Hector Gallegos is locked up in the Security Housing Unit (SHU), the maximum security cell block at Pelican Bay State Prison, California's most punitive prison. He offered this excerpt from a larger piece he is working on to "The Beat Within," a publication directed at young people in juvenile halls, with the comment "I thought it would be something that would give them a bit to chew on -- where it all ends for the lot of us when we continue to lead that 'Careless, reckless, thug lifestyle."'

Being locked in a windowless 12' by 8' concrete enclosure for 22 1/2 hours a day feels as though one is confined inside a pressurized tomb. I wonder if the tiny frogs I used to capture as a child felt the same way, enclosed inside those old mayonnaise jars, the way they stood up on their little hind legs and pushed around and around on the glass walls.

So I find a certain degree of solace each time I am let out to one of the isolated yards in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison.

It was on one these excursions that I noticed fate, in her own cruel, prankish way, would drop an insect into the yard. The feeble bug would land on the cold concrete floor with a sharp crackling sound. If it recovered from it's disoriented state, the insect would instinctively seek it's way back to its natural habitat -- only the bug, like most of the prisoners confined here, would never find its way back from whence it came. Even those insects equipped with wings could not maneuver their way beyond the twenty foot walls and through the rectangular steel trap overhead.

Remnants of dead insects would on occasion scatter from one end of the yard to the other, prompted by quick torrents of hot air that spurted through the steel screen above. When the tiny cyclone ended, the lifeless insects always seemed to end up in one pile.

I noticed that some had been decapitated, others were missing legs or wings. It was apparent that their mutilation was not the result of a natural withering - it looked like deliberate dismemberment. In that pile of crumbling insects, a couple still twitching, I came to realize, more so than ever, how much the inhumane nature of the SHU was taking it's toll everywhere. Prisoners were spending their time away from the cells torturing insects. Then I noticed something even more bizarre.

In one corner, there clung a large, single, undisturbed silky filament clustered with diminutive bits of insect husks. Part of the glistening web ran into a crevice in the wall, and there sat a black widow spider whose shiny abdomen and scarlet markings gave it the appearance of miniature olive with limbs.

"Fat little sucka, ain't ya," I softly whispered. I leaned forward for a closer look. I could actually see its multifaceted eyes. It raised its two front spindly legs in a rotating motion and worked its ragged maw up and down as though beckoning me -- or rather saying "Feed Me! Feed Me!"

I reached down to the ground and picked up a small pincher bug crawling by my shoe and dropped it into the spider's death bed. Presto! In a blur, the black widow swooped across the web like a bat out of hell and in one swift motion stung the helpless bug. A moment later it carried the disabled insect back to the crevice and started to devour it.

She, and she alone ruled in a silken domain amidst a realm of concrete and steel.

Prisoners had elected to allow the black widow spider to co-exist alongside them. Those insects that were not mutilated at the hands of prisoners were systematically sacrificed to the arachnid. She had become a symbol of captivity and torture, a reflection of one's own existence, of prisoners held in a giant man-made web of cruel and unusual punishment.

I was to be no exception. I too had become one of the black widow's many servants. Anger quickly swelled up in me and I was gripped with an irresistible urge to kick and smash the black bitch! To feel the crunch of her fat venomous body beneath my shoe. I wanted to destroy all she represented in my mind about this morbid place.

Instead, I found myself placing yet another sacrifice in her silken nest.

The sun peeked through the steel trap, spilling in warm rays which clashed with the cold shadows that blanketed the yard's inner walls. Above, swallows swooped in and out of view beneath a cotton candy sky, gathering straw and mud to build their homes somewhere beyond the reaches of these walls. Their chirping would remind me that in some other place in time, spring was in full bloom.

Looking up into the heavens from within one of these yards, one gets a grim sort of feeling -- as though viewing the firmament from the pits of hell. I found that if I kept my gaze downward at all times when I was on the yard, I would feel as if I was standing at the highest point, and not feel the flames of hell licked my feet. But eventually even the concept of walking around with bowed head failed, as it invoked an even grimmer sensation -- that of defeat. So in the end the sky would ultimately win out with its space of hope. A hope that lasted for a brief moment and faded with the passing clouds.

Behind me, fate dropped another insect into the yard, and nearby my black hostess rejoiced...