Can't Sleep? Count Sheep!

The room is still, except for the steady hum of crickets outside her window. Moonlight threads through the curtains, weaving a pale river across the floor. Near the bedroom door, her little egg-shaped night light glows softly, casting a warm yellow halo onto the wooden floorboards.

Chicken lies flat on her back, eyes pinned to the ceiling like a moth to a bare bulb. Her blanket is twisted around her legs. One wing is shoved beneath her head, the other limp across her chest. She hasn’t moved in ten minutes—except to sigh, over and over, louder each time.

Her bed, usually a safe nest of comfort, feels unfamiliar tonight. Too warm. Too flat. Too loud in its stillness.

She turns onto her side. Then her back. Then the other side. Her feathers are all rumpled, sticking out in a dozen directions. Her eyes are heavy, but sleep won’t come.

Her thoughts press in, relentless. Worries she thought she’d forgotten resurface—unfinished to-do lists, awkward conversations, bills she hasn't opened yet. Things she needs to do. Things she can’t control. It all tumbles through her mind like socks in a dryer, getting hotter the longer it spins.

She groans, flopping onto her stomach, beak buried in the pillow.

"This is torture," she mutters.

The crickets keep chirping. The moonlight keeps shining. The egg nightlight hums softly in its corner.

That’s when she remembers the flyer—bright and crinkled, taped to the front desk at Diane’s yoga studio. "Can’t Sleep? Count Sheep!" it had said in big, bubbly letters, with a cartoon lamb mid-stretch, looking suspiciously zen for someone battling insomnia. Chicken had glanced at it once while waiting for class, barely reading past the title before losing interest. But now, in the still of her dark room, it drifts back to her like a lifeline.

She shifts under the blanket, determined to give it a try.

"Alright," she whispers, resting her head back against the pillow. "One sheep..."

Baaa.

Her eyelids twitch, but she brushes it off. It’s late. Her mind is playing tricks. She squeezes her eyes shut tighter and keeps going.

"Two sheep..."

Baaa. Baaa.

This time, the sounds are closer, sharper, and fuller, like something real, not imagined. Chicken winces, her face scrunching in confusion, as if the noise could wrinkle her skin.

"Three Sheep..."

The room erupts into three loud baaas, right by her bed.

Chicken stiffens. Her eyes snap open.

There, standing in a loose, woolly line at the foot of her bed, are three sheep—real ones—blinking at her like she’s the strange one.

She sits up with a jolt, yanking the blanket up to her chest, clutching it like armor. Her heart thuds wildly. 

"What the—" she gasps, scanning the room.

The sheep stare back at her, calm and unimpressed, as if this is all perfectly normal.

Chicken doesn’t move. She stares, waiting for them to vanish like a weird dream.

They don’t.

One casually turns toward her bookshelf and starts scanning the titles like it’s browsing a library. Another trots over to her bedside table and sniffs the half-finished mug of hot oat milk she’d forgotten about. It lifts the mug with both hooves—somehow—and slurps.

"Hey!" Chicken yelps. "That was mine!"

The sheep doesn’t acknowledge her. It just lets out a satisfied baaa, then begins licking the mug's rim.

Two more sheep creep around the room, one peeking under her rug, another gently nudging her laundry basket like it’s searching for clues. A particularly fluffy one hops onto her reading chair and flips through a paperback with its nose.

But the worst offense is the sheep sitting cross-legged on the floor with her journal open in it's lap.

"Hey!" Chicken cries. "That’s private!"

The sheep looks up at her, totally unfazed. "Checking for emotional baggage," it says matter-of-factly. "Number one cause of sleep disturbances."

Chicken gapes at it, speechless.

She clutches the blanket tighter. And when she thinks it can’t get weirder, the door creaks wider.

More sheep begin to pile in.

One after another. Then five more. Then a dozen. It becomes a parade, a full-on fluffy migration, as if the room has been quietly designated the official meeting spot for the world’s most relaxed stampede.

