boulevard of broken dreams

I am not a very patient person, but I was determined to wait for those stupid chickens. A few weeks ago I lined the long, dark hallway with fluorescent red light strips and brought in cases and cases of bright white eggs. I laid the eggs on the floor, blanketing the concrete from wall to wall with little white orbs of expectation. I didn't count those eggs. I was waiting until they hatched.
For weeks I sat in the long, dark hallway watching those little white eggs do nothing. Their shells glowed red in the eerie incubating light, and sometimes I thought I saw them wriggle, but for the most part they were pretty quiet. It certainly wasn't a job for the impatient at heart, but I was very determined. I would not count those eggs.
Finally, one morning I woke up to a faint, hesitant sound. tap, tap tap (pause) tap, tap, tap. I opened my eyes to find a little yellow head with black beady eyes poking out of the reddish-hued egg next to my left ear. In about an hour, a wet, tired, and really very ugly chick was lying on the floor next to me, panting from its recent adventure. It peeped a few times before closing its eyes and falling asleep on the floor, still breathing heavily. I looked. I smiled. And then I counted.
One.
Soon the long, dark hallway was a chorus of tap, tap, taps and gentle peeping. I raced around the red-hued room, counting each shining body that lay on the concrete floor.
Two!
Three!
Four!
Five!
More taps, more peeps, more breaths, more chickens. I ran frantically from chick to chick, from tap to tap, counting, counting, always counting.
Thirty-five!
Thirty-six!
Thirty-seven!
Hurry, hurry, count the chickens. Don't miss any, don't miss one! The day you have waited for for so long - oh, so long - has come! They are hatching! They are here!
I was counting.
One hundred!
One-oh-one!
One-oh-two!
One-oh-three!
One-oh-four!
One-oh... Ouch!
Wait...
What?
Where am I?
My world was dark. I could feel a large lump forming on my forehead. I opened my eyes. My bruised head was resting on one of the concrete walls, the lights still casting their eerie red light on the long, dark hallway. How did I get here? I shook my head gently, trying to make sense of the bump, the wall, the egg shells at my feet.
What? Egg shells? Oh, right. One-oh-four.
I turned around from the wall, ready to resume my counting which had been so rudely interrupted. But as I faced the long, dark hallway, I was met with a very different sight than I expected. All around me, shattered eggs littered the floor. Yolks and whites spilled out of the shells and onto the concrete. There was not a chicken to be seen.
It had been a dream. A cruelly wonderful dream. A racing, counting, exhilarating dream. And in my sleepy excitement to count those dream chickens, as I sleepwalked from chick to chick, I had crushed all the eggs for which I'd been so determined to wait.
The bump on my forehead throbbed where I'd run into the wall.
One-oh-four. There had been one-oh-four. And now only egg shells covered the floor from lamp-covered wall to lamp-covered wall. All those chickens - all those hopes - were shattered.