MuckFlash

Akron, OH -16 April 2009- Edna and Hortense Engstrom were once as close as the two shy girls embracing in a worn sepia photograph taken nearly 50 years ago. These days, however, the animosity between the two siblings is palpable to outsiders and consuming for the both of them. Since 1976, when Edna filed a business process patent for the Engstrom family’s regionally renowned double fudge chip butterscotch cookies, the two have quarreled in and out of the legal system about who is the rightful owner of the recipe.

“That wrinkled pile of bitch stole my damn recipe,” fumed Hortense, speaking from her home. “It takes a dirty, lying whorebag to watch a family member work nights and days to perfect the family tradition and then go and sell the goddamn thing to Keebler,” she continued. “Momma baked a batch of those cookies every day before Poppa beat the life from her, and I’ll be a motherfucker if my slut of a sister can add a dash of vanilla and cash in like a bakery prostitute.”

Edna, through a spokesperson, declined to comment. The spokesperson reiterated, however, that any claims against her intellectual property were “entirely without merit” and that her patent rights company, as well as its primary licensee, Keebler Inc., would “vigorously defend against these frivolous arguments.”

The two sisters were born to a soy bean farmer in Akron in the summer of 1923 and worked for most of their lives as receptionists in the same dentist’s office. As their cookies became popularly demanded items at nearly every social event in Akron, however, Edna filed the recipe and preparation procedure with the U.S. Patent Office, and the patent was granted in the summer of 1976. When approached by Keebler, Edna quickly licensed the patent, though the terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Hortense, for her part, filed a lawsuit as soon as Edna revealed her secret by flaunting new and inexplicable wealth. As hostilities flared, Edna began to construct a new home several miles away from the two room apartment the sisters had shared for over four decades and began to garner a reputation in the town’s gossip pages as she vacationed with high school quarterbacks and lavished money on a prize winning kennel of pure-bread Corgis. Despite nearly reaching a settlement in 1984, the proceedings have swung back and forth as the case has drifted through various state and federal courts, with the sisters dropping and reinstating their arguments repeatedly.

This time, however, Hortense insists that she is committed to seeing the suit through to a favorable verdict. “I’ll get my due if I have to suck the very blood from her body,” she said.