They act like they own the place.

They’re everywhere—hoofing across her rug, grazing near her books, pawing through drawers, fluffing things, flopping down, baa-ing constantly. One particularly bold sheep is now wearing her bathrobe, looking entirely too pleased with itself. Another has started stacking her books by color on the shelf with alarming precision.

Her jaw drops. "Am I dreaming?" she mutters. "Or did I just wake up at a sheep-themed circus?"

No one answers. A sheep flops beside her bed and sighs, content.

A sheep with a clipboard steps forward and gives a gentle nod. "Miss Chicken?"

She stares. "Yes?"

“We received a subconscious dispatch from this location. Something about insomnia and an elevated heart rate.”

He checks the clipboard. “Yes. Verified. You summoned us.”

"I what now?"

"You counted sheep," says the bespectacled one, peering over his frames. "That activates our services."

"We’re Twenty Sheep to Sleep," adds another, adjusting the white socks snug around his hooves. "Specialty sleep support. Certified in baa-based calming techniques."

"I didn’t hire anyone!"

"Technically, it’s more of a psychic summoning," says a sheep now adjusting the curtains with extreme focus, as if preparing for a stage performance.

Chicken glances around wildly. Her entire room is now fully sheep-occupied.

Before she can protest, a tuning fork chimes, and the sheep fall silent. They arrange themselves around her bed like a chorus, and then, in perfect formation, they begin to baa.

Chicken stiffens again. One is lighting a lavender candle. Another is rubbing a tiny triangle of essential oil on her nightstand. Her drawer is still half-open, her oat milk is gone, and the curtains have been drawn just so, casting shadows that sway like scenery in a dream.

Then—a pause. Every sheep in the room clears its throat at once.

Ahem. Ahem. Ehh-hem.

"God help me—" she mutters.

And then the baa-ing begins.

Not loud or jarring, but soft, measured, oddly melodic. A few sheep hold a long, low hum, while others add gentle, breathy baaas with subtle vibrato. One hits a high note,  another harmonizes beneath it, a bassy undertone with the richness of a distant cello.

They sway in time, eyes half-lidded. Their white socks glow in the moonlight like part of a bizarre uniform.

Chicken doesn’t know whether to cry, laugh, or call animal control.

Instead, she exhales. Long and slow.

"Okay," she mutters, letting the blanket slip back down. "If I wake up in a padded room, at least it will be quiet."

She lies back against the pillow. The room is dim, wrapped in candlelight and sheep breath. The baa-ing rises and falls like a lullaby from another dimension. One sheep gently taps a triangle. Ting.

Her eyes begin to blur. The tension in her shoulders melts. Her breathing slows.

The baa-ing fades into a soft hum, like waves lapping at a distant shore. The edges of the room grow fuzzy and far away, and her limbs feel heavy.

Thoughts flicker, then drift. The sheep blur into shapes, and the room becomes a warm hush of wool and moonlight. One last breath, long and easy, escapes her beak, and her body sinks fully into stillness.

She falls asleep feeling like she’s lying in a meadow on a farm, the sky above her wide and soft, the air full of gentle bleats and the faint smell of hay—quietly praying she won’t wake up in sheep shit.

And high above it all, the moon hangs still in the sky, having silently witnessed the entire bizarre encounter. With a weary glow, it seems to sigh, Thank god my job is done for the night, before slowly slipping down toward the edge of dawn, ready to hand things off to the sun.

By then, the sheep vanished without a trace, leaving Chicken to her sweet, uninterrupted dreams.

Poem for Episode 

The Soft Collapse

Some nights, the mind grows too heavy to fight,

clouds knot in the ribs, and thunder grips the lungs tight

It thrashes and turns in a too-small cage, 

spilling lost dreams, old fears, and quiet rage.

Only when the storm rips the roof from the seams,

 and the heart lies bare under cold, brittle beams,

 does sleep, like a river, slip in through the scars,

 and stitch all the brokenness under the stars.

CHK