I am also aphantasic and have no internal monologue. I never had them as far as I know. When I heard that kids could have "imaginary friends" I thought it sounded totally absurd. I equated it with my schizophrenic relative who hallucinates and suffers delusions.

Unlike you, I have a little bit of aural memory and recall. It is faint and abstract compared to real hearing, but not nearly as abstract as for imagery, which is basically not there except for some spatial or topological feeling.

I'm also pretty good at recognizing voices, faces, gaits, and such. I also often have a feeling best expressed as, "doesn't this person resemble that person except for X", like I can feel a subset of recognition features are present or there is something contradictory about it. I don't think recognition entails "envisioning and comparing". It is a much more direct triggering on the recognizable features.

I remember the horror I experienced as a little kid, when I mis-recognized my mom in a store. I was so small I was looking at legs and hands and the torso disappears up into perspective. I went right up to her and grabbed her and then looked up. The feeling of "knowing" my mom was there evaporating and being replaced with the understanding that I just grabbed a stranger was a very disturbing perspective shift.