Kathy is an artist/graphic designer/writer/creative person with too many ideas and too little time. She says she can be long-winded who could have turn this contest into a 7000 word story . However, she asked me not to challenge her to do that =). She loves music, reading, and her three dogs. Her family is pretty cool, too, especially her 12 year old niece, who is turning out to be an artist/graphic designer/writer/creative person, too, for which she will take all the credit.

There are several runners up and I will be contacting you each of you. I want to thank everyone again. There were so many good stories to choose from  and I had a really rough time deciding on a winner.

Below is Kathy's Story, Follow The Yellow Face Road.  It will be re-posted in a blog entry of it's own, along with the runner's up as soon as I get confirmation from those writers.

Lauren woke up with a playing card stuck to her cheek. She peeled it off. Instead of a Jack of Hearts or a Queen of Spades staring back at her, it was an emoji.

Beyond the basic smiley, winky, and frowny, she had trouble figuring out what emotions the little yellow faces were trying to express. For instance, the one Twitter described as "weary" looked like it was having a straight up meltdown to her.

This one appeared nervous.

Propped up on the nightstand was another card, with the image of a paintbrush on it.

She texted a picture of the cards to Jason, with a question mark.

He responded with a skull and crossbones icon, wearing a safari hat. She recognized it as the logo of the mini golf course -- Jungle Joe's - which was across the street from one of those studios where you paint your own pottery.

She sent Jason the gif he called the confused frog, but got no response, so she dressed and headed towards Ocean Drive.

"Lauren?" the girl behind the counter asked, as she entered the pottery place.

Lauren nodded. The girl handed her two more cards. On one was the image of a silhouette of a man's head with his brain outlined inside. The other was an apple.

Thinking for a minute, Lauren wondered, "School?"

She drove to the high school. The parking lot was empty, except one car. Beneath the wiper blades were three more cards. One had a bullseye on it and the other a beer. This clue was easy. Whenever they disagreed, she and Jason headed down to the pub to settle things with a game of darts. The winner was declared right. The third card was of a character that looked like the baby of a purple people eater and a traffic cone.

At the pub, the bartender -- wearing a t-shirt with the purple people eater traffic cone creature on it - gave her another card, featuring an icon reminiscent of the ghosts from Pacman.

At the arcade down the street, she found another card with the logo of Jungle Jim's resting on the Pacman machine.

She sent Jason the confused frog gif again.

Her phone dinged with his reply: A picture of a man's hand, holding a stopwatch, followed by a picture of a running frog. They said HURRY, without using the word.

Lauren texted back the picture that looked like three arrows making up a rainbow circle. She hoped Jason got the meaning: Why are you making me go 'round and 'round?

He answered with a pointing emoji that Lauren interpreted to mean, "GO. NOW."

When Lauren got back to Jungle Jim's, Jason waited out front. He handed her three more cards.
One had the diamond ring emoji printed on it.

She tore up the card that had NO written on it. She handed back the one that said YES. And they both smiled, like the happiest of all the happy emojis.

It's August first in South Korea. There is roughly an 11 hour difference between then and now in the United States so sometime tomorrow the contest will offically close.