You don't need "fork", all you need is "spawn". Just because Unix spells "spawn" as "fork then exec" doesn't mean that is how you need to do it. Unfortunately, Perl doesn't expose a portable implementation of "spawn" despite having implemented one internally.

But if you have Windows Perl ("native" not cygwin), then your problem is solved as easily as:

    system( 1, $^X, $_ )
        for qw<
            /a/dir_fil­e_create.t­xt
            /b/dir_fil­e_create.t­xt
            /c/dir_fil­e_create.t­xt
        >;
    while(  0 <= wait()  ) {
        warn "Child exited with ", $?>>8, $/;
    }
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