Bonnie braced herself on the tentacle and pushed off with her hands: for a brief instant she was hanging in the air above the thing. She turned gracefully in mid-air and landed lightly, now facing the other way. She wasn't quite sure where she was headed but she leaped off the tentacle anyway. Anywhere, she felt, was better than where she was.
The frustrated thing with the tentacles started to pound on everything it could reach. Most of that, Bonnie knew, was a fire escape that had just about decided it'd had enough of life.
Behind her the fire escape gave up its grip on the building and started to fold and collapse like a weary accordion. The fellow with the tentacles went down with it, all his arms waving as he plummeted toward the pavement. Bonnie ignored him and tried to decide exactly how she was going to avoid going the same way. She didn't have a lot of time, or a lot of choices, since no matter how you looked at it she was falling and there wasn't a handhold in sigh
 |  |
