InKey works thanks. For some reason Komodo still produces an error... maybe i gotta stop using komodo and just do the command line thing...
Here is working code. The demo file in the distribution has some more to it.

#!/usr/bin/perl
 use strict;
 use lib qw(.);
 use Term::InKey;

 my ($x,$bullet);

 $|=1;

 &Clear;

 print "Hit a key: ";
 $x = &ReadKey;
 &Clear;

 print "You typed $x";
[download]

Komodo 3.52 spits out
Hit a key:
Not implemented on MSWin32: The handle is invalid at C:/Perl/lib/Term/InKey.pm line 32.

again this works in regular dos