Tiger Rock | The Monty Within | Bleeding Heart
Love hurts.
Danny’s next skin design was of a hummingbird because Daisy liked them so much. He prepared this time by stashing old towels and garbage bags under his bed in his room for easier cleanup. Unfortunately, the pain wasn’t getting any easier to endure. In fact, it felt even worse with each cutting the bots performed. His heart felt like it wanted to pound right out of his chest. His body would tremble and sweat as the blood dripped out of his body. And when the cutting stopped, he was super exhausted. He hadn’t been able to get up to patch himself for at least fifteen minutes.
But he was able to get through it knowing Daisy would love the design so much.
Quiet artist Danny Shullenberg hasn't had any real attention in a long while. His dad is out of town, his mom is busy with the toddler, and his older brother only makes fun of him. All he's got is his nerdy friend Aaron, and his beloved crush. Daisy Zayland is, in his opinion, the coolest girl in high-school. She even has a real tattoo!
When traveling to the Pizzaplex, Danny realizes that the place is using nanobots to cut wrapping paper and wrap presents, making it look like they're magically wrapping themselves. With his brother's advice to get his girl a "gift," he grabs a few to impress her, only for them to disappear from his pocket... and dig their way into his skin.
The twenty-first Tales from the Pizzaplex story, and the last of the seventh book, Tiger Rock.
Tropes related to “Bleeding Heart”:
- Animal Lover: Daisy likes hummingbirds and cats.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Danny thinks of Johnny as a "little monster" who likes to throw food at him.
- Attention Whore: Both Danny and Daisy qualify. Danny is suffering from severe Middle Child Syndrome, and starts harming himself in order to get Daisy's attention. Daisy herself is often left alone by her parents, and became interested in body art in order to stand out.
- Big Brother Bully: While Bobby isn't actively malicious, he does spend a lot of time making fun of his brother, making fun of him for having a crush, and steals his coveted phone call with his dad. He does seem to legitimately care about him, though, and tries to give him advice on how to ask out Daisy.
- Bloody Handprint: Daisy sees that Danny's left bloody handprints and shoeprints in his last moments.
- Body Horror: The nanobots slowly begin cutting into Danny's skin, in attempts to give him the tattoos he wants. Shaded tattoos cause them to literally cut holes in his skin. When he breaks and tells them to give him every tattoo, they turn him into a pile of blood and skin, which Daisy slowly has to follow to find his heart.
- Break the Haughty: Self-focused, snobbish Daisy actually enjoys hanging out with Danny, which is something new for her. When he brutally kills himself, she is forced hide from his dying pleas, then follow his trail of blood and skin until she finds his heart, upon which she screams.
- Cardiovascular Love: The first tattoo Danny gives himself is one of a little heart, which delights Daisy. The last thing she finds of him is a "silent and still" bloody human heart.
- The Cassandra: Aaron constantly tells Danny that Daisy is stuck-up and not as cool as he thinks, which Danny ignores. While it turns out that Daisy isn't that two-dimensional, she is very self-focused and her losing attention in Danny is what causes his breakdown.
- Changing Yourself for Love: In a more... physical manner than this trope normally sees, Danny remains his quiet artist self, but gets Daisy's attention by literally self-harming, cutting tattoos into his skin to get her approval.
- Childish Older Sibling: Bobby, who "acts like a baby" and is possessive over phone calls with their Dad.
- Christmas Episode: Doesn't actually take place on Christmas, but happens over the Christmas season.
- Clothing-Concealed Injury: Danny starts using clothes to cover up his makeshift tattoos so his family doesn't ask questions.
- Color Motifs: Right at the beginning, Danny describes Daisy as "like a vibrant purple or a dazzling orange. A color that caught your eye right away and didn’t have to mix with another shade because she wasn’t meant to blend in. She was meant to shine and be unique." In contrast, he's a neutral shade that is used to blend with other colors, "something overlooked and unseen."
- Commonality Connection: Danny intentionally utilizes this, telling Daisy that he's interested in body art like her. When the nanobots start cutting into his skin, she thinks he's giving himself tattoos and gets incredibly interested.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The nanobots, trying to cut every tattoo into Danny's skin, shred his body to bits, leaving only pools of blood, shaped bits of skin, and a sole human heart.
- Downer Ending: Thinking that he'll lose Daisy's attention, Danny declares to the nanobots that he wants every tattoo that they see at the expo, leading them to brutally cut him to pieces. As Daisy hides from the carnage, he despserately tells her about how he'd been in love with her for so long, leaving her broken and traumatized when she finds his remains, including his phone, which shows his parents desperately trying to find him.
