Dark Explorations Ch. 01-04

Chapter 1

"... it was good quality but extremely insensitive..."

"... Alan is usually better than this. He sounded insane..."

"... I hope the families of the victims sue your ass over this..."

It was my masterpiece. I created the Dark Explorations channel as an outlet for my passions. True Crime had always been a favorite subject of mine and after dropping out of college it felt like a risk worth taking. It had worked pretty well at first. I was nearing 40,000 subscribers and I saw the golden hilltop ahead, the job doing something I loved. I was able to absorb audiences with in-depth commentary and the chance to discover rarely covered mysteries from across the country.

I was always more confident than many wished and I will admit that. But never without evidence and reason, I can assure my audience that I am entirely fact-driven and logical. I wasn't someone looking to make money off of creating boogeyman theories for some long lost murder. I only cared for solving the unknown and bringing the truth to light. Many times people disagreed, but there was no reasoning that could win over my theory. I was a detective without a badge. A vigilante doing the work that the lazy and ignorant government could not. This video was going to be my magnus opus of my career so far. The story of Sofia Bercowisz had been told thousands of times but I found something that others didn't.

Sofia Bercowisz was born January 5th 2000 to a large family in Baton Rogue, Louisiana. Community and church groups in Bercowisz's early years described the family as pious fundamentalist christians. They homeschooled their seven kids, Sofia being the oldest daughter. The Bercowisz mother was a church marriage counselor while her husband was an accountant who frequently left home for business. Church members on facebook spoke about Bercowisz's mother's therapy, how it focused on feminine subservience to the husband and the importance of girls to be pious and pure of the dark influences of the world. Children should be taught this and corrections should be swift and unforgettable.

Violence was not unknown in the Bercowisz home and on two separate occasions the cries of a young girl were reported by neighbors to the police, no action beyond a wellness check was taken that returned negative. Sofia created her own internet presence in her teenage years through online forums. She frequented realms of alternative culture, she almost exclusively searched for the opposite of her home life of conservative domination. Her fascination only grew stronger as the years passed and she became engrossed in the fictional world of the internet. Users attached to her were seen discussing Satanism, BDSM, and surviving domestic abuse and running away. Sofia would be seen exclusively in long-sleeves beginning around this time, a history of self-inflicted wounds or an increase in familial violence is likely.

In the year 2016, she found an online boyfriend in New Orleans, a twenty year old high school dropout who toured Louisiana playing Punk music. The two bonded quickly through online messages and became obsessed with each other, they sent explicit messages, discussed idealistic futures, and spoke of the daily pains of life. Sofia had grown with her body bound in chains and could not wiggle without receiving a blow. To her, this was her best opportunity. On July 31st, her boyfriend would park and wait in a parking lot near Sofia's home. Sofia collected a backpack of multiple clothes, hygiene products, personal electronics, and personal items and had planned to run away.

Things did not go as planned. The exact details of the incident are unknown but can be pieced together from the scene. The Bercowisz mother had multiple broken bones in her hands, a torn muscle in her ankle, a broken nose, a caved-in impact on her temple from a blunt object smashed over head while she was on the ground, and twenty stab wounds in the chest and stomach post-humously. Multiple objects were broken in the living room that she bleed-out in from the result of the struggle between the two. Her father was found in a similar condition in the master bedroom. All six of her siblings were stabbed to death in their bedrooms, their positions imply for some of them to have happened in their sleep.

Sofia met her boyfriend afterwards. The meeting was caught on a camera from a gas station across the street. The boyfriend and Sofia argued upon meeting, a possible result of her informing him of her actions. The boyfriend leaned into his car to grab something, possibly his phone, when Sofia stabbed him in the back. Sofia pulled him out of the car and stabbed him thirty more times in both the back and neck. She took the car keys, waited eight minutes, then drove away. Sofia would be on the run from police for the next four days as she evaded state troopers using I-55 to head into Mississippi and drive north towards Memphis. During the chase, she killed seven more individuals for food, shelter, or their cars.

