Marisa Nikole's Dark Fantasy Comes to Life in New Single

Most people have had a relationship so toxic that once it’s over, the parties involved vow that if should they cross paths again, it’s pistols at 25 paces at dawn. Some of us have had more than one such relationship, and perhaps should just take up needlepoint for the good of society.

Denver-based singer-songwriter Marisa Nikole has had one of those relationships, and being the civilized person she is, Nikole didn’t fantasize about shooting her ex — only slow-poisoning him. It was a morbid daydream that inspired her single “Dangerous,” which is now available to stream. The song showcases a bluesy fuzzy guitar riff over a sparse drum arrangement as well as a guest verse from Denver rapper Jay Triiiple.

“The song can relate to anyone,” she says. “Everyone has someone in their life who they are like, ‘Ugh, not that person,’ or ‘I can’t stand that person.’ It relates to everyone, but I also feel like it has a feminine power vibe.”



Nikole was inspired to write the song about six years ago, when she was a medical student writing a paper about arsenic, a naturally occurring element present in most municipal drinking water that has found use as a slow-poisoning agent.

“It’s going to sound psycho, but it was a random thought that popped into my head,” she recalls. “What would it be like if I happened to poison my ex-husband, and he died a slow death after all the things we’d gone through and he’s done?”

Offing a no-good spouse or significant other is nothing new: Murder ballads have a longstanding place of honor in American folk music. The Chicks, formerly the Dixie Chicks, scored one of their biggest hits with “Goodbye, Earl,” a Fox News-infuriating tune about the murder of the abusive titular husband. Johnny Cash’s alter-ego, Willy Lee, ends up doing 99 years underneath the ground at the end of “Cocaine Blues” for shooting his bad woman down. In “For My Upstairs Neighbor,” Rapper El-P promises the woman in the adjacent apartment that he won’t tell if she kills him. Entire “news” shows on cable TV are dedicated to spousal homicide.

Arsenic is just one of the poisons employed by Abby and Martha Brewster in the play Arsenic and Old Lace, and it figures heavily in V.C. Andrews's 1979 novel Flowers in the Attic and its 1987 film adaptation. (And if you’ve seen that movie, the support group meets on Tuesday.)

Nikole, who says she mines her personal life for material, was married to the object of her dark fantasy for five years, and they were together for five years before that. Originally from Ohio, her ex-husband took a job that brought them to Denver in the first place. Nikole decided to stay after the marriage ended. “I don’t know what he's doing now,” she says. “I don’t really care, to be honest.”

She blames some of the relationship woes on being young, and she forgives herself for the mistakes of her youth. So what was it about the ex-husband that made Nikole break into a little smile as she pored over a medical text about arsenic?

“He’s done some things that I wouldn’t want people to know about if I were him,” she says. “One of the worst things he did was on our taxes, so he screwed my ability to even file for taxes for, like, eight years.”

There are plenty of bad things a rotten ex can do, but bringing down the fury of the Internal Revenue Service is probably pretty high on the list.

“It was like one of those things you do in the past that will haunt you for life because it’s the IRS,” she says. “I was basically thinking about things like that and all the shit he put me through unnecessarily. You know what you're doing when you do things like that.”

For the record, Nikole has since remarried and is in a happy relationship devoid of spousal murder fantasies. Sometimes, you just need to meet the right person.

“Dangerous” is available on Spotify. Check out marisanikolemusic.com for more information.