- Dream Intro: The story starts with Danny dreaming about Daisy actually talking to him in school.
- Driven to Suicide: Danny keeps upping his self-harming until he finally breaks and has the nanobots completely destroy him.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: Daisy has "blondish-brown" hair.
- Fanboy: Danny and Aaron are both big fans of the Blake Billings graphic novels.
- Five-Finger Discount: Hoping to use them to impress Daisy, Danny swipes some of the Pizzaplex's nanobots, which end up crawling into his skin.
- Flower Motifs: While obviously Daisy is named after a flower, interestingly, a bleeding heart is a type of flower as well.
- I Just Want to Be Loved: It's heavily implied that this is why Daisy acts the way she does, doing anything to get attention. Danny does the same thing.
- Lonely Rich Kid: Daisy's parents are constantly out of the house, and prefer to go to a skiing resort rather than spend Christmas with their daughter. They leave her with a nanny most of the time, and let her get a tattoo out of guilt for not being around.
- Love Letter: Instead of letters, Danny leaves sketches in Daisy's locker. She initially just throws them out, not thinking too much about them, but realizes too late that he'd been the one to leave them and feels bad about this.
- Middle Child Syndrome: Big time. Danny's older brother is a loud, arrogant high school senior, and his little brother isn't even four yet and requires a lot of attention. With his dad on a business trip, like he usually is, Danny becomes really desperate for attention and will do anything to get it.Being with Daisy made him feel noticed and wanted. Something he hadn’t felt in a while, not since Johnny was born. He knew his parents loved him, but being with Daisy felt different. She made him feel needed in some weird way, and she made his nerves tingle whenever he was with her. He’d never felt like that before, and he wanted to hold on to the feeling as long as he could.
- Monster of the Week: The Pizzaplex's nanobots.
- Nerd Glasses: On Aaron.
- Nerdy Inhaler: For Aaron.
- Not Like Other Girls: Danny notes that the other girls in school "seemed to begrudge her for being different."
- Only Friend: Danny becomes this to Daisy. When he gets injured, she thinks about how she doesn't know what to do, since she'd never had to worry about someone else before.
- Parental Neglect: Daisy's parents are never around, making her lonely and attention-seeking.
- The Quiet One: Danny, in both his family and school.So while his little brother was a can-do-no-wrong little monster and his older brother talked a bunch and monopolized his mother’s attention, Danny had grown to be the quiet one. The one who didn’t cause problems. He really only enjoyed drawing in his sketchbook and keeping to himself, anyway.
- Self-Harm: The first tattoo that the nanobots give to Danny was an accident; he had no idea they were even inside him, let alone that they could do anything about the tattoos he said he wanted. But when Daisy starts excitedly approaching him, he lets them cut more and more into his skin, setting up his room for the aftermath and trying desperately to hide from his friends and family what he's doing. After his brother steals his phone call to his dad and makes fun of him, Danny goes to his room and has the nanobots cut him up in frustration, really selling the self-harm imagery.
- Self-Harm–Induced Superpower: Danny can get a ton of different images carved into his skin. So long as he doesn't mind the insane pain, bleeding, and skin loss.
- Sequential Artist: Danny is a quiet, sensitive artist who likes to draw in his sketchbook, mostly drawing Daisy or her star tattoo. When Daisy realizes he's an artist, she excitedly asks if he'd ever get a tattoo of his drawings.
- Shout-Out: In his room, Danny has a print of M.C. Escher
's Drawing Hands. - Sibling Rivalry: Mostly between Bobby and Danny, though little Johnny does like to throw things at Danny.
- Stalker with a Crush: Thinking Daisy is "too cool" for him, Danny contents himself with shoving drawings into her locker and following her to library study sessions.
- Tattoo as Character Type: Daisy is immediately marked as Not Like Other Girls (or high-schoolers) by having a tattoo, which is a simple star on her wrist. She's really into body art, actually, and bonds with Danny over their artistic tendencies.
- Trail of Blood: This is the only way Daisy is able to locate Danny's remains.
- The Un Favourite: The Shullenbergs don't seem to be doing this intentionally to Danny, but what with their focus on their other sons, he tends to get overlooked. Especially by his mother, who starts the story yelling at Danny for the mess Johnny had left in his room, and Danny thinking sullenly about how she always gets him toaster tarts for breakfast, which he doesn't like anymore– "but his mom didn't listen to him so he ate them anyway." In contrast, Bobby has a full breakfast of fresh fruit and eggs.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: After realizing what the nanobots are doing to him, Danny runs into the bathroom to throw up.
- When You Coming Home, Dad?: Danny's dad is often out for work, making him lonely and depressed.