While crossing the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, a police chase began which ended in Sofia colliding with a police cruiser and sending both vehicles into the Mississippi River. The strong currents on that day saw both vehicles swept under and drowning both drivers. This is believed to be the conclusion to Sofia Bercowisz's story. This is what I told my viewers in the first half of the video. But I have reason to believe better. The only corpse at the scene of her car was a mutilated girl who was partially hanging out of the front window, nothing forensically was done to prove it was Sofia. I was able to find a pattern of murders that matched Sofia's along I-40 into the Tennessee countryside going into 2018.

I made the theory that Sofia Bercowisz was both alive and still active in the east of the United States. My corpus of evidence was massive and seemed uncrackable. Too many similar mysteries to not be clearly connected. This was my greatest work yet but I remain perplexed. How could they respond like this? They speak as if I committed some crime other than finding the truth. I did no harm to the victims by connecting them to this case. They should be thanking me for finding justice! My logic was sound and impenetrable.

The video statistics were clear about the public's opinion no matter how flawed it was, 85% disliked. I had not slept since I posted the video over 24 hours ago. I scrolled through comments in my dark apartment and the insults began to feel numb. I just wanted to find something good to take away from it all. I had never hid a video from the public before and to hide it and apologize felt like an admission of guilt, or to being incorrect. I was not guilty, these people just couldn't see it. But to leave it up, will only hurt my channel more.

A small chirp came from my laptop as a notification sounded. It woke me from my cemented stare in a sense of bewilderment. I blinked a few times to wake my tired eyes and realize what just happened. A Super Thanks? Someone donated a single dollar on my video? I quickly pulled up the comment to see why I was receiving one on such an unpopular video. The user's name was just a burner email and provided no photo for the profile picture.

"Do you think you could find out what happened to Roxane Elliot?"

Roxane Elliot? She was an 18 year old mass shooter in 2023. She killed four girls in her home for troubled teens, before driving to her high school, killing two more people in the parking lot, then getting shot by a police officer. Normally the story would end there but, her ambulance wrecked with multiple vehicles on the way to the hospital and the fire that followed destroyed her body. Her case was interesting for how it ended but typical of troubled teenagers turned mass shooters. Did this person think she was alive?

I don't know exactly why I thought the way I did. I didn't believe I could track her down under the presumption she was alive. For some reason though, I decided to respond to this kind person who reached out to me on my worst performing video yet with an innocent seeming question.

"I can definitely look into her case and try to dig up something. It's a long shot, but if there's something, I will find it."

That seemed like an adequate response. I looked over to the time on my computer; 2:33 AM. I needed to sleep. My eyes hurt from staring at this screen and simply reading negative comments won't turn them good. I'll decide when I wake up what I should do. I closed the laptop and my eyes slowly adjusted to the change in light. The room was barren with no posters on the walls or sign of personality in its inhabitance. I had started renting this place a year ago but never bothered to change it into something other than a place of rest.

I stood from my desk to the laying position on my bed. My hunched back cried in an ache of relief to be flat on the soft surface. My eyes did not last long as they shut out the world around me. I slept peacefully in my bed, uncaring to the world around me.

Chapter 2

My privileged rest was not eternal. I had always been a heavy sleeper. I lost multiple jobs and missed many classes because of it. I felt the strong impact in my stomach and immediately tried to shoot upwards and defend myself from the sudden pain. I was greeted with the metallic rattle and an uncomfortably sharp edge on my ankles and wrists hindering my movement. I tried to adjust to my surroundings but the dark room provided little clues. The only thing I could perceive was the figure standing above me and the acidic smell of cigarettes.

"You sleep like a fucking corpse. I didn't even think that would wake you."

The voice was deep and scratchy but notably feminine. I tried to get up once again only to realize what was happening. My arms and legs were spread like a starfish and were locked with handcuffs attached to each end of my bedframe. The figure moved from the side of my bed to my desk chair. She pulled it over and set it next to my bed before sitting down herself and placing her feet up on my own legs with her heavy boots.

