Cake and Eat It…

The leap was not one which her athletics teachers would have been happy with. It lacked finesse, it lacked style, but most-of all, it lacked distance.

It was only the flailing of her arms that saved her from a fatal drop. They caught the telephone wires as the rest of her body sailed through the air.
The cables twanged under strain as she swung madly from them, hardly able to believe her luck. However, the rest of her brain elbowed this aside in favour of avoiding highly plausible death in a number of easy to obtain forms.

Further thought on the subject was dropped, rather like she was, when the cables reached breaking-point.

Daisy hit the wet grass and bounced slightly, winded but not yet out of the race. The gun clattered to the concrete path, where  – had she fallen slightly differently – she would have died of concussion and bullet-related injuries.

One of the spiders poked its head over the edge of the roof. Daisy grabbed the gun and pulled the trigger once more with eyes closed. A junction box attached to one of the poles exploded magnificently with a shower of sparks and a simultaneous BWhopffff!

She rolled to her feet and bolted for the other side of the road and possible cover, narrowly avoiding the oncoming traffic, trams and bullets. Those damn spiders had disappeared, which could be good or bad depending on whether her guardian angel was still around or not.
She heard running footsteps behind her, which probably meant the angel was having a crafty ciggie somewhere with some mates and wasn’t on the job. Her donation wouldn’t be as large as originally intended.

Meanwhile, the rational side of her mind – the one that wasn’t still screaming from the arachnids – assessed her situation, which had yet to improve. She had gotten away again, but the icing on the cake was that she was now being pursued by both factions: the women and the men; together with two bloody enormous spiders.

As she darted down side-streets away from these issues, she hoped her local knowledge had not been subverted by overzealous city politicians in the pay of rich apartment developers. She also wondered when the cherry for the icing would appear.

‘Hello there,’ said The Assassin, stepping out of the shadows.

‘Get in line!’ yelled Daisy, and squeezed the trigger of the gun in his direction. A bullet hit the wall beside him, showering him with brick-dust.

She kept going and lost him too.

Finally, a metaphorical light dusting of icing sugar appeared for her imaginary cake, in the form of torrential rain. The visibility soon became negligible and she was finally forced to stop, soaked to the skin and exhausted. She stepped into a doorway for a little shelter, then, gasping for breath, tried to work out where she was; she’d been running on instinct alone.