Your laundry
has a villain.
She slaps it.

The ordinary one. The shirt that was fine out of the dryer and isn't by the second wearing.

The cultures eat the film it grows from, so there's no second wearing stink.

Fast, sweaty, gone before you can grab it. Synthetic fabric holds sweat residue like a sponge.

Enzymes break the sweat down in the wash; the cultures take the after-shift.

Thick, slow-drying, and the biggest film in the house. Takes three slaps in the game. Takes a hot wash in real life, usually.

Cold water works. The cultures do the slow part after the dryer.

Mildew. The load you forgot in the washer overnight. In the game it spreads to the next machine.

Odor at the source: the residue it feeds on is gone. Still, take the load out.

You washed it. It came back. Split it and you get two little ones. That's a colony regrowing from survivors.

No survivors' house to regrow from. The space is occupied.

Somewhere in the closet. Ducks the first slap. Pops up on a different shelf.

Freshness that lasts a drawer, not an evening, so there's nowhere to hide.

A gas cloud. Let one escape and it fogs three washers. You know the bag.

The residue is gone, so there's nothing to off-gas. Wash the bag too.

Steals her sock and her points. In real life: the residue that competes with your scent, so the perfume loses by Tuesday.

With the competing film gone, the scent you picked is what's left to smell.

A shirt that passes the eye test and fails the sniff test. Fair game. Leave the actually clean shirts alone.

She cleans what the eye can't see: the film, not the stain.

Stage three. The whole drawer. Six slaps. He's what every other Tufo grows into if you let the film run the place.

Don't sterilize. Repopulate. He never gets his throne back.