My guilt tortures every purposeful step, but the chapel carpet is thick and forgiving. I slip silently in and up to the plinth where the coffin once was. Beneath the plinth are some discarded tools: an adjustable spanner, a blue electric screwdriver and a file or rasp with a broken handle. Some kind of repair has been going on; an open box gives easy access to wiring and other things I don't understand. What fun that must have been: the funeral where the mourners were not alone in their breakdowns.

A slight gap in the curtains gives cut shaped views through a hatch in the wall. Visual slices show the coffin in the next room; its weight pressed down on parallel steel rollers. It rests horizontally on a familiar plinth, just a foot away on the other side of the wall. Maybe this is what they meant when the polite ones said he had 'gone to the other side'. The room through the hatch appears pleasantly devoid of anyone living, so I try to find an entrance of the vertical kind. I feel the wall behind the curtains and find a shape recognisable clearly as a door. Near the handle I find the key still in the lock - of little consequence as the door is already unlocked. Doors like that are just asking to be opened, so I feel no tugging shame when I find myself the other side of it.

The walls of the room are covered with a grid of white ceramic tiles of the kind found in hospital wards and public lavatories. The smells of bleach and pine fresh disinfectant burn red on sensitive membranes; a double-edge sting for the nose and the eyes. The greeting impression is one of a sterile workroom, a purely functional space clean of any religious apparel. Wall mounted dispensers hold latex gloves and soapy green liquids. Stainless steel trolleys carry gloss varnished coffins in readiness for another place. Everything in sight is 'wipe clean' and smooth with porous and organic matter banished into boxes.

Around a corner I find another room, fitted and styled in the same decor. A metal table exhibits its age in a 'Paisley' of scratches; a swirling patina of scrubbing and abrasion. A large steel plate breaks the monotony of the wall, itself interrupted by two stainless steel doors. They are tea tray sized and cold to the touch - unusual considering the function of the machine. I open one while ducking down, expecting a blast of heat to the face. Nothing. I look into the dormant machine, the burner, the incinerator... a slow easy heat emanates from inside like afternoon sunlight.

Asbestos blocks line the tunnel-like oven. Gas nozzles protrude like nipples on a dogs hairless stomach. A gritty residue of particles gathers in the cracks and holes of the floor. As if testing the iron I spit some phlegm on the insulating bricks and they stay wet without the fizz of evaporation. Clearly this hasn't been used very recently. I spit in again just for the fun of it. An ash engrained chute catches the dripping saliva beneath the main chamber. A streak of moisture runs a wavering line through untold remains.

Close to the table a plastic bristled brush holds a greasy dandruff between its synthetic hair. A copy of Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche rests on top of a worn out grinder. Lined up against the wall a queue of coffins on trolleys wait to be processed like casualty patients in an NHS ward. They are wooden missiles ready to be loaded into the fiery tube and launched into the next life.

I see a large heavy door that I had previously missed; set slightly away in a recessed alcove. It follows the running theme of cold stainless steel; the favoured material for a sterile design. A lockable latch flips easily open for an inquisitive hand...

I find myself shivering in a walk-in freezer and exhaling smoke without cancerous repercussions. The shelves are stacked with bodies on trays, covered with thin paper sheets to protect any remaining modesty. Lists, toe tags and clipboards exhibit impressions of order and organisation, of paper trails and bureaucracy. In the far end of the freezer a dirty green tarpaulin disturbs the array; throwing chaos at uniformity. I lift up a crumpled corner and find a mound of rolled up carpets, black bin bags and plastic sheeting. Just for once I wish for emptiness; to find nothing inside the confusion of packaging. My wish dies in a breath of vapour when I see a frozen hand sticking out of a ripped open plastic sheet.

The hand is raised and motionless in time as if stuck in the act of clawing for the ceiling. Its nails are broken and brittle like ice cracked on a window pane. From a rolled up carpet the crown of a head bares male-pattern baldness; dark and matted with frosted hair. An old orange bucket holds the body of an infant stamped into the base with the force of a boot, its imprint stored in the distended head. Rubbish bags cling with static and ice to the shape of a face; solid and still like a statue in a gimp mask.

