My best friend and I were filming a short for our high school's film festival, hoping to win the grand jury award. It was a black & white horror movie because we were artsy outsiders, and I had smuggled in my treasured illegal butterfly knife to serve as the murder weapon. I was operating camera for a planned POV shot. The POV of the victim. My friend was playing the killer. Action! He rushed at me, swinging the knife towards camera wildly while I attempt to film and squirt fake blood (chocolate syrup) towards his face. It happened on the first take.
Didn't feel much at first. Just a dull thud in my arm when it went in, like getting hit with something small and heavy. It went through some forearm meat and hit my elbow, not too deep, stopped by the bone and cartilage. What I noticed most, was the sound. A juicy wet THWACK, surprisingly similar to what you'd hear in a cheesy slasher flick. It was a gross sound. The stabber immediately screamed "OH FUCK DUDE!" and dropped the knife. It made a kind of slimy sucking sound coming out too. I didn't feel any pain for a surprisingly long time. And though it did eventually hurt - mostly an itchy, burning sensation - I still assumed I had simply been lucky. Until I realized it had been hours and I still couldn't bend my elbow.
For the next four days I tried to hide what had happened from my parents and teachers. That was the scariest part; getting dressed, eating breakfast, going to school, my left arm flopped uselessly by my side as I tried to act casually. My 15 year-old brain had judged that the threat of expulsion (it was my knife, after all, on school property) was too great to risk seeking help, while inside I panicked more and more that I'd damaged some crucial nervous system infrastructure and would never regain full mobility.
Slowly, after the third day, feeling and locomotion began to return to the elbow. Tingling gave way to dull tactile sensation. I could bend and unbend my arm again. I never had to tell my parents the elaborate lie I'd made up where that nasty scab came from. I wore a lot of long sleeve shirts in the May heat. Eventually I healed fully, leaving only a neat looking scar that pairs with a pretty decent story. We used the shot in the finished short film, including the original sound of the stab. Alas, we did not win any awards at the festival.