My eyes slowly adjusted and began to pick up details of this home intruder. Her outfit was all in shades of black and moved like it was thick and heavy. She wore leather pants and a heavy jacket that resembled a biker's when unzipped. Her hands were exposed and her left held a lit cigarette between her index and middle finger. She had been smoking it for quite a bit as the room was filled with the smoke and smell. She took a drag of the hand-rolled plant and the spark partially illuminated her. Her pale caucasian face was fully pierced with steel in her nose, lip, eyebrow, tongue, and more. Her black hair was cut short and messy. Her face had this angry look that was in paradox with the twist at the corner of her lips. I caught my breath after the blow and managed to speak out.

"Who are you? Why are you here?"

She took a moment to fully exhale the smoke in her lungs before responding.

"Not now, I'm asking the questions first."

She changed positions as she pulled her feet off of the bed and me and leaned forward in the chair. She was leaning near my face so I could smell the smoky stench mixed with an odor of the outdoors. I coughed from it.

"Tell me Alan, how did you track me?"

She was close enough that I could make out an expression of anger in the dark. Her teeth were clenched tight enough to fear for their condition. I wasn't able to process her statement immediately. All I could make out of my fear was a short response.

"What?"

She clicked her tongue in disapproval to my exclamation.

"Don't play dumb. I saw the video. How did you track me? Not a single person has even figured out I was still alive."

Her tone rose as she spoke. She practically yelled at me by the end of it. Realization settled in my mind and I felt my eyes go wide and my throat run dry. This was the same woman I had spent weeks making a video about. This was the same woman who killed sixteen people before disappearing into the Mississippi river. This was the same woman who people were calling me crazy for believing her to be alive. I tried to speak but it only came out as a shocked whimper. She wasn't happy with that.

"Tell me god damn it!"

She stood up and grabbed the night shirt I wore to bed. She lifted me and held me helplessly as my limbs pulled against their chains. I could feel her hands from the other side of the fabric. They were strong and warm, clearly still alive. I finally managed to say something.

"I just followed the pattern!"

She dropped me back down on the bed. She remained standing and looked down at me. Her anger remained but seemed mellowed compared to before. Rather than running hot it seemed to go cold and was now trying to calculate me or my response. She kept staring at me with a gaze that felt heavy to be under. I continued explaining myself, anything to save me from her.

"A Mississippi house just south of your accident was burglarized and had their car stolen hours after you... fell from the bridge. It matched with other houses that you did the same to. I don't know how but you survived and switched your body with another girl's. I just kept finding cases that matched your work.

My voice was scared and panicked. My breath was shallow and no matter how much I breathed I was unable to fill my lungs. She looked away from me and inhaled her cigarette. She was quiet as she turned around from me. She kicked the chair and sent it flying into the wall in a loud crash. I closed my eyes in panic. I knew what she was capable of and I would never be able to stop her if she decided I should be next. Did I know too much? Was she going to hide all the evidence I collected in a shallow grave with me in it? It was not the smartest thing to do but I closed my eyes and hoped it was a dream. I heard her sigh loudly.

"Do you think you can do it again?"

I opened my eyes and saw she was looking down at me again. Her eyes were lit up from the light of the cigarette. I could see the shine of her many piercings reflected off of it. There was no longer the same anger. I couldn't decipher the neutral expression she held as she waited for me.

"Again? What do you mean?"

She pointed over towards my desk where my laptop lay.

"You said you could find Roxane Elliot if there was evidence."

The Super Thanks? I responded to it before I went to bed. Did she see the comment? Was she the one who left it?

"Yes! If she's alive I can track her!"

She took the cigarette and inhaled the last of its usable tip. She grabbed the sleeve of her left arm and rolled it up. It was covered in scarring, burns, and bruises. It was like seeing the result of a house fire on a living person. She took the end of the cigarette and extinguished it on her own skin. It made a sizzling noise that made my skin curl. Her body didn't move but I saw her react in the darkness. She was biting her lip and it was almost a curled smile. When she was done with it, she threw it on the ground. She returned her attention to me after the display.

"My boss wants to use you. If you're as useful as you say at least."

More questions began to rise. She had a boss? Who was this person employing a psychotic killer like Sofia Bercowisz? She didn't give me the opportunity to answer. She walked towards me and raised her right fist. She sent it down on my head and struck my temple. That was the last I remembered before my life changed.