I tear at the bag and look into the face. A young woman stares back with pupils of clouds; coloured and textured like solidified cooking oil. I run a finger down her cheek and feel the cold and the smooth; touching what 'is' and thinking of what 'was'. I imagine the warmth of her life, the nervous blink of her eyelids, the moisture from her breath. I touch the paradox of her mouth; a conflict of soft curves and solid frozen matter. It is the kind of face you never tire of studying; an image that tattoos on your eyes and pervades all subsequent vision.

The chapel air vibrates with interrupting voices; a duet of banal and vociferous chatter. Unenthusiastic shoes scrape tracks through the carpet pile.

"...plane into the pentagon, or something... some American building anyway."
"that's mad. A plane?"
"Yeah a plane... anyway this guy... what was I saying?"
"Some guy flying a plane into some American building?"
"Yeah anyway, so he flies this plane into the Whitehouse or something..."

The dull talk rises in decibel intensity; signalling a closer, approaching proximity. Physical laws remain constant and comforting when everything else feels disturbed. I step away from the scene and let the tarpaulin fall. I feel something crunch under my shoe.

"And this is all in this book?"
"Yeah, Tom borrowed it me. Anyway he gives this big long speech about..."
"Is he still in the plane?"
"yep, he's on the plane and on about stuff that's gone on and all that..."
"A plane...that's mad"

The conversation progresses while momentum takes a breather at the curtained entrance door. A handle turns and the boring speech grows ever louder.

"...apparently some guy read this book and blew up a lorry outside some police building"
"that's mad, like, after reading a book?"
"yeah he read it and got the idea and made some bomb out of cow shit or something"
"aww man that's mad, cow shit heh heh!"
"I don't think it was cow shit but it was something like that. But he got the idea from this book."
"mad"

I find a rough chipwood door leading off the main workroom and hide inside before the voices move closer. I hear the blood in my veins and become sensitised to everything that moves. I suck air economically when the climate of sound allows it. My heart beats through my head like a punching fist. Over my lungs I hear the banter of two males and the irritating squeak of metal rollers. In the distance, organ music begins a reprise. Soon, someone else's relatives will be miming archaic lyrics. I will have to sit this one out.

Sing stuff, say stuff, sing stuff, move stiff, the ritual repeats with the priests self-satisfied tones MC'ing the performance. I swallow away my yawns and investigate the cupboard I find myself in. The smells of dust and pinewood struggle in silence against the outside bleach clouds. Broken down coffins stack like self-assembly furniture, brass-look handles and other adornments glint in interlocked plastic boxes. It seems like everyone's recycling these days.

Outside the crying is reaching a crescendo while electric motors hum an accompanying bass line. Through a crack in the door frame I see the two chatting workers, uniformly dressed in paper overalls and blue disposable aprons so thin you could wrap your lunch in them. A new visitor arrives - one equally lacking in conversation skills and lying cold in a shiny pine box.

Muffled through the dividing walls, the priest brings his pitch to closure. The workers watch through the open hatch, while the saline dripping masses organise themselves out the door. As the last one leaves, cheap cigarettes and disposable lighters appear from overall pockets. The men disappear the way they came. When the way is clear I exit the building quickly to avoid getting caught in the loop again. Outside, the chimney still stands dormant.

I walk the crematorium grounds, freshly cut lawns sprout with shaped slabs of stone; marble and granite monoliths marking centuries of forgotten accidents, diseases or crumbling, pissing exits. Segregated areas of flowers and planting fail to disguise this place as a garden; the remotely natural just camouflage the rubbish removal machine. Incinerated or landfill? Wives and mothers make your choice. They say they love you, then chuck you in a box and let the council take you away. Those fortunate enough to be buried here are only designated to natures disposal process; as stone nominated bacteria food. Here is no glorious ending, no wonderful mourning, just the throwing away of human shells; the expended exoskeletons of dead verminous insects.