Her white, sightless eyes, staring but not really seeing the radio that was playing Beethoven’s ninth symphony, over and over again. The sound was to mask the beeping of the respirator, but it’s beeping was still there, thumping through her mind like the beating of drums.
She rubbed her once beautiful skin, now withered like a rotten tomato. Was that what she was? She had lived a quiet life on the base of the plant for her entire life and this was how she was going to die? To be plucked quietly off the branch, never to be seen again?
She tugged her respirator towards her sink, where she was going to clean the dishes. She flicked off the radio and the room was silent apart from the quiet squeaking of a small rodent scratching in the wall and the constant drum of the respirator.
Her hands searched through the soapy water; clutching a glass between her hands she fell into the rhythm that she knew so well.
Scratch

Scratching at the stalk
Scratch
Hacking through the threads that bound her to this world.
Scratch
Soon she would not be able to hold on.
Scratch
She fell
Scratch
The sounds ran together and she began to fade.
Scratch
And she was gone.
Scratch, scratch, scratch
And then the scratching stopped too.