How does Edgar Allan Poe start the story?

Poe's opening paragraph of this first person narrative raises the reader's curiosity and leads to the expectation of a bizarre story. The narrator invites the reader to construct his or her own meaning from the tale he is about to tell, saying that he doesn't expect to be believed. He states as well that to some readers the story may seem less horrible than it does to the narrator. He speculates that some will find the story baroque, by which he means complicated, rather than "terrible." He even says that a mind calmer and more logical than his own may construct a perfectly ordinary meaning out of his tale, one that does not rely on the supernatural.
As is typical with a Poe story, the narrator insists he is not mad, which, of course, leads us to believe that he has been accused of insanity and perhaps may indeed be insane. We find ourselves primarily teased to read onward by this opening, wondering why the narrator says he will die tomorrow and what "series of mere household events" is causing him to react with such drama. Poe shows here, as in other stories, that he is a master at pulling the reader into a tale.