her chances with the flames and failed; even though she leaned forward in frustration of guessing wrong, she still sat back up and relaxed. Alice was flat-out giddy and dancing in her seat.

("I've got to stop panicking over everything. What happened to my arms...what I had to do to get them back...")

She looked down at the blue-white permanent bands on her arms. Scenes of a train flashed into visions of a dark forest. A lit cabin resurfaced, then where her arms were inside, then the face of the man who also had blue-white lines and was missing something, and took it out on her.

("...that isn't normal. It's not what's going to happen ever again. You're safe, Marie")

She looked up to see Rachel take her turn. Marie watched as her empty wrist rose to choose a flame. The red X appeared again. Rachel went back to rubbing her wrist on her neck and strumming her fingers on the table. Mini-Rachel was sitting on a tiny sliver of her space, trying not to get smashed by the fingers.

Marie smiled at her unseeing friends who cared enough about her to force her to come on this vacation. For the first time since her incident, she felt like she could take a risk again.

A great many turns passed on the way to (and through) the final phase. A great many hands, feet, eyes, ears, heads, arms, and mouths were lost, severed, taken, traded, granted, and collected. Pirates decapitated and amputated, traps in ruins took away feet and poked out eyes, townsfolk gave away free heads for more spaces per turn, and an executioner operated a gallows.

They played on and on, laughing and teasing and spectating all the same, sharing in great cheer through to the end. Their first day of their getaway was over. Christmas Eve was only a nighttime away.