This post's first paragraph is a great example of the same technique I used on the first chapter of It Follows. An early confession of doing something weird, callous, and kind of psychotic, is a great way to pull in readers and keep them interested. I have no data on this, but I'm pretty sure a fair percentage of people who started reading It Follows and got to the third paragraph continued to at least to the end of the first chapter, as reading through the details of someone confessing how they stalk others is inherently hooking because, well, stalking is inherently hooking and this is an opportunity for the reader to stalk the stalker, which is exactly the same thing coldhealing goes for here. I can't help but appreciate the technique when I see it in the wild.