Chapter 3

My head was pounding. I didn't feel like I was unconscious for long. It felt like Sofia hit me and I simply blinked but that was clearly not the case. The surroundings were completely different. My comfy bed was replaced with soft grass and the roof of my apartment was now a beautiful night sky. I was still in the simple shorts and white shirt that I had worn to bed that night. I immediately attempted to get up. I felt relief as my hands and feet were no longer constrained from the handcuffs.

"Thank god. I was worried I'd need to kick in the ribs to wake your lazy ass."

I looked over and saw Sofia sitting on the porch of a small rustic home. She wasn't smoking this time and the moonlight provided me a far better look at her. She wore the same leather biker jacket but zipped this time. Her face was clearly beautiful but held a ruggedness that made you keep your distance or fear being cut. She stared at me with an expression of boredom as she rested her head on her hand. I quickly stood up.

"Where am I?"

My voice trembled with uncertainty and confusion. I knew this wasn't a dream. The dirt on my palms made me aware of that. I didn't understand anything though. Why didn't she just kill me if she didn't want me to track her? Why was she asking about Roxane Elliot? But the most important question was simply where was I? It was clearly rural as this small home was the only thing along a small dirt road in the forest. Sofia remained sitting and watched me closely. I watched as she seemed to play with a lip piercing with her tongue.

"30 minutes from Peterstown, near the border with Virginia."

The border with Virginia? I was just in Morgantown. How far did we travel? And how? I didn't get the chance to ask my next question. She stood up in front of the house. This was the first time we were both standing. She was a little bit taller than me and held the muscular advantage clearly. If she wanted, she'd easily destroy me. She pointed to the building behind her.

"This right here was where Roxane was last that we know. My boss needs you to figure out where she's going."

She spoke about her boss before she hit me. Who could be hiring her with such a history? But I didn't ask that. Something else she said caught my attention.

"You know Roxane Elliot was here? How long ago?"

Sofia answered my first question with a nod.

"Two days ago. No one has touched it since we found it. You think you can find whatever it is you need?"

In a normal situation, I would have said no. Without looking at the situation inside, I had no idea if she left any clues I could use. I had never seen another of her crime scenes recently and only remembered the details of her case five years ago. I had no way to make any solid claims about her behavior. But this wasn't a normal situation.

"I can try."

I confirmed her question. If I wanted to survive this, I needed to play along. She seemed pleased and gave this crazy smile showing white teeth and a pierced tongue behind them.

"That's the spirit. Come on in!"

She turned around, walked up the steps, and opened the wooden door. It gave a creaking sound that left the rest of nature silent. She turned towards me and motioned for me to go inside. I took a few steps forward before the stench hit me. It was a sweet bouquet of rotten meat that attacked the nostrils. I recoiled instinctively and made a sour face while covering my nose. Sofia laughed at my reaction.

"What the hell did you expect? It's a fucking crime scene."

Part of me had hoped I was dreaming despite the pain in my side and extremities. Any hope

I had disappeared at that moment. That smell was definitely real and seemed to work its way into my nostrils no matter what barriers I put between. I continued to approach, despite my best judgement.

As I walked past Sofia and through the threshold into the home, she followed in behind me. All the lights were off and I took a moment to find a light switch by the door. Luckily, the lights came on. The entrance was a wide hallway which turned left into a living room/ area. I turned the corner to find the source of the smell, at least one of the sources.

The living room was simple with a couch and a recliner chair facing a fireplace with a mounted TV. The walls had wooden wall panels that kept its rustic look. In the recliner chair sat what was left of an older gentleman. The body would have been overweight in life but had ballooned since death. The skin was a sickly pale with a green tint. The arms rested neatly on the recliner's armrest while the head was plastered across the ceiling and on to the kitchen island behind the recliner. To add insult to injury, a knife or other sharp instrument had been taken to the nether region leaving it skinned and shapeless.

