The Fructophobia Series is an ongoing series where I play with form and themes of horror, sex, and absurdity. As a person with an aversion to fruit and a hypersensitivity to textures, I have found the consumption of fruit to be quite uncomfortable - picture the standard horror manga. Let's perhaps use Junji Ito as a case study. His ability to command the page turn in horror fiction, having characters react viscerally to something a page before that "something" is then revealed to the reader, almost puts the reader in a state of anticipation and suspension. As is the phenomena of bugs entering strawberries, there is an innate horror to eating fruit that is similar to the page-turn - the biting down of such food only to look down and see it becoming something else. This series aims to explore that flirtation between the sweet and the sinister.

1. “Don’t Swallow My Seed”

2. “—Nana Job”

3. “The Hairier the Berry”

4. (Work in Progress)