Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome writer and poet Adriana Mucea, based in Sydney, Australia, with “Thunderstruck,” a captivating short story that reveals the way prejudice blinds us to help and distracts us from clear and present danger. Driving home across the countryside after work, Simon is annoyed to see the biker in his rearview mirror–his brother was killed in an accident with a biker–and is distracted. After a brief phone conversation with his woman at home, he turns up his radio to hear his favorite song, ACDC’s Thunderstruck. If you know it, you will be singing right along when “Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flicker of bright red in the left side mirror. A car was speeding on the side road. He saw the Stop sign. The car did not slow down.” Adriana writes with an immediacy and an economy of words, creating a believable world very quickly and enmeshing us in Simon’s reality. The ironic twist of fate that follows the horrifying hit-and-run accident and leaves us hopeful that Simon will not bleed out on the side of the road is riveting. Adriana calls forth our empathy while questioning the limits of that empathy. Would we make Simon’s mistake ourselves? Have we done so in the past?
Read “Thunderstruck” in Synkroniciti’s “Vulnerable” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Adriana Mucea is a writer and high school English teacher who lives in Sydney, Australia. Her poems were published by Duck Duck Mongoose Magazine (USA) in their February 2023 issue. Adriana also creates blackout poetry and some of her blackout poems were published in December 2022 and 2023 by Coin-Operated Press (Scotland).
She now ventures into the realm of fiction where she would like to spend more time writing narratives that captivate and resonate with the readers. To search for inspiration, Adriana enjoys reading short prose and poetry. When she is not, she is watching movies or she is baking.