I was not disgusted. I was too desensitized for that. It was inaccurate to say I was shaken either, I had expected such a scene. But there was a certain innate shock to finding such a scene in person rather than in a photograph. There was no drop in my stomach or panic in my thoughts. Only a silent moment of taking in the area and wondering what led me to this. I was taken from the moment by Sofia tapping my shoulder.

"I hope you aren't growing a moral compass now of all time."

I shook my head in response. I took a few steps forward. The body was at least two days old and had clearly been carved up after the death judging from the stains on the seat. It was quick based on the arms and legs and how they settled into rigor mortis.

I saw behind the recliner there was a dark brown stain on the wooden floor boards. I recognized it as the stain you see from dragging a body. It led from the kitchen all the way into a hallway on the other side of the room. Sofia didn't speak but followed and gave a discerning look.

The hallway was short and split into three doors left, front, and right. The trail led to the left door which was left wide open opposed to the closed front and right. The left seemed to have been a guest room or a child's. It held a single adult twin bed and a dresser and little decoration. On the bed was the body of an older woman rolled onto her side. Her head was intact and kept a wide eyed look of fear on it. Her chest had been pulverized with her right breast completely gone. Whatever clothing she wore was removed and thrown to the side on the floor. I watched as a roach lay unbothered on her left breast, eating away at the dead flesh.

Sofia laughed at the sight and I turned to her confused. She gave me a cheeky smile, as if sharing a joke that I didn't understand.

"I didn't know Roxane was a Sappho. Guess she prefers dead GILFs."

I looked over to the body and immediately shook my head.

"No, she didn't have sex with her. The body's position wouldn't allow it. Let me check for something."

Sofia raised an eyebrow, intrigued, as I moved out of the room and back into the living room. I walked over to the recliner chair and began inspecting the pants of the man. Sofia followed and was immediately confused. I explained.

"She was looking for something. And was desperate enough to go through her clothes and his pants. His pockets are inside out."

I stood up and moved past Sofia quickly. She turned around and followed me as I moved to the door on the right of the previous hallway.

"If I'm correct, then I assume..."

I opened the door and was met with a complete mess. This was previously the master bedroom with a king sized bed, a large dresser, jewelry boxes, and a desk. Every single part of the room was turned inside out. Papers, clothes, and various trash covered the floor.

"Yep, she made a mess."

Sofia looked exasperated at the mess. I walked into the room, not bothering to dodge the trash on the floor.

"If it's on the floor, she didn't need it."

I narrated as I moved through the room. It felt like another one of my videos at that moment. Analyzing crime scene photos and piecing together a puzzle. Sofia followed along as I spoke. Her face would shift between confusion, shock, and laughing as I went through each part of the room. Once I reached the bed, some conclusions could be made.

"The bed isn't made but that's not surprising. But the lack of trash on it is. Odds are, she slept here for one night."

I took one of the pillows on the bed trying to find some hair. Some hair that differed from either corpse's grey would've been conclusive but none turned up. Sofia looked at the bed for a moment before grabbing the blankets and throwing them aside. Hidden underneath was a single large blood stain and the man's missing genitals, locked in an erect fashion. I was shocked but Sofia wasn't.

"Yeah she definitely stayed the night. She even made a dildo for the night."

I looked at her confused and she matched mine. She grabbed it and began to examine it. The skin was falling off but the rigor mortis kept it hard and long.

"You've never seen Dahmer's freezer? Rigor mortis dicks make a great dildo for the short term."

I nodded along as she spoke. Okay, this one grossed me out. I instinctively imagined Sofia treating me the same way and felt both fear and a little aroused at the idea. She gave me a knowing smile which I decided was best to ignore.

"Well that confirms she stayed the night and it was meant to be temporary. Now the question is what she wanted."

Sofia dropped the dead dick back on the bed. I looked around the room for any other sign of life. Whatever was cleaner must've been important. The kitchen was clean aside from the large stain on the ground and had dirty dishes in the sink at least a day old. The bathroom behind the third door also had a brunette's hair in its shower drain, Roxane's same color.

Chapter 4

After an hour, Sofia was losing patience as I continued to go over the same few rooms in the small house.

