Though there were three perfectly comfortable chairs around the kitchen table, Galileo Figaro had chosen to lie on the floor, his bare stomach where his tank top had ridden up resting flat on the cold and slightly grimy tiles. He held the weight of his torso on his elbows and bowed his head over his fumbling hands in which he held a small pill between his index fingers and thumbs. As he turned it over and over his eyes stared down at it accusingly, it seemed strange that such a small capsule could do anything at all, let alone the phenomenal things that the Gaga doctor had claimed.
"Take one of these with food- refrain from the use of any alcohol or recreational drugs and come back in a fortnight so that we can discuss your progress." The Doctor had told him, looking down an overlarge nose through a thin pair of spectacles. They were worn purely with the intention of making him look intelligent, Galileo had decided, having noticed that there didn't seem to be any lenses in them.
As the Doctor had turned on his revolving computer chair, Galileo had peered over his shoulder, watching him with interest as he typed frantically. 'Self-confessed symptoms of schizophrenia', Galileo suppressed a grin as a teenage voice rang in his head.
"Nice… 'Cept coming from a self-confessed nutter... not."
But he was no longer a teenager and thirty five years of words and phrases, unsettled sleep and abnormality was more than enough.
"I'm too old for this shit," he'd told Scaramouche, "The words don't even mean anything anymore."
Galileo sniffed at the almost scentless pink and white pill. "How very Gaga of you." He told it, disgusted with its appearance and clinical smell. "I don't believe for one second that you'll make any difference…" he paused and narrowed his eyes. "I don't even believe you're a real pill. Placebo."
"You know," Scaramouche walked bare foot into the kitchen, peering down at her husband over an armful of washing. "They say that talking to yourself is the first sign of madness."
Galileo didn't move. "And talking to the pills that are supposed to stop madness, what about that?"
Stepping over his legs and slinging the laundry onto the countertop Scaramouche laughed, "I believe that's the last sign." She lowered herself onto the floor and laid flat on her side next to him, her cheek against the floor as she looked kindly up at his worried face and her thin fingers traced across his back affectionately. "Or perhaps the last but one… I suppose the last would be if they started talking back to you." She offered him a smile but he didn't respond.
"Just one pill and the madness is gone." She wasn't sure if he was telling her or himself.
"Maybe I like the madness," Scaramouche challenged, "What if I didn't want it to go away, would you reconsider making it stop?"
Galileo bit his bottom lip and shook his head in a motion that could only be described as something one might do if an insect had crawled into their ear. "I don't know… I just don't want to listen to the voices anymore." He told her as he placed the pill on the end of his tongue, but didn't retract it.
"Gazza?" Scaramouche had shuffled closer towards him now and entangled her arms around his forearm in a childish embrace, she dry-swallowed loudly and looked up at him with shining eyes of concern.
"Mm?"
"What if it's the voices that are telling you to love me?"