Monsieur Alimonde Vernais

Monsieur Alimonde Vernais, spotted more times than Elvis, has the dubious distinction of being the most famous dead person alive.

Born aloft a small bakery in Brussels, Vernais was raised by his two maiden aunts who never properly addressed how they came to be in possession of a small boy. Immersed in their coffee grinding business, they won a contract to become the official state grinders, and soon affluence embraced the family.

At the tender age of twelve, young Alimonde was sent to school to learn how to read, write, and distinguish girls from boys. He flourished until the mysterious death of his aunts in the now infamous grind horror of Rue de Felves. It put coffee drinking back ten years, as people were still finding body parts in their Kenya-mocha.

Vernais has been included in a variety of bizarre sightings, including one in Argentina where he was posing as the Virgin Mary on the side of a sixty-story office building. Vernais, considered to be more elusive than the Comte Saint Germain, followed the same lifestyle of the mythical alchemist with Hermetic ties to even the Rosicrucians themselves.

Once referred to as the man who knows nothing and who surely died by now—except for a few instances where he was accused of being related to Dracula or Hercule Poirot—Vernais enjoyed a lack of public scrutiny while remaining largely ignored by the social and intellectual set of his day. His fading away from life was duly noted by one funeral director, and two bored pigeons.

Claiming to be a genuine adept and to have the hermetic seal of approval, Vernais has been sighted many times in mysterious yet inane circumstances. In a world at odds with even its own spirituality and humanity, repeated impersonations of religious icons can cause even the most passionate of zealots to yawn.

As a spokesman from the Vatican explained, “We can only sell so many bread rolls with the face of Jesus on them, as the public is always looking out for a new and improved method of instant faith.”

Vernais, who was missed by none and not really remembered by any, will pass into the annals of time as one of the people who really were never there.—Katri Cardew