"When are we gonna admit you have nothing?"

She asks as I went through the dirty clothes on the ground. I said these were likely useless but I needed to find something. I didn't want to lose the only reason she had to keep me alive.

"I just have to change my approach. What happened before she came here? Do you know?"

Sofia laid on the bed, ignoring the rotting appendage next to her. She closed her eyes and thought for a moment.

"My boss told me to get Roxane out of her territory. She was snooping around where she shouldn't have been. I found her in Peterstown and we fought. She got a good shot on my leg and was able to get away. That was two days ago."

She spoke about it off-handedly. Like it was a normal fact about her life. A few details definitely weren't normal.

"She shot you in the leg? You don't even have a limp."

She shrugged.

"I know a good doctor."

I decided to move past that statement. It was strange and needed to be addressed later if I survived this ordeal.

"So you found her and persued. She ran away and ended up here. She stayed the night then left later the next day."

Sofia nodded along to the same story we've built over the last hour. Finally an idea hit me.

"How did she get away from you?"

Sofia finally opened her eyes and looked at me curiously.

"She ran on foot. I managed to cause her to crash her car."

A realization hit me.

"There was no car parked outside but there was a driveway with tire tracks. She stole the car."

Sofia leaned forward and angrily shouted.

"You're fucking kidding me! Of course she fucking did. She could be in fucking Kentucky at this rate!"

I stepped away from the angry serial killer and shook my head.

"Not necessarily! She wouldn't ransack this place just for some car keys. Those would be easy to find. She was also looking for something else."

Sofia looked towards me with those angry eyes. There was a dark fire behind them that told me they would kill and desperately want to.

"Oh yeah? You haven't been able to find anything else. God, you're useless."

She laid back down with a thud that caused the mattress to shake. I stepped back and tried to imagine myself as Roxane. She walked into this house killing both residents. She finds the car keys but needs something else before she can leave in the morning and it forces her to stay until late afternoon. I imagined her walking through the house tearing up everything in sight for it. I had edited 3d figures doing the same actions in my videos before. I tried to imagine how I'd animate it.

Trash was everywhere as she tossed aside cabinets full of belongings. Papers fly as the desk drawers are dumped and end up on the floor. Papers? I kneel down and look at a few of the papers on the ground in front of the desk; tax documents, a birth certificate, all very personal information. Why did she feel the need to dump these out? Was it something personal to those people she randomly found? It seemed unlikely.

As I was going through, something caught my eye. Among all the legal documents was a single piece of scratch paper. I picked it up. It had been crinkled into a ball, the only one among these documents. I unfolded it to find an itemized list of passwords. The wifi, bank accounts, and more. This wasn't something you normally crumpled.

An idea formed. On the desk among the trash and clothes was a small Chromebook. I opened it up and was met with a password requirement. I looked down at the paper and wrote the password 'rayandjane1971.' The computer came to light with a single Google Chrome window open. I flicked over to the search history. 'Yesterday: Google Maps - Lynchburg, Virginia.'

"You found something?"

I looked over my shoulder and found Sofia leaning over me from the edge of bed. Her grin was large and eyes seemed wild. Despite that, I couldn't help but think she was beautiful. And the distance between us was probably only a few inches. I found myself blushing at the serial killer's pretty face. I tried to take a step away casually. To not show the effect it had on me.

"Uh, yeah! She was searching for their computer password. I hadn't thought about it but there's not service out here. If she wanted to figure out where she was and how to get to wherever she's going, she would need to find the password. Luckily, she didn't delete her search history."

Sofia hopped off the bed and fistpumped in the air.

"Hell yeah! I thought you were going to be some useless know-it-all. Turns out she was right about you."

She turned around and pointed towards me. It was odd seeing her excited. The only smile I saw was that sadistic one she gave me. This one seemed more friendly, though I could not say what the exact difference was in appearance. Something behind her eyes told me that I didn't need to be afraid of this one. She punched me in the shoulder. It was a friendly gesture not meant to harm but it definitely hurt.

"Consider yourself lucky Alan. I was starting to plan how I'd kill you."

On second thought, I think that was my imagination.