In Short – Issue 4 (Winter 2026)

January 31, 2026

Image credit: Katherine Matsubara

A Nutshell Study

By Hillary Wentworth

When the call came, the detectives didn’t say how my brother had died. Just that there was no evidence of foul play. And so I was left to wonder.

Years before, I’d become interested in The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, miniature scenes one woman created in the 1940s and 50s for forensic science education. Macabre dollhouse dioramas of suicides, murders, and accidents where the sole question was: What happened here?

I had to see for myself. Entering Jon’s apartment, I observed a half-eaten package of sushi rolls, a spider plant in need of water, Grey Goose in the freezer, a bowl of fruit oozing juice, scratch-off lottery tickets, a cell phone, a wallet holding $12 in cash, a crumpled ATM receipt, the couch where his body had been. And a plastic CVS bag with three used syringes in it. 

Something like that skews the scene until it’s all you can see. 

Students took their time with a single nutshell study, noting new discoveries with every viewing: the open oven door; the coil of rope; the blood droplets; the tiny, bloated hand. Each detail informed their analysis until they arrived at a cause and manner of death.

I thought I knew my brother’s. The syringes told me, but they weren’t the full story.

The pill bottles in Jon’s apartment don’t register at first. They are tucked in a neat row on his bedside table, mostly empty. Prescription antidepressants he was supposed to be taking daily but that, it appears now, he had stockpiled for a future event. One that had swiftly arrived, his friend having left, the heroin gone, the eviction notice—the size of a postage stamp—slipped under the dollhouse door.

Hillary Wentworth earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Her work has appeared in Hippocampus, Black Warrior Review, The Fourth River, and Flash Fiction Magazine, among other journals. She lives and writes in southern Maine.