If I Should Die Before I Wake (audio story)

If I Should Die Before I Wake was the fourth and final story in the audio anthology The Stuff of Nightmares, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by John Dorney from a story by Jacqueline Rayner and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and India Fisher as Charlotte Pollard.

Publisher's summary
The Eighth Doctor and Charley are lost – in a labyrinth of monsters. And somewhere, lurking, are the Dream Crabs...

From the Sphinx to Gorgons, Cerberus and Pegasus, the Greek myths are alive and threatening the TARDIS duo with death at every turn. How long until their Fates unravel, and the truth is revealed?

Plot
The Doctor tells Charley a story in which she reaches the centre of a labyrinth and finds bodies and bones and other things beginning with B. A minotaur roars and attacks, her death certain, but Charley interrupts the story and says that she leapt to one side at the last moment and uses a cape to lure it into a pit. She uses a step ladder to get down and retrieve the belt from the minotaur before following the string out of the labyrinth and giving the belt to the King.

Charley says that she will not be able to get to sleep after that story, but the Doctor points out that he would not have put her bed in a room with three weavers if he wanted her to sleep.

The Doctor tells Charley another story, this one set in a garden full of statues armed with real swords. A Gorgon searches for Charley, who cannot escape from the garden (although Charley notes that she must have got in somehow) and has no weapons (which she thinks silly after encountering the minotaur). Charley interrupts and says that she smashes a statue, grabs a sword and decapitates the Gorgon with her eyes closed. When the Doctor asks how she knew where the Gorgon was, she points out that she had hissing snakes for hair. Again, she follows the string out.

In another story, Charley is alone on a ship on Lake Lerna, being attached by the Hydra. She adds that she was serving as a distraction whilst her men launch flaming arrows from another boat. The Doctor says that the flaming heads of the Hydra fall onto the ship, setting it alight, and that a flailing limb has broken Charley's arms and knocked her overboard, but she says that her men pulled her to safety by way of the string.

Charley asks why the Doctor seems so intent on killing her in the stories. He tells her about the parasitic Kantrofarri and how thinking about them gives them power, making her realise that she is dreaming. The weavers are making a tapestry with the threads of the stories to create a portrait depicting the ultimate fate of one of the travellers. The Doctor tells her that she has to die in the stories to shock her into waking up, saving her from the Kantrofarri, but she worries that she will die in real life.

The Doctor sets the next story in Thebes and has Charley encounter the Sphinx. Before the riddle can be asked, Charley says that the answer is "man" and that there is string showing her the way onwards. She follows it to the city and ends the story, for which the Doctor admonishes her due to the need for her to die in order to wake up. The tapestry now shows a Kantrofarri on a face.

In the next stories, Charley encounters Cerberus and plays fetch with him before using string to escape; she escapes from Scylla and Charybdis using a rope bridge; she turns the Cyclops into stone using the Gorgon's head, having carried it around in her bag in case of emergencies, before following the string out of the cave; astride Pegasus, she falls from the skies and lands on a net she prepared earlier; and she defeats Typhon using string to trip him into a crevasse.

Charley rhetorically asks the Doctor why she is not allowing herself to be killed in these stories when she trusts him completely, telling him that the tapestry is showing the Doctor's fate rather than hers. It is the Doctor who has to wake up, so Charley begins a story about the Harpy Queen. In this story, Charley is dealing with the lesser harpies whilst the Doctor goes after the Queen, but he is attacked by a Kantrofarri and she goes in search of him in a maze. She allows herself to be attacked too so that she can join him in the dreaming.

Charley gets tired and falls asleep. The Doctor commands the weavers, the Fates, to cut the final thread of the tapestry, causing him to wake up and kill the Kantrofarri. He eventually manages to find Charley by following the string and removes the Kantrofarri from her face using his sonic screwdriver. They follow the string out of the cave and fly away using harpy wings, making Charley wonder if they are still dreaming. The pain at their temples has gone, however, and they continue to fly to the TARDIS.

The Doctor and Charley end the story.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Paul McGann
 * Charlotte Pollard - India Fisher
 * All other parts played by India Fisher

Continuity

 * The Doctor and Charley met whilst flying. (AUDIO: Storm Warning)